he principal province of my work. The study of the kings from the
twenty-sixth dynasty--that is, the one with which the independence of
the Pharaohs ended and the rule of the Persians under Cambyses began
in the valley of the Nile--occupied me a long time. I used the material
thus acquired afterward for my habilitation essay, but the impulse
natural to me of imparting my intellectual gains to others had induced
me to utilize it in a special way. The material I had collected appeared
in my judgment exactly suited for a history of the time that Egypt fell
into the power of Persia. Jacob Burckhardt's Constantine the Great was
to serve for my model. I intended to lay most stress upon the state of
civilization, the intellectual and religious life, art, and science
in Egypt, Greece, Persia, Phoenicia, etc., and after most carefully
planning the arrangement I began to write with the utmost zeal.

[I still have the unfinished manuscript; but the farther I advanced
the stronger became the conviction, now refuted by Eduard Meyer,
that it would not yet be possible to write a final history of that
period which would stand the test of criticism.]

While thus engaged, the land of the Pharaohs, the Persian court, Greece
in the time of the Pisistratidae and Polycrates grew more and more
distinct before my mental vision. Herodotus's narrative of the false
princess sent by Pharaoh Amasis to Cambyses as a wife, and who became
the innocent cause of the war through which the kingdom of the Pharaohs
lost its independence, would not bear criticism, but it was certainly
usable material for a dramatic or epic poem. And this material gave me
no peace.

Yes, something might certainly be done with it. I soon mastered it
completely, but gradually the relation changed and it mastered me,
gave me no rest, and forced me to try upon it the poetic power so long
condemned to rest.

When I set to work I was not permitted to leave the house in the
evening. Was it disloyal to science if I dedicated to poesy the hours
which others called leisure time? The question was put to the inner
judge in such a way that he could not fail to say "No." I also tried
successfully to convince myself that I merely essayed to write this tale
to make the material I had gathered "live," and bring the persons and
conditions of the period whose history I wished to write as near to me
as if I were conversing with them and dwelling in their midst. How
often I repeat