48 MINES OF 



CHAP. It, 



was succeeded by Amasis, who was raised to 

 power in the course of a civil war, in which the 

 native Egyptians subdued the mercenary troops, 

 among whom Apries fell 1 . Amasis preferred peace 

 to conquest, and died just before the attack of 

 Cambyses, by which Egypt 2 at length fell under 

 the dominion of the Persians, who had previously 

 subdued the Babylonian kingdom. The Persians 

 retained the sovereignty in Egypt till the con- 

 quest of it by the Macedonians under Alexander 

 the Great, about the year 330 before Christ. 

 Nearly a hundred and fifty years later, Egypt, 

 with the greater part of the other conquests of 

 Alexander, became a province of the all-con- 

 quering Roman republic. 



After this digressive historical sketch of the 

 causes of the abandonment of those fertile sources 

 of metallic wealth in Nubia and Ethiopia, which 

 furnished a large share of the gold and silver 

 accumulated before the Christian era, and which 

 must have taken place in a great degree before 

 the time of Alexander, we may advert to the 

 progress of the arts of mining, and of preparing 

 the metals. 



It is sufficiently obvious, from scattered frag- 

 ments in the writings of the ancients, that in 

 remote periods only that ore which was found 



1 Herodotus, book ii. c. 169. 



2 About the year 530 B. C. 



