An Egyptian Princess | Page 2

instead of among the less easily accessible notes at the end.
The fact that displeasure has been excited among men of letters by this
attempt to clothe the hardly-earned results of severer studies in an
imaginative form is even clearer to me now than when I first sent this
book before the public. In some points I agree with this judgment, but
that the act is kindly received, when a scholar does not scorn to render
the results of his investigations accessible to the largest number of the
educated class, in the form most generally interesting to them, is
proved by the rapid sale of the first large edition of this work. I know at
least of no better means than those I have chosen, by which to instruct
and suggest thought to an extended circle of readers. Those who read
learned books evince in so doing a taste for such studies; but it may

easily chance that the following pages, though taken up only for
amusement, may excite a desire for more information, and even gain a
disciple for the study of ancient history.
Considering our scanty knowledge of the domestic life of the Greeks
and Persians before the Persian war--of Egyptian manners we know
more--even the most severe scholar could scarcely dispense with the
assistance of his imagination, when attempting to describe private life
among the civilized nations of the sixth century before Christ. He
would however escape all danger of those anachronisms to which the
author of such a work as I have undertaken must be hopelessly liable.
With attention and industry, errors of an external character may be
avoided, but if I had chosen to hold myself free from all consideration
of the times in which I and my readers have come into the world, and
the modes of thought at present existing among us, and had attempted
to depict nothing but the purely ancient characteristics of the men and
their times, I should have become unintelligible to many of my readers,
uninteresting to all, and have entirely failed in my original object. My
characters will therefore look like Persians, Egyptians, &c., but in their
language, even more than in their actions, the German narrator will be
perceptible, not always superior to the sentimentality of his day, but a
native of the world in the nineteenth century after the appearance of
that heavenly Master, whose teaching left so deep an impression on
human thought and feeling.
The Persians and Greeks, being by descent related to ourselves, present
fewer difficulties in this respect than the Egyptians, whose dwelling-
place on the fruitful islands won by the Nile from the Desert,
completely isolated them from the rest of the world.
To Professor Lepsius, who suggested to me that a tale confined entirely
to Egypt and the Egyptians might become wearisome, I owe many
thanks; and following his hint, have so arranged the materials supplied
by Herodotus as to introduce my reader first into a Greek circle. Here
he will feel in a measure at home, and indeed will entirely sympathize
with them on one important point, viz.: in their ideas on the Beautiful
and on Art. Through this Hellenic portico he reaches Egypt, from
thence passes on to Persia and returns finally to the Nile. It has been
my desire that the three nations should attract him equally, and I have
therefore not centred the entire interest of the plot in one hero, but have

endeavored to exhibit each nation in its individual character, by means
of a fitting representative. The Egyptian Princess has given her name to
the book, only because the weal and woe of all my other characters
were decided by her fate, and she must therefore be regarded as the
central point of the whole.
In describing Amasis I have followed the excellent description of
Herodotus, which has been confirmed by a picture discovered on an
ancient monument. Herodotus has been my guide too in the leading
features of Cambyses' character; indeed as he was born only forty or
fifty years after the events related, his history forms the basis of my
romance.
"Father of history" though he be, I have not followed him blindly, but,
especially in the development of my characters, have chosen those
paths which the principles of psychology have enabled me to lay down
for myself, and have never omitted consulting those hieroglyphic and
cuneiform inscriptions which have been already deciphered. In most
cases these confirm the statements of Herodotus.
I have caused Bartja's murder to take place after the conquest of Egypt,
because I cannot agree with the usually received translation of the
Behistun inscription. This reads as follows: "One named Cambujiya,
son of Curu, of our family, was king here formerly and had a brother
named Bartiya, of the same