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According to the inscription on a statue (the Naophorus) in the Vatican, set up by Uza-hor-ent-res, admiral of Amasis and Psammetichus III (R. P. x. 49; cf. Petrie, iii. 361-2), Cambyses at first paid respect to the goddess Neith, cleansed her temple, and restored her revenues, which had been alienated for the Greek mercenaries. This was a reversal of the policy of Amasis (ii. 154 n.), and along with the outrage on his mummy was an appeal to the party in Egypt which had hated him. It was also the usual Persian policy towards the religion of subject peoples. Cf. Cyrus in Babylon (C. C. 27 seq. in R. P.2 v. 167), and also his attitude towards the Jews (2 Chron. xxxvi. 23). This inscription, however, is not inconsistent, as some maintain, with H.'s story of the outrage on Apis (c. 29), which took place after the disastrous expedition against Ethiopia; it speaks of a period of ‘great woe in all the land’, and Uza-hor-ent-res himself left Egypt (perhaps fleeing from Cambyses), and was recalled by Darius (§ 7). Moreover, panegyrics on a monarch's piety are apt to be misleading (cf. ‘our most religious and gracious King, George IV’, though the parallel is only a partial one). Maspero, therefore (iii. 668 seq.), accepts H.'s narrative as to Cambyses (as does also Meyer, i.1 508 doubtfully); but it is rejected by many as due to Egyptian hatred of their conqueror; Duncker (vi. 170) argues that Egypt would never have remained quiet, had its religion been outraged thus. (See further c. 29 nn. and App. V. 3.)
ταφῆς: cf. ii. 169 n.; the name of Amasis is found to have been erased in several monuments at Sais and elsewhere.
For the impiety of polluting fire by burning a dead body cf. App. VIII. 4, and i. 86 n. (the story of Croesus); i. 131. 2 n.
ἡλικίην, ‘stature’ (cf. Matt. vi. 27). The mummy of the queen of Amasis from Thebes is in the British Museum; the gilding on it shows it was not burned.
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