The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [118]
24. If this is evidence of humanity in Cambyses, it should be balanced against what he next did,
25. Which was to go from Memphis to Sais, where King Amasis had been buried, and command that his embalmed body be exhumed,
26. For Cambyses held a grudge against Amasis, which was part of his reason for invading Egypt in the first place.
27. When the corpse of Amasis was brought out, Cambyses ordered his attendants to scourge the body,
28. And prick it with goads, and pluck the hair from it, and heap upon it all manner of insults.
29. The body, however, having been embalmed, resisted, and refused to come apart, do what they would to it;
30. So the attendants grew weary of their work; whereupon Cambyses bade them take the corpse and burn it.
31. This was felt by the Egyptians to be a great indignity to their deceased king. It was also among the first marks of madness that was creeping upon Cambyses.
Chapter 23
1. Having designs on the land of the Ethiopians, and wishing to know their strength and dispositions, Cambyses dispatched an embassy there,
2. With gifts for the Ethiopian king comprising a purple robe, a gold chain for the neck, armlets, an alabaster box of myrrh and a cask of palm wine.
3. The Ethiopians are said to be the tallest and handsomest men in the world. In their customs they differ greatly from the rest of mankind, and particularly in the way they choose their kings;
4. For they find out the man who is tallest of all the citizens, and of strength equal to his height, and appoint him to rule over them.
5. The Persian ambassadors, on reaching this people, delivered the gifts to their king, and said,
6. ‘Cambyses, king of the Persians, anxious to become your friend, has sent us to bring you these gifts,which are the things he himself most delights in.’
7. To which the Ethiopian, who knew they came as spies, answered, ‘The Persian king did not send you with these gifts because he desired my friendship;
8. ‘Nor is what you say of yourselves true, for you are here to spy on my kingdom.
9. ‘Your king is not a just man, for were he so, he would not covet a land not his own, nor try to bring slavery on a people who never did him wrong.
10. ‘Take him this bow, and say, “The Ethiopians thus advise: when the Persians can pull a bow of this strength as easily as an Ethiopian, let him come with an army.
11. ‘“Until then, let him be thankful that it is not in the heart of the sons of Ethiopia to covet countries which do not belong to them.”’
12. So speaking, he unstrung the bow and gave it to the messengers. Then, taking the purple robe, he asked them what it was, and how it had been made.
13. They answered truly, telling him concerning the purple, and the art of the dyer; whereupon he observed that ‘the men were deceitful, and their garments also’.
14. Next he took the neck chain and the armlets, and asked about them. So the ambassadors explained their use as ornaments.
15. Then the king laughed, and believing they were fetters, said the Ethiopians had much stronger ones.
16. Thirdly, he inquired about the myrrh, and when they told him how it was made and rubbed upon the limbs, he said the same as he had said about the robe.
17. Last he came to the wine, and having learnt their way of making it, he drank a draught, which greatly delighted him;
18. Whereupon he asked what the Persian king liked to eat, and what age the longest-lived of the Persians attained.
19. They told him that the king ate bread, and described the nature of wheat; adding that eighty years was the longest term of man’s life among the Persians.
20. To this the Ethiopian king remarked that it did not surprise him, if they fed on dirt, that they died so young;
21. Indeed he was sure they never would have lived so long as eighty years, except for the refreshment they got from their wine, which he confessed to be superior to anything that the Ethopians drank.
22. When the spies had seen everything, they returned to Egypt and made report to Cambyses, who was stirred to anger by the words of the Ethiopian