governor of his canton, and show the means by which he was getting an
honest living, may have done something towards making industry general;
but his example, his active habits, and his encouragement of art and
architecture, probably did more. His architectural works must have given
constant employment to large numbers of persons as quarrymen, boatmen,
bricklayers, plasterers, masons, carpenters, and master builders; his
patronage of art not only gave direct occupation to a multitude of
artists, but set a fashion to the more wealthy among his subjects by
which the demand for objects of art was multiplied a hundredfold.
Sculptors and painters had a happy time under a king who was always
building temples, erecting colossi, or sending statues or paintings of
himself as presents to foreign states or foreign shrines.

The external aspect of Egypt under the reign of Amasis is thus as bright
and flourishing as that which she ever wore at any former time; but, as
M. Lenormant observes, this apparent prosperity did but ill conceal the
decay of patriotism and the decline of all the institutions of the
nation. The kings of the Saïte dynasty had thought to re-vivify Egypt,
and infuse a little new blood into the old monarchy founded by Menes, by
allowing the great stream of liberal ideas, whereof Greece had already
made herself the propagator, to expand itself in her midst. Without
knowing it, they had by these means introduced on the banks of the Nile
a new element of decline. Constructed exclusively for continuance, for
preserving its own traditions in defiance of the flight of centuries,
the civilization of Egypt could only maintain itself by remaining
unmoved. From the day on which it found itself in contact with the
spirit of progress, personified in the Grecian civilization and in the
Greek race, it was under the absolute necessity of perishing. It could
neither launch itself upon a wholly new path, one which was the direct
negation of its own genius, nor continue on without change its own