Persia Conquers Egypt

In 525 BCE the Persian king Cambyses II defeated the Egyptian pharaoh Psamtik III and brought Egypt into the Achaemenid Empire. The conquest ended the last native dynasty of the Late Period's early phase, the Twenty-sixth, and made Egypt a Persian satrapy. It also extended Persian power across the Nile Valley, giving the empire control of one of the Mediterranean world's richest agricultural lands and most ancient states.

Egypt in the sixth century BCE was a prosperous but increasingly exposed kingdom. The Twenty-sixth Dynasty, based at Sais in the Delta, had restored a measure of stability and wealth after earlier periods of fragmentation and foreign rule. Its pharaohs relied heavily on Greek and Carian mercenaries and encouraged Greek trade, notably through the city of Naukratis. Meanwhile Persia had risen with astonishing speed under Cyrus the Great, who absorbed Media, Lydia and Babylon. Cambyses inherited this expanding empire in 530 BCE and turned his attention to Egypt, the major remaining power in the region.

Ancient sources, chiefly the Greek historian Herodotus, offer a colorful account of the campaign, though they were written long afterward and with a clear bias. Herodotus suggests various personal motives for the invasion, which modern historians treat with caution. The more plausible reasons are strategic and imperial. Pharaoh Amasis died shortly before the invasion, and his son Psamtik III had only recently taken the throne. Persian forces, supported by arrangements with Arab groups who helped them cross the Sinai, met the Egyptians at Pelusium on the eastern edge of the Delta. The Egyptians were defeated, and the Persians then took Memphis. Psamtik was captured; accounts of his fate vary, though most agree he was eventually put to death after a failed revolt or intrigue.

Cambyses was crowned pharaoh and, according to Egyptian-language evidence, adopted traditional royal titles. Herodotus portrays him as a sacrilegious madman who killed the sacred Apis bull and mocked Egyptian customs. Archaeological finds, including a burial of an Apis bull from his reign, suggest this picture is exaggerated, probably reflecting later Egyptian hostility toward Persian rule. He also launched expeditions toward Nubia and the western oases, with limited success.

Egypt became the sixth satrapy, paying tribute and supplying grain, but it kept much of its administration, religion and local elites. Darius I later codified Egyptian law and sponsored temple work and a canal linking the Nile to the Red Sea. Rebellions recurred, and Egypt regained independence for a time in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, until Persia reconquered it. Alexander the Great finally ended Persian rule there in 332 BCE.