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Cambyses1 was by nature half-mad and his powers of reasoning perverted, and the greatness of his kingdom rendered him much the more cruel and arrogant. [2]

Cambyses the Persian, after he had taken Memphis and Pelusium,2 since he could not bear his good fortune as men should, dug up the tomb of Amasis, the former king of Egypt. And finding his mummified corpse in the coffin, he outraged the body of the dead man, and after showing every despite to the senseless corpse, he finally ordered it to be burned. For since it was not the practice of the natives to consign the bodies of their dead to fire, he supposed that in this fashion also he would be giving offence to him who had been long dead. [3]

When Cambyses was on the point of setting out upon his campaign against Ethiopia, he dispatched a part of his army against the inhabitants of Ammonium,3 giving orders to its commanders to plunder and burn the oracle and to make slaves of all who dwelt near the shrine.Const. Exc. 2 (1), pp. 224-225.

1 King of Persia, 529-522 B.C.

2 525 B.C.

3 The site of the oracle of Ammon, the present oasis of Siwah.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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