The Historians' History of the World 02

After the removal of his rival, Darius did nothing to win the affection of his Egyptian subjects, or even to render his rule supportable. The best means of succeeding with a self-sufficient, religious people like the Egyptians, would have been to manifest a great respect for the gods and national kings, but, unlike Cambyses, he took the side of the persecuted priests. Cambyses had exiled the head of the priesthood of Saïs to Elam, but Darius bade him return and repair the disasters caused by the folly of his predecessor. So the high priest was escorted back to his native town, where he founded a college of hierogrammatics, and restored to the temple of Nit the property and revenues, of which it had been deprived. Greek tradition exceeds the national tradition, for it reports that Darius was initiated into the mysteries of Egyptian theology, and studied the sacred books. It maintains, moreover, that, when arriving at Memphis, after the death of a sacred bull, he took part in the universal mourning, and promised one hundred talents to the discoverer of the new Apis. Before leaving the country, he visited the temple of Ptah, and commanded his statue to be put up by the side of that of Sesostris. But the priests refused to do it, saying, “Darius has not equalled the deeds of Sesostris, he has not conquered the Scythians that he conquered,” to which Darius replied “that he hoped to do as much as Sesostris if he lived as long as Sesostris had lived,” so he submitted to the exclusive pride of his subjects, and the Egyptians expressed their gratitude by adding him to the six legislators, whose memory they venerated.

Egypt certainly prospered under the rule of Darius, and with Cyrene and Barca, she formed the sixth satrapy of the empire, and the Nubian tribes nearest to the southern frontier were included in this province. The governor installed at the White Wall, in the old palace of the Pharaohs, was in command of an army of one hundred and twenty thousand men occupying the three entrenched camps of the kings of the Saïtes Nomes, which were Daphne and Memphis on the confines of the Delta, and Elephantine on the south.

Beyond these great posts, where the authority of the Great King was in full sway, the ancient organisation of Egypt still continued: the temples had their property, the vassals were free of the ordinary charges, and the nobles were as independent in their principalities and as ready to revolt as they were before. The annual tribute which was the heaviest next to that of Chaldea and Assyria, was not more than seven hundred talents of silver. Add to this sum the value of the fisheries of the Lake Mœris (which, according to Diodorus, were worth a talent a day the whole year round, and according to Herodotus, during the six months of high water) the 120,000 medimni of corn for the subsistence of the army of occupation, and the provision of the palace with nitre, and water from the Nile, and the whole of the assessment was far from being disproportionate to the resources of the country. But they had several advantages to compensate for the expense of the tribute. For, being now consolidated with an empire stretching into three continents, regions which had been hitherto inaccessible to them were now opened up for their industrial exports, and they profited greatly by the commodities of the Sudan having to pass through their territory before arriving at the great depots of Babylon or Susa, as the Isthmus was one of the shortest routes to the districts of the Mediterranean for merchandise from India or Arabia.

[486-485 B.C.]

Darius completed the canal of the Nile to the Gulf of Suez, and reopened the road from Coptos to the Red Sea. He fortified the oases, and built in the little town of Hib a grand temple to Ammon, the ruins of which remain to this day. But gratitude could not extinguish the Egyptians’ strong desire for liberty. The defeat of the Persians at Marathon encouraged them to try and shake off the yoke, and, in 486, they sent off the foreign garrisons and proclaimed as king, Khabbash, who was probably descended from Psamthek. But Darius did not wish to stop the invasion of Greece on this account, and he collected a second army and had made preparations for the two wars, when he died in the thirty-sixth year of his reign in 485.e

For his epitaph we can hardly do better than quote one of his own inscriptions, that at Behistun, as translated by Sir Henry Rawlinson.

I am Darius, the great King, the King of Kings, the King of Persia, the King of (the dependent) provinces, the son of Hystaspes, the grandson of Arsames, the Achæmenian.

Says Darius the King: My father was Hystaspes; of Hystaspes the father was Arsames; of Arsames the father was Ariaramnes; of Ariaramnes the father was Teispes; of Teispes the father was Achæmenes.

Says Darius the King: On that account we have been called Achæmenians; from antiquity we have been unsubdued (or we have descended); from antiquity those of our race have been Kings.