The separate pieces were made of ebony and ivory, some being curiously inlaid with sentences, in hieroglyphics of gold and silver.
Amasis laughed heartily with his friends at Gyges' artifice, allowed the young heroes to mix freely with his family, and behaved towards them himself as a jovial father towards his merry sons.

That the ancient Egyptian was not quite extinguished in him could only be discerned at meal-times, when a separate table was allotted to the Persians.

The religion of his ancestors would have pronounced him defiled, had he eaten at the same table with men of another nation.
[Herodotus II.41.says that the Egyptians neither kissed, nor ate out of the same dish with foreigners, nay, indeed, that they refused to touch meat, in the cutting up of which the knife of a Greek had been used.

Nor were the lesser dynasties of the Delta allowed, according to the Stela of Pianchi, to cross the threshold of the Pharaohs because they were unclean and ate fish.

In the book of Genesis, the brethren of Joseph were not allowed to eat bread with the Egyptians.] When Amasis, at last, three days after the release of Gyges, declared that his daughter Nitetis would be prepared to depart for Asia in the course of two more weeks, all the Persians regretted that their stay in Egypt was so near its close.
Croesus had enjoyed the society of the Samian poets and sculptors.