provisions and water through the desert, and might intimidate or overpower the few Arab tribes which inhabited it; but, unless the command of the sea was gained and the navigation of the Nile closed, Memphis might successfully resist attack.  Cambyses appears to have perceived with sufficient clearness the conditions on which victory depended, and to have applied himself at once to securing them.  He made a treaty with the Arab Sheikh who had the chief influence over the tribes of the desert; and at the same time he set to work to procure the services of a powerful naval force.  By menaces or negotiations he prevailed upon the Phoenicians to submit themselves to his yoke, and having thus obtained a fleet superior to that of Egypt, he commenced hostilities by robbing her of a dependency which possessed considerable naval strength, in this way still further increasing the disparity between his own fleet and that of his enemy.  Against the combined ships of Phoenicia, Cyprus, Ionia, and AEolis, Egypt was powerless, and her fleets seem to have quietly yielded the command of the sea.  Cambyses was thus able to give his army the support of a naval force, as it marched along the coast, from Carmel probably to Pelusium; and when, having defeated the Egyptians at the last-named place, he proceeded against Memphis, he was able to take possession of the Nile, and to blockade the Egyptian capital both by land and water.

It appears that four years were consumed by the Persian monarch in his preparations for his Egyptian expedition.  It was not until B.C. 525 that he entered Egypt at the head of his troops, and fought the great battle which decided the fate of the country.  The struggle was long and bloody.  Psammenitus, who had succeeded his father Amasis, had the services, not only of his Egyptian subjects, but a large body of mercenaries besides, Greeks and Carians.  These allies were zealous in his cause, and are said to have given him a horrible proof of their attachment.  One of their body had deserted to the Persians some little time before the expedition, and was believed to have given important advice to the invader.  He had left his children behind in Egypt; and these his former comrades now seized, and led out in front of their lines, where they slew them before their father’s eyes, and, having so done, mixed their blood in a bowl with water and wine, and drank, one and all, of the mixture.  The battle followed immediately after; but, in spite of their courage and fanaticism, the Egyptian army was completely defeated.  According to Ctesias, fifty thousand fell on the vanquished side, while the victors lost no more than seven thousand.  Psammenitus, after his defeat, threw himself into Memphis, but, being blockaded by land and prevented from receiving supplies from the sea, after a stout resistance, he surrendered.  The captive monarch received the respectful treatment which Persian clemency usually accorded to fallen sovereigns.  Herodotus even goes so far as to intimate that, if he had abstained from conspiracy, he would probably have been allowed to continue ruler of Egypt, exchanging, of course, his independent sovereignty for a delegated kingship held at the pleasure of the Lord of Asia.