The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 02

by Unknown

CAMBYSES

[529-525 B.C.]

Cyrus bequeathed the crown to his eldest child, Kambujiya, called by the Greeks Cambyses, and the government of several provinces to Bardius (Smerdis), his second son. He thought that this pre-settlement of the succession would prevent the disputes usually accruing to the succession of a new king in the East. But this hope was disappointed. Cambyses had hardly ascended the throne when he murdered his brother: but the crime was committed with such care and secrecy that it passed unnoticed by the people, and it was thought by the subjects and court that Bardius was shut up in some distant palace in Media, from whence he would shortly reappear.

Freed from a rival who might have been dangerous, Cambyses then gave his full attention to war. Alone among the great nations of the old world, Egypt, protected by the desert and the marshes of the Delta, was able to withstand the power of the Persians, and followed in peace the course of her development. Since his unfortunate intervention in Lydia, Aahmes had always avoided any ground for strife with his neighbours. His ambition went no further than the establishment of the old suzerainty of Egypt in Cyprus. Thanks to this prudence, he lived on amicable terms with Cyrus, and profited by twenty-five years of tranquillity to develop the natural resources of his country. The course of the canals was repaired and enlarged, agriculture was encouraged, and commerce extended.

But it was impossible to withstand the hatred of his subjects, and it compassed his ruin. Cyrus dead, Aahmes resigned himself to war. There was no lack of serious counts against him: he had made an alliance with Lydia; he had intrigued with Chaldea; and Cambyses, being young, was more disposed to excite than to calm the warlike spirit of his compatriots. According to the Persians, Cambyses asked the daughter of the old king in marriage, hoping that his refusal would furnish him with an insult to avenge. But Aahmes substituted Nitetis the daughter of Uah-ab-Ra for his own daughter. Sometime afterwards, when Cambyses was with her, he called her by the name of her pretended father; whereupon she said: “I see, O king! that thou dost not suspect how thou hast been deceived by Amasis [Aahmes]; he took me, loaded me with jewels, and sent me to thee as his own daughter. It is true I am the child of Apries [Uah-ab-Ra] who was his lord and master, until he rebelled and was put to death with the other Egyptians.” The anger of Cambyses, son of Cyrus, was thus roused, and he took up arms against Egypt.

In Egypt the story was different: Nitetis was sent to Cyrus, and she was the mother of Cambyses, and the conquest was only the re-establishment of the legitimate family against the usurper Aahmes; and thus Cambyses ascended the throne, less in the character of a conqueror, than in that of Uah-ab-Ra’s grandson. It was by an equally puerile fiction that the Egyptians in their decadence consoled themselves for their weakness and disgrace. Always proud of their past glory, but henceforth powerless to conquer, they pretended that they were only vanquished and governed by themselves. It was not Persia that imposed her king upon Egypt, but Egypt who loaned hers to Persia and thence to the rest of the world. The desert and marshes formed a perfect bulwark for the Delta against the attacks of the Asiatic princes. There were ninety leagues of distance, which no army could traverse in less than three weeks, between the last important garrison of Syria and Lake Serbon, where the Egyptian outposts were encamped. In times past the stretch of desert was less, but the incursions of the Assyrians and Chaldeans had depopulated the country and given over to the nomadic Arabs regions which had been formerly quite accessible. An unforeseen event, however, showed Cambyses a way out of the difficulty. Phanes of Halicarnassus, one of the generals of Aahmes, deserted, and fled to Persia. He was a man of judgment and energy, and fully acquainted with Egypt. He advised the king to make friends with the sheikh who governed the coast, and get a passport from him; so the Arab had camels, loaded with sufficient water for the whole army, stationed all along the road.

[525-523 B.C.]

On arriving at Pelusium, the Persians learned that Aahmes was dead, and that he had been murdered by Psamthek III. In spite of their confidence in their gods and themselves, the Egyptians now began to be alarmed. They were not only threatened by the nations of the Tigris and Euphrates, but the whole of Asia and the Hellespont also seemed ready to invade them. The allies upon whom Aahmes had counted, such as Polycrates of Samos, and old subjects like those of Cyprus, had abandoned his cause, which now seemed hopeless, and supplied the Persians with forces. The people, consumed with fear of the invader, regarded the slightest phenomenon of nature as a bad sign. Rain is rare in the Thebaïd, and storms rarely come more than once or twice in a century; so, as some days after the accession of Psamthek, “rain fell in torrents at Thebes, which was a rare event, the battle before Pelusium was fought with the bravery of despair.”

Phanes had left his children in Egypt. His old soldiers, the Carians, and the Ionians in the service of the Pharaoh, killed them before his eyes, poured their blood into a goblet half full of wine, and after drinking the mixture, they dashed like madmen into the thickest of the fight. Towards evening the Egyptian line began to waver, and the rout began. Instead of rallying the rest of his forces, and defending the passage of the canals, Psamthek lost his head and took refuge in Memphis. Cambyses sent to demand his surrender, but the maddened people killed the envoys. After a siege of some days, the town opened the gates, and Upper Egypt submitted without further resistance; and the Libyans and Cyrenians offered a tribute without even waiting for it to be demanded. It is said that ten days after the surrender of Memphis, the conqueror wishing to test the imperturbability of his prisoner, gave orders for his daughter, who was dressed as a slave, his sons, and the sons of the chief Egyptians to march past him on their way to their execution. But Psamthek saw the procession without evincing a sign of emotion; when, however, one of his old boon companions went by, dressed in rags like a beggar, he burst into tears and struck his forehead in despair. Cambyses, astonished at this display of despair in a man who had seemed so self-controlled, sent to ask him the reason of his grief, whereupon he said: “O son of Cyrus, my personal misfortunes are too great for tears, but not so with those of my friend. When a man falls from luxury and plenty into misery on the threshold of old age, one can but weep for him.” When the messenger repeated these words to Cambyses, he saw their truth, and Crœsus was moved to tears, for he was with Cambyses in Egypt, and all the Persians present also began to weep. So Cambyses, touched with compassion, treated his prisoner like a king, and would probably have replaced him as a vassal on the throne, had he not learned that a conspiracy was being formed against him; so he entrusted the government of Egypt to Aryandes, the Persian.

Thus, for the first time in the memory of man, the Old World was under one master; but it was impossible to keep the people of the Caucasus and those of Egypt, the Greeks of Asia Minor and the Iranians of Media, the Scythians of Bactriana and the Semites of the Euphrates, under one ruler, so the empire dissolved as quickly as it had been formed.