…Cambyses himself went on towards Æthiopia. But before his army had accomplished the fifth part of their journey…they ate the beasts of burden until there was none left…they kept themselves alive by eating grass; but when they came to the sandy desert, some did a terrible thing, taking by lot a man and eating him.
-Herodotus 3:26
Cambyses sent half his army west from Thebes to Siwa and the other half he led deeper south, probably not far off the Nile-side tracks we made coming north 2,500 years later. Why he left the river’s edge to push through a sandy desert is a mystery. Herodotus thought him insane. If he had been with us, we would have thought that too, for him to prefer dry grass and human flesh over the fresh peas and beans of Mahas, giving us a brief respite from our hated asīda.