"Woe worth the day! For the day is near,
Even the day of the Lord is near, a day of clouds;
It shall be the time of the heathen.
And a sword shall come upon Egypt, and anguish shall be in Ethiopia;
When the slain shall fall in Egypt;
and they shall take away her multitude,
And her foundations shall be broken down.
Ethiopia and Phut and Lud, and all the mingled people, and Chub,
And the children of the land that is in league,
shall fall with them by the sword....
I will put a fear in the land of Egypt.
And I will make Pathros desolate,
And will set a fire in Zoan, and will execute judgments in No....
Sin [Pelusium] shall be in great anguish,
And No shall be broken up,
and Noph shall have adversaries in the daytime.
The young men of Aven and of Pi-beseth shall fall by the sword:
And these cities shall go into captivity.
At Tehaphnehes also the day shall withdraw itself,
When I shall break there the yokes of Egypt;
And the pride of her power shall cease."[31]
According to Herodotus, Cambyses was not content with the
above-mentioned severities, which were perhaps justifiable under the
circumstances, but proceeded further to exercise his rights as conqueror
in a most violent and tyrannical way. He tore from its tomb the mummy of
the late king, Amasis, and subjected it to the grossest indignities. He
stabbed in the thigh an Apis-Bull, recently inaugurated at the capital
with joyful ceremonies, suspecting that the occasion was feigned, and
that the rejoicings were really over the ill-success of expeditions
carried out by his orders against the oasis of Ammon, and against
Ethiopia. He exhumed numerous mummies for the mere purpose of examining
them. He entered the grand temple of Phthah at Memphis, and made sport
of the image. He burnt the statues of the Cabeiri, which he found in
another temple. He scourged the priests of Apis, and massacred in the
streets those Egyptians who were keeping the festival. Altogether, his
object was, if the informants of Herodotus are to be believed, to pour
contempt and contumely on the Egyptian religion, and to insult the
religious feelings of the entire people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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