ted by an interpreter who
inscribed on it a bilingual inscription in hieroglyphics and
Carian.

[Illustration: 348a.jpg EGYPTIAN GREEK]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from PI, Petrie. The original
statuette in alabaster is now in the Gizeh Museum; the
Cyprian style of the figure is easily recognised.

[Illustration: 348b.jpg EGYPTIAN GREEK]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from PI. Petrie. The original
limestone statuette is in the Gizeh Museum.

By thus bringing his subjects in contact with an active, industrious,
and enterprising nation, full of youthful vigour, Psammetichus no doubt
hoped to inspire them with some of the qualities which he discerned in
the colonists, but Egypt during the last two centuries had suffered too
much at the hands of foreigners of all kinds to be favourably disposed
to these new-comers. It would have been different had they presented
themselves in humble guise like the Asiatics and Africans to whom Egypt
had opened her doors so freely after the XVIIIth dynasty, and if
they had adopted the obsequious manners of the Phoenician and Hebrew
merchants; but they landed from their ships fully equipped for war, and,
proud of their own courage and ability, they vied with the natives of
the ancient race, whether of plebeian or noble birth, for the favour
of the sovereign. Their language, their rude military customs, their
cunning devices in trade, even the astonishment they manifested at the
civilisation of the country, rendered them objects of disdain, as well
as of jealous hatred to the Egyptian. The food of which they partook
made them unclean in native estimation, and the horrified fellah shunned
contact with them from fear of defiling himself, refusing to eat with
them, or to use the same knife or cooking-vessel: the scribes and
members of the higher classes, astonished at their ignorance, treated
them like children with no past history, whose ancestors a few
generations back had been mere savages.

Although unexpressed at first, this hostility towards the Hellenes was
not long in manifesting itself openly. The Saite tradition attributed it
to a movement of wounded vanity. Psammetichus, to recompense the prowess
of his Ionian and Carian soldiers, had attached them to his own person,
and assigned to them the post of honour on the right wing when the army
was drawn up for review or in battle array.*

* Diodorus Siculus states that it was during the Syrian war