Note 615 — Chapter XX · EGYPTIANS.

Herodot. ii, 149-152. This narrative of Herodotus, however little satisfactory in an historical point of view, bears evident marks of being the genuine tale which he heard from the priests of Hephæstos. Diodorus gives an account more historically plausible, but he could not well have had any positive authorities for that period, and he gives us seemingly the ideas of Greek authors of the days of the Ptolemies. Psammetichus (he tells us), as one of the twelve kings, ruled at Saïs and in the neighboring part of the delta: he opened a trade, previously unknown in Egypt, with Greeks and Phenicians, so profitable that his eleven colleagues became jealous of his riches and combined to attack him. He raised an army of foreign mercenaries and defeated them (Diodor. i, 66-67). Polyænus gives a different story about Psammetichus and the Karian mercenaries (vii 3).