, and who will assuredly work its ruin; unless
indeed, worn out by internal dissension, it perish even sooner from its
own weakness!"

Thus far Amasis had listened to these revilings of all he held dearest in
silence, though pale, and trembling with rage; but now he broke forth in
a voice, the trumpet-like sound of which pealed through the wide hall:
"Know'st thou not then, thou boasting and revengeful son of evil, thou
future destroyer of this ancient and glorious kingdom, know'st thou not
whose life must be the sacrifice, were not my children, and the dynasty
which I have founded, dearer to me than the welfare of the whole realm?
Thou, Psamtik, thou art the man, branded by the gods, feared by men--the
man to whose heart love and friendship are strangers, whose face is never
seen to smile, nor his soul known to feel compassion! It is not, however,
through thine own sin that thy nature is thus unblessed, that all thine
undertakings end unhappily. Give heed, for now I am forced to relate what
I had hoped long to keep secret from thine ears. After dethroning my
predecessor, I forced him to give me his sister Tentcheta in marriage.
She loved me; a year after marriage there was promise of a child. During
the night preceding thy birth I fell asleep at the bedside of my wife. I
dreamed that she was lying on the shores of the Nile, and complained to
me of pain in the breast. Bending down, I beheld a cypress-tree springing
from her heart. It grew larger and larger, black and spreading, twined
its roots around thy mother and strangled her. A cold shiver seized me,
and I was on the point of flying from the spot, when a fierce hurricane
came from the East, struck the tree and overthrew it, so that its
spreading branches were cast into the Nile. Then the waters ceased to
flow; they congealed, and, in place of the river, a gigantic mummy lay
before me. The towns on its banks dwindled into huge funereal urns,
surrounding the vast corpse of the Nile as in a tomb. At this I awoke and
caused the interpreters of dreams to be summoned. None could explain the
vision, till at last the priests of the Libyan Ammon gave me the
following interpretation 'Tentcheta will die in giving birth to a son.
The cypress, which strangled its mother, is this gloomy, unhappy man. In
his days a people shall come from the East and shall make of the Nile,
that is of the Egyptians, dead bodies, and of their cities ruinous heaps;
these are the urns for the dead, w