It was not long before the Persian army drew up under the walls, and invested the city by land, while the fleet blockaded the river.  A single Greek vessel, having received orders to summon the defenders of the place to surrender it, had the boldness to enter the town, whereupon it was set upon by the Egyptians, captured, and destroyed.  Contrarily to the law of nations, which protects ambassadors and their escort, the crew was torn limb from limb, and an outrage thus committed which Cambyses was justified in punishing with extreme severity.  Upon the fall of the city, which followed soon after its investment, the offended monarch avenged the crime which had been committed by publicly executing two thousand of the principal citizens, including (it is said) a son of the fallen king.  The king himself was at first spared, and might perhaps have been allowed to rule Egypt as a tributary monarch, had he not been detected in a design to rebel and renew the war.  For this offence he, too, was condemned to death, and executed by Cambyses’ order.

The defeat had been foretold by the prophet Ezekiel, who had said:—­

  “Woe worth the day!  For the day is near,
   Even the day of the Lord is near, a day of clouds;
   It shall be the time of the heathen. 
   And a sword shall come upon Egypt, and anguish shall be in Ethiopia;
   When the slain shall fall in Egypt;
          and they shall take away her multitude,
   And her foundations shall be broken down. 
   Ethiopia and Phut and Lud, and all the mingled people, and Chub,
   And the children of the land that is in league,
          shall fall with them by the sword.... 
   I will put a fear in the land of Egypt. 
   And I will make Pathros desolate,
   And will set a fire in Zoan, and will execute judgments in No.... 
   Sin [Pelusium] shall be in great anguish,
   And No shall be broken up,
          and Noph shall have adversaries in the daytime. 
   The young men of Aven and of Pi-beseth shall fall by the sword: 
   And these cities shall go into captivity. 
   At Tehaphnehes also the day shall withdraw itself,
   When I shall break there the yokes of Egypt;
   And the pride of her power shall cease."[31]

According to Herodotus, Cambyses was not content with the above-mentioned severities, which were perhaps justifiable under the 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