The last pharaoh of the Twenty-Sixth dynasty, Psamtik (Psammetichus) III, was defeated by Cambyses II (q.v.; 530-22 B.C.E.) in the battle of Pelusium in the eastern Nile delta in 525 B.C.E.; Egypt was then joined with Cyprus and Phoenicia in the sixth satrapy of the Achaemenid empire (Cook, p. 214; Bresciani, Camb. Hist. Iran, pp. 502-03; Briant, 1987; idem, 1992, p. 67). The “first Persian domination” over Egypt (or Twenty-Seventh dynasty) ended around 402 B.C.E. After an interval of independence, during which three indigenous dynasties reigned (the Twenty-Eighth, Twenty-Ninth, and Thirtieth; for the probable last ruler, Khababash, see Ritner; cf. Bresciani, 1990, pp. 637-41), Artaxerxes III (q.v.; 359-38 B.C.E.) reconquered the Nile valley for a brief period (342-32 B.C.E.), usually called the “second Persian domination.”
The first Persian domination. Cambyses led three unsuccessful military campaigns in Africa: against Carthage, the oases of the Libyan desert, and Nubia. He remained in Egypt until 522 B.C.E. and died on the way back to Persia. In contrast to the hostile tradition transmitted by Herodotus (3.64-66) and Diodorus Siculus (1.95), who described Cambyses’ conduct in Egypt as mad, ungodly, and cruel, contemporary Egyptian documents offer a different perspective on this sovereign’s “atrocities” (Posener, pp. 171 ff.; Klasens; Bresciani, Camb. Hist. Iran, pp. 504-05), even though violence and abuses perpetrated by the occupation troops can be taken for granted. Herodotus may have drawn on an indigenous tradition that reflected the Egyptian clergy’s resentment of Cambyses’ decree (known from a text in Demotic script on the back of papyrus no. 215 in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris) curtailing royal grants made to Egyptian temples under Amasis (Bresciani, 1981).
