Editing Amasis II (section)

==Later reputation==
[[File:Egyptian - Head of King Amasis - Walters 22415.jpg|thumb|This head probably came from a temple statue of Amasis II. He wears the traditional royal nemes head cloth, with a protective uraeus serpent at the brow. Circa 560 BCE. [[Walters Art Museum]], [[Baltimore]].]]
From the fifth century BCE, there is evidence of stories circulating about Amasis, in Egyptian sources (including a demotic papyrus of the third century BCE), [[Herodotus]], [[Hellanicus of Lesbos|Hellanikos]], and [[Plutarch]]'s ''[[Convivium Septem Sapientium]]''. 'In those tales Amasis was presented as a non-conventional Pharaoh, behaving in ways unbecoming to a king but gifted with practical wisdom and cunning, a trickster on the throne or a kind of comic Egyptian [[Solomon]]'.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Ioannis M. |last=Konstantakos |title=Trial by Riddle: The Testing of the Counsellor and the Contest of Kings in the Legend of Amasis and Bias |journal=[[Classica et Mediaevalia]] |volume=55 |year=2004 |pages=85–137 (p. 90) }}</ref>

[[File:Bronze footbath with its stand MET DP116950.jpg|thumb|A bronze footbath from ancient Greece. Circa 400 BCE. [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]], [[New York City]].]]
For example, Herodotus relates that, when the Egyptians disrespected Amasis for having been born a commoner, he had his golden footbath ([[wikt:ποδανιπτήρ|ποδανιπτήρ]]) melted down, made into a statue of a god, and placed in the centre of city where people would worship it. After the people of that city had worhsipped and "did great reverence" to it, Amasis gathered them and declared to them that the golden image they now worshipped had once been a footbath where people would vomit, urinate and wash their feet. He claimed that likewise, although he was once a man of the people, he was now their king and they ought to fittingly respect him.<ref>{{cite book |author=Herodotus|author-link =Herodotus|title=2.172|translator=G. C. Macaulay|translator-link=George Campbell Macaulay|url=https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_History_of_Herodotus_(Macaulay)/Book_II}}</ref>

On another occasion, Herodotus tells that Amasis' friends admonished him for spending his time frivolously instead of on governing the country. He responded to them that archers stretch their [[Bow and arrow|bows]] only when they need them, because if they kept them constantly stretched the bows would break. "So also is the state of man: if he should always be in earnest and not relax himself for sport at the due time, he would either go mad or be struck with stupor before he was aware; and knowing this well, I distribute a portion of the time to each of the two ways of living."<ref>{{cite book |author=Herodotus|author-link =Herodotus|title=2.173|translator=G. C. Macaulay|translator-link=George Campbell Macaulay|url=https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_History_of_Herodotus_(Macaulay)/Book_II}}</ref>