e Alcmaeonides undertook to rebuild it from
the ground for the sum of three hundred talents, of which one-fourth was
to be furnished by the Delphians. When these, being too poor to pay
the sum out of their own resources, made an appeal to the generosity of
other friendly powers, Amasis graciously offered them a thousand talents
of Egyptian alum, then esteemed the most precious of all others. Alum
was employed in dyeing, and was an expensive commodity in the markets of
Europe; the citizens of Delphi were all the more sensible of Pharaoh's
generosity, since the united Greeks of the Nile valley contributed only
twenty _minae_ of the same mineral as their quota. Amasis erected at
Cyrene a statue of his wife Ladike, and another of the goddess Neit,
gilded from head to foot, and to these he added his own portrait,
probably painted on a wooden panel.**

* The very fact of the marriage is considered by Wiedemann
as a pure legend, but there is nothing against its
authenticity; the curious story of the relations of the
woman with Amasis told by the Cyrenian commentators is the
only part which need be rejected.

** The text of Herodotus can only mean a painted panel
similar to those which have been found on the mummies of the
Graeco-Roman era in the Fayum.

He gave to Athene of Lindos two stone statues and a corselet of linen
of marvellous fineness;* and Hera of Samos received two wooden statues,
which a century later Herodotus found still intact. The Greeks flocked
to Egypt from all quarters of the world in such considerable numbers
that the laws relating to them had to be remodelled in order to avoid
conflicts with the natives.

* It seems that one of these statues is that which, after
being taken to Constantinople, was destroyed in a fire in
476 A.D. Fragments of the corselet still existed in the
first century of our era, but inquisitive persons used to
tear off pieces to see for themselves whether, as Herodotus
assures us, each thread was composed of three hundred and
sixty-five strands, every one visible with the naked eye.

The townships founded a century earlier along the Pelusiac arm of the
Nile had increased still further since the time of Necho, and to their
activity was attributable the remarkable prosperity of the surrounding
region. But the position which they occupied on the most exposed side
of Egypt was regarded as permanently endanger