Egypt -- History -- To 332 B.C. -- Fiction; German fiction -- Translations into English
My reasons for making Phanes an Athenian will be found in Note 90. Vol.
I. This coercion of an authenticated fact might have been avoided in the
first edition, but could not now be altered without important changes in
the entire text. The means I have adopted in my endeavor to make Nitetis
as young as possible need a more serious apology; as, notwithstanding
Herodotus’ account of the mildness of Amasis’ rule, it is improbable
that King Hophra should have been alive twenty years after his fall.
Even this however is not impossible, for it can be proved that his
descendants were not persecuted by Amasis.
On a Stela in the Leyden Museum I have discovered that a certain
Psamtik, a member of the fallen dynasty, lived till the 17th year of
Amasis’ reign, and died at the age of seventy-five.
Lastly let me be permitted to say a word or two in reference to
Rhodopis. That she must have been a remarkable woman is evident from the
passage in Herodotus quoted in Notes 10, and 14, Vol. I., and from the
accounts given by many other writers. Her name, “the rosy-cheeked one,”
tells us that she was beautiful, and her amiability and charm of manner
are expressly praised by Herodotus. How richly she was endowed with
gifts and graces may be gathered too from the manner in which tradition
and fairy lore have endeavored to render her name immortal. By many she
is said to have built the most beautiful of the Pyramids, the Pyramid of
Mycerinus or Menkera. One tale related of her and reported by Strabo and
AElian probably gave rise to our oldest and most beautiful fairy tale,
Cinderella; another is near akin to the Loreley legend. An eagle,
according to AElian--the wind, in Strabo’s tale,--bore away Rhodopis’
slippers while she was bathing in the Nile, and laid them at the feet of
the king, when seated on his throne of justice in the open market.
The little slippers so enchanted him that he did not rest until he had
discovered their owner and made her his queen.
The second legend tells us how a wonderfully beautiful naked woman
could be seen sitting on the summit of one of the pyramids (ut in una ex
pyramidibus); and how she drove the wanderers in the desert mad through
her exceeding loveliness.
Moore borrowed this legend and introduces it in the following verse:
“Fair Rhodope, as story tells--
The bright unearthly nymph, who dwells
‘Mid sunless gold and jewels hid,
The lady of the Pyramid.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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