Amasis laughed heartily with his friends at Gyges’ artifice, allowed the young heroes to mix freely with his family, and behaved towards them himself as a jovial father towards his merry sons.  That the ancient Egyptian was not quite extinguished in him could only be discerned at meal-times, when a separate table was allotted to the Persians.  The religion of his ancestors would have pronounced him defiled, had he eaten at the same table with men of another nation.

[Herodotus II. 41. says that the Egyptians neither kissed, nor ate out of the same dish with foreigners, nay, indeed, that they refused to touch meat, in the cutting up of which the knife of a Greek had been used.  Nor were the lesser dynasties of the Delta allowed, according to the Stela of Pianchi, to cross the threshold of the Pharaohs because they were unclean and ate fish.  In the book of Genesis, the brethren of Joseph were not allowed to eat bread with the Egyptians.]

When Amasis, at last, three days after the release of Gyges, declared that his daughter Nitetis would be prepared to depart for Asia in the course of two more weeks, all the Persians regretted that their stay in Egypt was so near its close.

Croesus had enjoyed the society of the Samian poets and sculptors.  Gyges had shared his father’s preference for Greek art and artists.  Darius, who had formerly studied astronomy in Babylon, was one evening observing the heavens, when, to his surprise, he was addressed by the aged Neithotep and invited to follow him on to the temple-roof.  Darius, ever eager to acquire knowledge, did not wait to be asked twice, and was to be found there every night in earnest attention to the old priest’s lessons.

On one occasion Psamtik met him thus with his master, and asked the latter what could have induced him to initiate a Persian in the Egyptian mysteries.

“I am only teaching him,” answered the high-priest, “what is as well known to every learned Chaldee in Babylon as to ourselves, and am thereby gaining the friendship of a man, whose stars as far outshine those of Cambyses as the sun outshines the moon.  This Darius, I tell thee, will be a mighty ruler.  I have even seen the beams of his planet shining over Egypt.  The truly wise man extends his gaze into the future, regards the objects lying on either side of his road, as well as the road itself.  Thou canst not know in which of the many houses by which thou passest daily, a future benefactor may not have been reared for thee.  Leave nought unnoticed that lies in thy path, but above all direct thy gaze upward to the stars.  As the faithful dog lies in wait night after night for thieves, so have I watched these pilgrims of the heavens fifty years long—­these foretellers of the fates of men, burning in ethereal space, and announcing, not only the return of summer and winter, but the arrival of good and bad fortune, honor and disgrace.  These are the unerring guides, who have pointed out to me in Darius a plant, that will one day wax into a mighty tree.”