48
MINES OF
CHAP. II.
was succeeded by Amasis , who was raised topower in the course of a civil war, in which thenative Egyptians subdued the mercenary troops,among whom Apries fell h Amasis preferred peaceto conquest, and died just before the attack ofCambyses, by which Egypt 1 2 at length fell underthe dominion of the Persians , who had previouslysubdued the Babylonian kingdom. The Persians retained the sovereignty in Egypt till the con-quest of it by the Macedonians under Alexanderthe Great , about the year 830 before Christ.Nearly a hundred and fifty years later, Egypt ,with the greater part of the other conquests ofAlexander, became a province of the all-con-quering Roman republic.
After this digressive historical sketch of thecauses of the abandonment of those fertile sourcesof metallic wealth in Nubia and Ethiopia , whichfurnished a large share of the gold and silveraccumulated before the Christian era, and whichmust have taken place in a great degree beforethe time of Alexander, we may advert to theprogress of the arts of mining, and of preparingthe metals.
It is sufficiently obvious, from scattered frag-ments in the writings of the ancients, that inremote periods only that ore which was found