Latest / The Achaemenid Empire: Persia's Golden Age of Power — Fexingo History / Achaemenid Siege of Memphis: Persia Conquers Egypt
Transcript
- Lucas: So after episodes on the Ionian Revolt and the sieges of Athens and Babylon, we've danced around it enough. Let's talk about Egypt. Not the reconquest under Artaxerxes III—we did that in episode 73—but the original takeover: Cambyses II's conquest in 525 BCE. This is the moment Persia becomes a truly transcontinental empire, swallowing the ancient kingdom of the Nile. Luna: Right, because Cyrus had died before he could turn south. This was Cambyses's war from the start. Lucas: Exactly. Cyrus conquered Babylon in 539, but Egypt remained independent under the pharaoh Amasis, who had ruled for decades. Cambyses, Cyrus's son, spent his early reign consolidating—then in 525, he marched. But it wasn't a straightforward invasion. He needed a way across the Sinai desert, a barren stretch that had swallowed armies before. So he did something clever: he negotiated with the Arab tribes who controlled the desert routes, securing water supplies and safe passage. Herodotus says the Arabs filled skins with water and brought them by camel. Probably true, though the logistics were staggering. Luna: How big was his army? Lucas: Herodotus says hundreds of thousands. Modern estimates are more conservative—tens of thousands, but still a massive force for the time. They also had Greek mercenaries and a fleet provided by Polycrates of Samos, a Greek tyrant who was allied with Cambyses. So it was a combined arms operation. The first major clash came at Pelusium, a fortress city at the eastern edge of the Delta. Luna: And that's where the cats come in. Lucas: Yes—the cats. This is one of the most famous stories from Herodotus. He says Cambyses, knowing the Egyptians' deep reverence for animals—especially cats, but also dogs, ibises, and other sacred creatures—ordered his soldiers to paint or carry images of these animals on their shields, and even to place live cats in the front lines. The Egyptian archers, terrified of harming their sacred animals, supposedly held their fire or aimed poorly. It's a brilliant piece of psychological warfare if it's true. Some modern scholars doubt the cats were literally paraded—more likely the Persians used the symbols to demoralize. But either way, the battle was a decisive Persian victory. The Egyptian commander, a Greek mercenary named Phanes of Halicarnassus who had defected to Persia, may have given Cambyses inside intelligence. Luna: So Egypt's defenses crumbled quickly? Lucas: Not immediately. After Pelusium, Cambyses laid siege to Memphis, the capital. It held out for a while—the walls were strong, and the Nile floods had started, making approach difficult. But eventually, the Persians took the city. The pharaoh at that point was Psamtik III, who had only been on the throne for six months after his father Amasis died. Cambyses captured him and, according to Herodotus, subjected him and his family to a brutal psychological test—parading his daughter as a slave, his son led to execution. But Psamtik showed more grief for a fellow prisoner than for his own children, and when asked why, he said the king's sorrow was too great for tears. Cambyses was impressed and spared his life—until Psamtik later tried to stir up rebellion, at which point he was executed. Luna: Was Cambyses actually as mad as Herodotus claims? Lucas: That's the big question. Herodotus portrays him as a drunken, paranoid tyrant who killed his own sister, desecrated Egyptian temples, and went insane. But Herodotus was writing for a Greek audience with a bias against Persia, and much of his information came from Egyptian priests who hated Cambyses for curtailing temple privileges. Contemporary Egyptian sources—like the sarcophagus of the Apis bull—tell a different story. There's an inscription from 525 BCE that records Cambyses himself participating in the burial of the Apis bull at Saqqara, an act of great piety for an Egyptian pharaoh. He took the traditional pharaonic titles, built a temple to the goddess Neith at Sais, and generally presented himself as a legitimate ruler. So the 'mad king' narrative is likely Greek propaganda, at least in part. But there's no doubt he was ruthless. Luna: So what went wrong? He conquered Egypt, but then? Lucas: He went further. He planned campaigns against Carthage—but his Phoenician allies refused to fight their own colony. He tried to conquer the oasis of Siwa, but a sandstorm supposedly buried his army. He led an expedition south into Nubia, or Kush, which had some success but ultimately stalled. The logistics in the desert were brutal. Meanwhile, at home in Persia, there was trouble. While Cambyses was in Egypt, a man claiming to be his brother Bardiya—who Cambyses had secretly murdered—seized the throne. The usurper, whom we now call Gaumata the Magian, was accepted by most of the empire. Cambyses started marching back but died under mysterious circumstances in Syria in 522 BCE. Herodotus says he accidentally stabbed himself in the thigh with his own sword—an accident that turned gangrenous. That may be a cover for assassination. Regardless, his death triggered the succession crisis that Darius the Great had to crush. Luna: And Egypt became a satrapy under Persian rule—until they rebelled later. Lucas: Exactly. Egypt was a hugely lucrative province. The satrap Aryandes, whom we mentioned in the Suez Canal episode, governed it initially. But the Egyptians never fully accepted Persian rule, and there were repeated revolts. Still, Cambyses's conquest was a watershed. It brought the two great civilizations of the ancient Near East under one rule for the first time, creating an empire that stretched from the Indus to the Nile. And it set a precedent for later Persian kings, who would have to deal with Egypt's stubborn independence for almost two centuries. Luna: And it's amazing how much of our knowledge comes from just a few sources—Herodotus, a few Egyptian stelae, and some Greek fragments. Lucas: Yeah, we're piecing together a whole empire from fragments. Speaking of which—this is the kind of deep dive we can only do because of a small group of listeners who chip in. We don't run ads, so it's just buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo that keeps us going. If you've been enjoying these deep cuts on the Achaemenids, that's literally what funds it. No pressure, but it's why we can do episodes on Cambyses instead of just the greatest hits. Luna: And it makes a real difference. Every little bit helps us spend more time on the research. Lucas: So back to Cambyses: his legacy is complicated. He was a conqueror who added the most prestigious ancient kingdom to the Persian realm, but his reign ended in chaos. The Egyptians would remember him as both a respectful pharaoh and a mad destroyer—which probably tells us more about the politics of memory than about the man himself.