Budge_Ethiopic_Alexander

VIII INTRODUCTION.
"of living captives."' The terrible state of a
country througli which such soldiers had marched
"in peace" may be readily imagined. The accounts
of the wars carried on in Western Asia by the
kings of the XVIIIth and XlXth dynasties are full
of deeds of mutilation and cruelty, and of records
of ruined cities and wasted lands. It was not,
Savage however, until the invasion of Egypt by the Per-
c^mbyses. slaos uudcr Cambyses that the Egyptians suffered
the worst calamities of war, for never before had
the ancient shrines of Thebes and Memphis been
plundered, and the gods therein turned into ridicule,
and their cities burnt, and their nobles slain, and
their women sold into slaver)-. The burning of
the Serapeum, too, and the wounding, or slaughter,
of the Apis bull would add the keenest anguish
to their miseries. With such events in their minds
the Egyptians could not help comparing the results
of the invasions of their country by Cambyses and
Progress of Alexander. Where the Persian monarch had passed
Alexander i . . . . . . . .
and cam-iay destructiou and misery, but m the tram of
p^J. """" ^^^•^^'^'^^'' there followed peace and Greek civi-
lization. Obstinate opposition, such as that shewn
by the inhabitants of Tyre and Gaza, Alexander
punished with the greatest severity, but, considering
his wars and batdes as a whole, he was a magna-
nimous conqueror. The account of his treatment
of the high-priest Jaddua and of his behaviour in
the Sanctuary in Jerusalem, if only pardy true.
' Inscription of Una, lines 22 to 27.