The change of monarch made little difference to the Greeks in Egypt. They were too valuable, both as soldiers and as traders, for the Pharaoh to dispense with their services. The mercenaries were removed from Daphnæ to Memphis, in the very heart of the kingdom, and fresh privileges were granted to the merchants of Naukratis. The Pharaoh married a Greek wife, and a demotic papyrus, now at Paris, even describes how he robbed the temples of Memphis, On and Bubastis of their endowments and handed them over to the Greek troops. “The Council” which sat under him ordered that “the vessels, the fuel, the linen, and the dues” hitherto enjoyed by their gods and their priests should be given instead to the foreigner. In this act of sacrilege the Egyptians of a later day saw the cause of the downfall of their country. The invasion of Nebuchadrezzar had passed over it without producing much injury; indeed, it does not seem to have extended beyond the eastern half of the Delta. But a new power, that of Cyrus, was rising in the East. Amasis had foreseen the coming storm, and had occupied Cyprus in advance. If Xenophon is to be believed, he had also sent troops to the aid of Krœsus of Lydia. But all was of no avail. The power of Cyrus steadily increased. The empires of Lydia and Babylonia went down before it, and when his son Kambyses succeeded him in July, B.C. 529, the new empire extended from the Mediterranean to India and from the Caspian to the borders of Egypt. It was clear that the fertile banks of the Nile would be the next object of attack. Greek vanity asserted that the actual cause of the invasion was the Greek mercenary Phanês. He had deserted to Kambyses, and explained to him how Egypt could be entered. That Phanês was a name used by the Egyptian Greeks we know from its occurrence on the fragment of a large vase discovered by Professor Petrie at Naukratis. Here we read: “Phanês the son of Glaukos dedicated me to Apollo of Naukratis.” But the invasion of Egypt by Kambyses was the necessary consequence of the policy which had laid the whole of the oriental world at his father’s feet. Amasis died while the army of Kambyses was on its march (B.C. 526), and his son Psammetikhos III. had to bear the brunt of the attack. A battle was fought near Pelusium, and though the Greek and Karian auxiliaries did their best, the invading forces gained the day. The Pharaoh fled to Memphis, which was thereupon besieged by Kambyses. The siege was a short one. The city of “the White Wall” was taken, Psammetikhos made a prisoner, and his son, together with two thousand youths of the leading Egyptian families, was put to death. For a while Psammetikhos himself was allowed to live, but the fears of the conqueror soon caused him to be executed, and with his death came the end of the twenty-sixth dynasty and the independence of Egypt. CHAPTER V. THE AGE OF THE PTOLEMIES.