. The
unhappy prince had already fallen. Cambyses was so far appeased by the
influence of these facts, that he abstained from doing Psammenitus or
his family any further injury.

He, however, advanced up the Nile, ravaging and plundering the country
as he went on, and at length, in the course of his conquests, he
gained possession of the tomb in which the embalmed body of Amasis was
deposited. He ordered this body to be taken out of its sarcophagus,
and treated with every mark of ignominy. His soldiers, by his orders,
beat it with rods, as if it could still feel, and goaded it, and cut
it with swords. They pulled the hair out of the head by the roots, and
loaded the lifeless form with every conceivable mark of insult and
ignominy. Finally, Cambyses ordered the mutilated remains that were
left to be burned, which was a procedure as abhorrent to the ideas and
feelings of the Egyptians as could possibly be devised.

Cambyses took every opportunity to insult the religious, or as,
perhaps, we ought to call them, the superstitious feelings of the
Egyptians. He broke into their temples, desecrated their altars, and
subjected every thing which they held most sacred to insult and
ignominy. Among their objects of religious veneration was the sacred
bull called Apis. This animal was selected from time to time, from the
country at large, by the priests, by means of certain marks which they
pretended to discover upon its body, and which indicated a divine and
sacred character. The sacred bull thus found was kept in a magnificent
temple, and attended and fed in a most sumptuous manner. In serving
him, the attendants used vessels of gold.

Cambyses arrived at the city where Apis was kept at a time when the
priests were celebrating some sacred occasion with festivities and
rejoicings. He was himself then returning from an unsuccessful
expedition which he had made, and, as he entered the town, stung with
vexation and anger at his defeat, the gladness and joy which the
Egyptians manifested in their ceremonies served only to irritate him,
and to make him more angry than ever. He killed the priests who were
officiating. He then demanded to be taken into the edifice to see the
sacred animal, and there, after insulting the feelings of the
worshipers in every possible way by ridicule and scornful words, he
stabbed the innocent bull with his dagger. The animal died of the
wound, and the whole country was filled with horror and indignation.