Note 110 — Chapter XVI · ABOU SIMBEL.

On the left leg of this colossus is the famous Greek inscription discovered by Messrs. Bankes and Salt. It dates from the reign of Psamatichus I, and purports to have been cut by a certain Damearchon, one of the two hundred and forty thousand Egyptian troops of whom it is related by Herodotus (book ii, chaps. xxix and xxx) that they deserted because they were kept in garrison at Syene for three years without being relieved. The inscription, as translated by Colonel Leake, is thus given in Rawlingson’s “Herodotus” (vol. ii, p. 37); “King Psamatichus having come to Elephantine, those who were with Psamatichus, the son of Theocles, wrote this: ‘They sailed, and came to above Kerkis, to where the river rises ... the Egyptian Amasis....’ The writer is Damearchon, the son of Amœbichus, and Pelephus (Pelekos), the son of Udamus.” The king Psamatichus here named has been identified with the Psamtik I of the inscriptions. It was in his reign, and not as it has sometimes been supposed, in the reign of Psamatichus II, that the great military defection took place.