Cambyses discovered this, he compelled him to drink bulls' blood, and he died on the spot. Such was his end." "But Cambyses came from Memphis to Sais, and when he entered the palace of Amasis, he gave orders to take his body out of the grave; when this was done he caused the corpse to be scourged, the hair to be torn out; he stabbed it and treated it with every kind of indignity. When those who were executing his commands grew weary, for the body being embalmed resisted their blows, and did not come to pieces, he ordered it to be burned. This was a sacrilegious command. The Persians regard fire as a deity, and the burning of the dead is not according to the laws either of the Persians or the Egyptians. The Persians do not consider it right to offer a corpse to a god; the Egyptians regard fire as a living all-consuming animal, and as it is by no means lawful to give up corpses to animals, they embalm them that they may not be consumed by worms. Hence Cambyses had commanded what was not allowed by the law of either nation. But the Egyptians say that it was not Amasis who endured this contumely, but another Egyptian of the same age, whom the Persians outraged under the impression that they were outraging Amasis. Amasis had been informed by an oracle what would happen to him after death; to escape his fate he had buried a man, who died at the time, in the tomb which he had made for himself at the temple of Neith at Sais, near the door, and had commanded his son to bury him in the innermost grave-chamber. In my opinion these arrangements of Amasis about his burial were not carried out, they were mere inventions of the Egyptians." Ctesias' narrative is as follows: Cambyses fulfilled the last commands of his father that his younger brother Tanyoxarkes should be made lord of the Bactrians, Chorasmians, Parthians, and Carmanians, and in every other respect, and sent his corpse to Persia for burial. Having ascertained that the Egyptian women were more desirable than others, he asked Amasis for one of his daughters, and Amasis sent Nitetis the daughter of Hophra. Cambyses took great delight in her, and loved her much, and when he had learned all her story he acceded to her request that he would avenge the murder of her father. When he had armed against Egypt and Amyrtaeus, the Egyptian king, the eunuch Combaphes, who had great influence with Amyrtaeus, betrayed the passes into Egypt, and all the affairs of the country, in order that he might be viceroy of it. Then Cambyses set out on his march; in the battle 50,000 Egyptians and 20,000 Persians were slain,[144] Amyrtaeus was taken alive, and all Egypt was subjugated. Cambyses did no further harm to Amyrtaeus beyond sending him with 6000 Egyptians of his own choice to Susa; but Combaphes became governor of Egypt as Cambyses had promised first by Izabates, his most trusted eunuch and the cousin of Combaphes, and then by his own mouth.[145]