l the 17th year of
Amasis' reign, and died at the age of seventy-five.

Lastly let me be permitted to say a word or two in reference to
Rhodopis. That she must have been a remarkable woman is evident from the
passage in Herodotus quoted in Notes 10, and 14, Vol. I., and from the
accounts given by many other writers. Her name, "the rosy-cheeked one,"
tells us that she was beautiful, and her amiability and charm of manner
are expressly praised by Herodotus. How richly she was endowed with
gifts and graces may be gathered too from the manner in which tradition
and fairy lore have endeavored to render her name immortal. By many she
is said to have built the most beautiful of the Pyramids, the Pyramid of
Mycerinus or Menkera. One tale related of her and reported by Strabo and
AElian probably gave rise to our oldest and most beautiful fairy tale,
Cinderella; another is near akin to the Loreley legend. An eagle,
according to AElian--the wind, in Strabo's tale,--bore away Rhodopis'
slippers while she was bathing in the Nile, and laid them at the feet of
the king, when seated on his throne of justice in the open market.
The little slippers so enchanted him that he did not rest until he had
discovered their owner and made her his queen.

The second legend tells us how a wonderfully beautiful naked woman
could be seen sitting on the summit of one of the pyramids (ut in una ex
pyramidibus); and how she drove the wanderers in the desert mad through
her exceeding loveliness.

Moore borrowed this legend and introduces it in the following verse:

"Fair Rhodope, as story tells--
The bright unearthly nymph, who dwells
'Mid sunless gold and jewels hid,
The lady of the Pyramid."

Fabulous as these stories sound, they still prove that Rhodopis must
have been no ordinary woman. Some scholars would place her on a level
with the beautiful and heroic Queen Nitokris, spoken of by Julius
Africanus, Eusebius and others, and whose name, (signifying the
victorious Neith) has been found on the monuments, applied to a queen
of the sixth dynasty. This is a bold conjecture; it adds however to the
importance of our heroine; and without doubt many traditions referring
to the one have been transferred to the other, and vice versa.
Herodotus lived so short a time after Rhodopis, and tells so many exact
particulars of her private life that it is impossible she should have
been a mere creation of fiction. The letter of Dar