CAMBYSES (Pers. Kambujiya), the name borne by the father and by the son of Cyrus the Great. When Cyrus conquered Babylon in B.C. he was employed in leading religious cere monies (Chronicle of Nabonidus), and in the cylinder which contains Cyrus's proclamation to the Babylonians his name is joined with his father's in the prayers to Marduk. On a tablet dated from the first year of Cyrus, Cambyses is called king of Babel, but in reality it was only in 53o that Cyrus associated Cambyses with him on the throne, and numerous Babylonian tab lets of this time are dated from the first year of Cambyses, when Cyrus was "king of the countries" (i.e., of the world). After the death of his father in 528 Cambyses became sole king.
The traditions about Cambyses, preserved by Greek authors, come from two sources. The first, forming the main account of Herodotus (iii. 2 4; is of Egyptian origin. Here Camby ses is the son of Cyrus and a daughter of Apries (Herod. iii. 2, Dinon fr. II., Polyaen. viii. 29), whose death he avenges on the successor of the usurper Amasis. (In Herod. iii. I. and Ctesias ap. Athen. xiii. 56o D, this tradition is corrected by the Persians: Cambyses wants to marry a daughter of Amasis, who sends him ir_stead a daughter of Apries, and by her Cambyses is led into war.) His great crime is the killing of the Apis, for which he is punished by madness.
In the Persian tradition the chief crime of Cambyses is the murder of his brother. With the exception of Babylonian dated tablets and some Egyptian inscriptions we possess no con temporary evidence for Cambyses except the short account of Darius in the Behistun inscription. Without doubt, he seems to have been a wild despot, committing many atrocities in his drunkenness.
Cyrus having conquered Asia, Cambyses undertook the con quest of Egypt, the only remaining independent State of the Eastern world. The war took place in 525, when Amasis had just been succeeded by his son Psammetichus III. The Persians, being supported by the Cyprian towns and the tyrant Polycrates of Samos, who possessed a large fleet, and the commander of the Greek troops, Phanes of Halicarnassus, defeated the Egyptians at Pelusium, and shortly afterwards Memphis was taken. The cap tive king Psammetichus was executed, having attempted a re bellion. From Egypt Cambyses attempted the conquest of Ethiopia (Cush), i.e., the kingdom of Napata and Meroe, the modern Nubia, but the deserts forced him to return. In an in scription from Napata (in the Berlin museum) the Ethiopian king Nastesen relates that he had beaten the troops of Kern basuden, i.e. Cambyses, and taken all his ships (H. Schafer, Die Aethiopische Konigsinschrif t des Berliner Museums, 1901). The plan of attacking Carthage was frustrated by the refusal of the Phoenicians to operate against their kindred. Meanwhile the Persian usurper, the Magian Gaumata, who in 522 pretended to be Cambyses's murdered brother, Bardiya (Smerdis), was ac knowledged throughout Asia. After an. unsuccessful march against him, Cambyses died by his own hand (March 521) ac cording to the preferable account of Darius though the traditions of Herodotus and Ctesias ascribe his death to an accident.
See A. Lincke, Kambyses in der Sage, Litteratur and Kunst des Mittelalters, in Aegyptiaca: Festschrift fur Georg Ebers (Leipzig, 1897), pp. 41-61 ; Strassmaier: Inschrif ten von Cambyses, No. 97; E. Meyer: Gesch. der Altertums, 3rd ed. (Berlin, 1921) ; J. V. Prasek: Gesch. der Meder and Perser (Gotha, 1906) ; and "Kambyses" in Der Alte Oriente (1913) ; also PERSIA: Ancient History.