After this brutal deed,—calculated to efface in the minds of the Egyptian priests the enormities of Cheops and Chephrên, and doubtless unparalleled in all the twenty-four thousand years of their anterior history,—Kambysês lost every spark of reason which yet remained to him, and the Egyptians found in this visitation a new proof of the avenging interference of their gods. Not only did he commit every variety of studied outrage against the conquered people among whom he was tarrying, as well as their temples and their sepulchres,—but he also dealt his blows against his Persian friends and even his nearest blood-relations. Among these revolting atrocities, one of the greatest deserves peculiar notice, because the fate of the empire was afterwards materially affected by it. His younger brother Smerdis had accompanied him into Egypt, but had been sent back to Susa, because the king became jealous of the admiration which his personal strength and qualities called forth.[395] That jealousy was aggravated into alarm and hatred by a dream, portending dominion and conquest to Smerdis; so that the frantic Kambysês sent to Susa secretly a confidential Persian, Prexaspês, with express orders to get rid of his brother. Prexaspês fulfilled his commission effectively, burying the slain prince with his own hands,[396] and keeping the deed concealed from all except a few of the chiefs at the regal residence. [395] Ktêsias calls the brother Tanyoxarkês, and says that Cyrus had left him satrap, without tribute, of Baktria and the neighboring regions (Persica, c. 8). Xenophon, in the Cyropædia, also calls him Tanyoxarkês, but gives him a different satrapy (Cyropæd. viii, 7, 11). [396] Herodot. iii, 30-62.