circumstances, but proceeded further to exercise his rights as conqueror
in a most violent and tyrannical way. He tore from its tomb the mummy of
the late king, Amasis, and subjected it to the grossest indignities. He
stabbed in the thigh an Apis-Bull, recently inaugurated at the capital
with joyful ceremonies, suspecting that the occasion was feigned, and
that the rejoicings were really over the ill-success of expeditions
carried out by his orders against the oasis of Ammon, and against
Ethiopia. He exhumed numerous mummies for the mere purpose of examining
them. He entered the grand temple of Phthah at Memphis, and made sport
of the image. He burnt the statues of the Cabeiri, which he found in
another temple. He scourged the priests of Apis, and massacred in the
streets those Egyptians who were keeping the festival. Altogether, his
object was, if the informants of Herodotus are to be believed, to pour
contempt and contumely on the Egyptian religion, and to insult the
religious feelings of the entire people.

On the other hand, we learn from a contemporary inscription, that
Cambyses so far conformed to Egyptian usages as to take a "throne-name,"
after the pattern of the ancient Pharaohs; that he cleared the temple of
Neith at Saïs of the foreigners who had taken possession of it; that he
entrusted the care of the temple to an Egyptian officer of high
standing; and that he was actually himself initiated into the mysteries
of the goddess. Perhaps we ought not to be greatly surprised at these
contradictions. Cambyses had the iconoclastic spirit strong in him, and,
under excitement, took a pleasure in showing his abhorrence of Egyptian
superstitions. But he was not always under excitement--he enjoyed lucid
intervals, during which he was actuated by the spirit of an
administrator and a statesman. Having in many ways greatly exasperated
the Egyptians against his rule, he thought it prudent, ere he quitted
the country, to soothe the feelings which he had so deeply wounded, and