Picture: A modern recreation of the court of Darius the Great (r. 522-486 BCE), by Zvonimir Grbasic. Courtesy of Ancient History Magazine / Karwansaray Publishers.
“A messenger from the satrapy of Hyrcania – lord Vishtaspe – is here, my majesty. He is weary by the road and has an urgent message for your greatness if you allow him to present himself. He has been asked to present the letter to you with his own hands.” Dabirbad said, bowing in half before the King Cambyses.
Cambyses was watching the city of Memphis from the terrace of Apries palace. Clothed in his Persian robe, wearing his dagger very casually. He turned back to Dabirbad, looking like he expected it. Cambyses said, “I suppose it is time to return home. I have been waiting for a call, I suspect. Allow him in.”
Dabirbad beckoned to the guard to bring the messenger to the King.
“What are you suggesting, my majesty?” Dabirbad asked paradoxically.
“We have been in Egypt for so long. It has been three years now. We lost so many good soldiers in this far-flung, crusted land.”
The marked lineaments of his face resembled the pain of an enslaved man carrying a giant boulder on his back. It took him three years to assemble a military to cross the hostile Sinai desert, the land of turquoise, the wall of never been broken defence of Egyptian, his father’s dream of conquest. Defeating Psamtik III, Pharaoh of Egypt, son and successor of Ahmose, in the battle of Pelusium wasn’t a mere pledge. He wished his father was alive and witnessed his victory, believing that he could be a king as great as he was. A King that is not the King of Kings and lands only, but the King of the world. What else on earth remained out of his empire? Little Greece! The miniature land of stinking smoked fish and greasy olives, the land of nudity and sodomy. That was perhaps a misfit to be patched to his world of the so-called world, or mayhap his next melancholic mission meant to burn down and abolish this land from the world’s map of his and weed out all the hideous pariahs. When the Egyptians lost and retired to Memphis, and the Pharaoh was carried off in chains to Susa, he proved to himself that he is strong enough to silence all Persian lords who rebuffed him on his decision. He remembered distinctly who scorned him when his father dethroned him from Babylon’s satrapy. Now not an act of revenge but to establish a foothold without their succour.
“Now that everything is in peace and the people of Egypt contribute tax to the Persian central government, I think it is time to nominate a satrap for Egypt and return to Persia. I trust there are mountains of work to be attended in Susa and Pasargadae.” Cambyses turned his eyes to the door.
Two guards escorting the messenger reached the door. Cambyses summoned the messenger to come forward. The man strode a few steps ahead and squatted on the floor.
“Let’s see what brought you all the way to Memphis?” Dabirbad asked the messenger.
The messenger took the sealed letter out of a secret pouch located close to his armpit inside his robe. On his knees, he offered the letter to the King with his two hands stretched forward and head down between his hands. Cambyses darted a glance at Dabirbad. Dabribad examined the letter and handed it to Cambyses. He sat behind his stone made desk and cracked the seal. He opened the letter, and a few moments in silence passed. Dabirbad was burning in curiosity faltered. “Any celebrating new, my majesty?”
Cambyses looked at the Dabirbad under his eyebrows with a lopsided grin. “Family matters, but a droll one, a valid insane mockery this time.” A long pause and none blinking eyes locked on Cambyses lips for a single word made all overhear the howling wind sifting the sands through the columns of the Apries palace.
“My brother crowned himself the King of Persia.”
Kam Austine 
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