The Saite reunification of Egypt in the mid-650s bc reversed a long-running trend in the country’s history in that all recent precedents pointed imperiously to continued fragmentation punctuated by bouts of foreign domination. The years following the end of the 20th Dynasty had brought the disintegration of the kingdom tmder a variety of pressures: the weakness of the last Ramesside rulers provoked the collapse of centralized government; the development of the power of
The priesthood of Amun-Ra at Thebes created a formidable rival to royal authority; and the infiltration of the country by Libyans rapidly led to their ascendancy in the social and political hierarchy. Not surprisingly, vigorous Libyan princelings had experienced little difficulty in getting their hands on the royal office, thus creating a sequence of dynasties of varying efficiency. Later, the tangled web of the 25th Dynasty—characterized by intermittent Nubian domination—covered the best part of 100 years. Although the 25th Dynasty started well, it ended with the country suffering severely from the Assyrian invasions of 671 and 663 BC.
The founder of the 26th Dynasty, heir to this legacy, was, therefore, confronted by several problems; the ancient ideal of Egypt as a unified kingdom had been severely eroded by the rivalry of opposing power blocks in the form of the priesthood of Thebes and Libyan dynasts; this diffusion of power generated economic weakness and was, at the same time, aggravated by it; finally, the ambitions of Asiatic enemies and Nubian kings to regain control of Egypt posed a recurrent external threat. Any attempt to recreate a powerful and united Egyptian state was dependent on the eradication, or at least neutralization, of these factors. In this the 26th Dynasty achieved spectacular success, which was to be crowned with nothing less than the resurgence of Egypt as a major international power.
The credit for reunifying Egypt falls to Psamtek I (664-610 BC), whose father Nekau I (672-664 bc) had previously ruled at Sais under Assyrian protection and had been killed for his pains by the Nubian King Tanutamani (664-656 BC) in 664 bc. Psamtek succeeded to his father’s position with Assyrian support, initially controlling about half the Delta with his main centres of power at Sais, Memphis, and Athribis, as well as close religious links with Buto. The Assyrians evidently saw this development as a continuation of the old system of rule through local princes, but the sands were swiftly running out for such power as Nineveh had in Egypt. Given their pressing commitments elsewhere in the Empire, the Assyrians simply did not have the military strength to maintain their position indefinitely so far west. With typical Saite strategic acumen, it did not take Psamtek long to exploit this situation, so that relations with Assyria quickly took a very different turn, and in about 658 bc we find him receiving support from Gyges of Lydia in emancipating himself from Assyrian control, an episode that may well be linked with Herodotus’ tradition that Psamtek employed Carian and Ionian mercenaries in his efforts to strengthen and extend his authority. In addition to military power, our sources highlight a further dimension to his strategy: strengthening his economic base by developing trade links with Greeks and Phoenicians. It was evidently firmly grasped by this formidable ruler that all power must be based on a sound exchequer.
By 660 BC Psamtek had control of the entire Delta, and from this potent military base he was able to gain mastery of the rest of the country by 656 BC, mainly, it would seem, by diplomatic means, although the wheels of diplomacy were certainly oiled by the obvious availability of a substantial well-equipped military force of none-too-scrupulous foreign mercenaries. He also benefited substantially from the well-honed pliability of local princes such as the Shipmasters of Herakleopolis Magna and Mentuemhat of Thebes, who quickly saw the advantages of coming to an accommodation. At least equally pressing was the problem of gaining control of the powerful priesthood of Amun-Ra at Thebes, which had been a significant factor in weakening royal authority since the late New Kingdom. Here a major step in resolving the difficulty was taken when Psamtek arranged for his daughter Nitiqret to be appointed as heiress to the ‘god’s wife of Amun’, thereby initiating a process intended to place the major southern repository of ecclesiastical power firmly in the hands of the dynasty.
Power gained is one thing; power maintained is quite another, but the process of consolidation was carried out with triumphant success. A major contribution was made by the mercenaries who had played such a significant role in the conquest of the country. Our documentation lays much emphasis on those of Greek and Carian extraction, but we also hear of Jews, Phoenicians, and possibly Shasu Bedouin. These troops had two functions. In the first place, they were intended to guarantee Egypt’s security from external attack in the face of a series of enemies, initially Assyrians and subsequently Chaldaeans (Babylonians) and Persians. However, they also undoubtedly provided a counterweight within the country to the power of the machimoi, the native Egyptian warrior class, who were, in origin, Libyans and posed a significant potential internal threat to royal authority.
Herodotus informs us that stratopeda (‘camps’) were established between Bubastis and the sea on the Pelusiac branch of the Nile. He claims that these camps were occupied without a break for over a century until the mercenaries were moved to Memphis at the beginning of the reign of Ahmose II (570-526 bc), but the archaeological evidence presents a rather more complex picture. At Tell Defenna (Greek Daphnae) the earliest king exemplified is certainly Psamtek I, but the vast majority of the material dates to the time of Ahmose II— That is, the distribution contradicts the Herodotean tradition. We also know of another camp 20 km. from Daphnae, a little to the south of Pelusium, where sixth-century Greek pottery has been found in quantity. The most plausible explanation for the contradiction between our literary and archaeological evidence is that the troops were pulled out of the camps at the beginning of Ahmose’s reign as the result of an anti-Greek backlash (see below), but reintroduced at a later stage to counter the growing menace of Persia. As for their integration into the Egyptian army, the famous Greek inscription on the leg of one of the colossi at Abu Simbel, as well as later practice, indicates that the mercenaries, under Egyptian command, formed one of the two corps in the army whose supreme commander was also Egyptian. It has to be said that these troops were not consistently reliable, and we do have evidence of a revolt of mercenaries at Elephantine during the reign of Apries (589-570 bc).
Petrie’s work at Tell Defenna has provided a vivid and probably typical picture of the character of the permanent bases of such troops in the Saite period. The site is located on a large plain covered with pottery and dominated by the remains of a mud-brick platform constructed on the standard honeycomb principle consisting of casemates many of which were filled with sand. Its original height was estimated by Petrie to have been about 30 feet (c. io m.), and he believed that it had been surmounted by a fort. This structure, which was certainly built by Psamtek I, seems to have functioned as a keep within an enclosure demarcated by a massive oblong mud-brick wall, but this had been eroded to ground level by Petrie’s time. Outside the wall lay the civilian settlement, mainly to the east. Excavation yielded a substantial quantity of Greek infantry equipment, but the site was also a naval base from which Greek-style war galleys could operate, a situation reflecting the important role played by the mercenaries in the Egyptian navy.
Not surprisingly, the preference shown to these foreign troops was far from welcome to the machimoi. According to Herodotus, a group of them mutinied and withdrew from Egypt to a site that may well have lain somewhere in the vicinity of the Blue Nile and Gezira area near Omdurman, if we can trust his topographical data. By the time of Apries, things had got far worse and eventually reached a disastrous level when we find the king being swept from the throne by a machimoi backlash against the privileged position of Greeks and Carians in the military establishment. The spark that lit this powder keg was a disastrous defeat sustained by a force of machimoi sent against the Greek city of Gyrene, which provided the opportunity for Ahmose to use these troops to defeat Apries’ mercenaries at Momemphis in 570 bc and usurp the throne of Egypt.
The economy was an equally important focus of Saite policy in reconstructing Egypt. The foundation of a sound economy in the country was, and always has been, sound agriculture, and by Ahmose’s time this had been raised to a spectacular level of success. Herodotus (2.177. i) comments, ‘It is said that it was during the reign of Ahmose II that Egypt attained its highest level of prosperity both in respect of what the river gave the land and in respect of what the land yielded to men and that the number of inhabited cities at that time reached in total 20,000.’
Trade was also greatly encouraged. In our textual sources, Greek relations play a major role, although it would be as well to remember that most of the sources are themselves Greek. Within Egypt itself we hear of trading stations such as ‘The Wall of the Milesians’ and ‘Islands’ bearing such names as Ephesus, Chios, Lesbos, Cyprus, and Samos, but their precise relationship to the Crown or other Greek centres in the country is quite unclear for the earliest period. However, by far the best-documented trading centre is Naukratis, established on the Canopic branch of the Nile not far from the capital, Sais, and with excellent communications for internal and external trade. Although the city was founded by Milesians in the mid - or late seventh century BC, members of other East Greek cities were also firmly established there, as well as traders from the island state of Aegina in the Saronic Gulf south of Athens. Excavation has revealed a series of sacred enclosures dedicated to Greek cults, a scarab factory producing material for export, and a typical Late Period honeycomb platform comparable to that at Tell Defenna, which may have been military in purpose but could equally well have had civilian, administrative functions.
It is difficult to determine to what extent trade was regulated in the early years of the foundation. It may be that from the very beginning the model of Mirgissa in Nubia during the Middle Kingdom applied. This system is summarily described in the stele of the eighth year of the reign of Senusret III as follows:
The southern frontier made in regnal year 8 under the majesty of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt Khakaure (may he live for ever and ever) in order to prevent it being passed by any Nubian journeying north by land or in a fcoi-boat as well as any livestock belonging to Nubians, with the exception of a Nubian who shall come to traffic at Mirgissa or on an embassy, or on any matter which may lawfully be done with them; but it shall be forbidden for any feoi-boat of the Nubians to pass northwards beyond Semna for ever.
Be that as it may, there is no doubt that Naukratis became the channel through which all Greek trade was required by law to flow from C.570 BC. However, there is evidence of even more strenuous efforts to promote trade; we know that Nekau II (610-595 BC) at the very least began to construct a canal running from the Nile to the Red Sea, an activity that must indicate a revival of economic activity in the Red Sea area, which had been a major focus of commercial concern in earlier dynasties. It is also reasonable to regard the existence of the implausible Herodotean narrative of a circumnavigation of Africa instigated by Nekau II as a further reflection of interest in this quarter.
Impressive and even spectacular though these measures may have been, we must never lose sight of the simple fact that big battalions and a full exchequer can never be a sufficient basis for lasting power. There must always be an ideological underpinning that is acceptable to the subject people. In Egypt the basis for this had always been the concept of divine kingship that gave the pharaoh a clearly defined and universally accepted role, not only in the governance of the kingdom but in the very maintenance of the cosmos itself. This agenda had to be accepted and rigorously observed; to be a legitimate pharaoh it was essential to act legitimately. I have summarized this pharaonic ideal elsewhere as follows;
The basic elements are: pharaoh ascends the throne as Horns, champion of cosmic order (moot) and vanquishes the forces of darkness; in continuation of this role he then ensures the well-being of Egypt in economic terms by organizing the irrigation system and in military terms by maintaining its military forces and defeating its external foes; the pax deorum is ensured by supplying temples with all their requirements and by constructing monuments both for the gods and for himself (statues and mortuary installations); expeditions will be sent to Punt, Sinai and other canonical sources of raw materials and in the course of these operations the gods will indicate their approval of the king by biayt, ‘marvels’, which may consist both of the conspicuous success of the enterprise and of any signs or omens which the gods may choose to provide. The result of all this will be long life for the king and the realization of the will of the gods in the establishment of the cosmic order on earth. (Herodotus Book II. Commentary 2.16-17)
Psamtek I was well placed here, but, at the same time, burdened with a heavy responsibility. He was undertaking one of the most critical roles of kingship, donning the mantle of Menes and Mentuhotep II; he was unifying the country and restoring the proper order of things, the state of being that the Egyptians called maat. This emerges with crystal clarity at the beginning of the preserved section of the Nitiqret Adoption Stele, the longest surviving royal inscription of his reign;
I [Psamtek] have acted for him as should be done for my father. (2)1 am his first-bom son, one made prosperous by the father of the gods, one who carries out the rituals of the gods; he begat him for himself so as to satisly his heart. To be ‘god’s wife’ have I given him my daughter, and I have endowed her more generously than those who were before her. Surely he will be satisfied with her adoration and protect the land of (3) him who gave her to him... 1 will not do that very thing which ought not to be done and drive out an heir from his seat inasmuch as I am a king who loves (4) tmth—my special abomination is lying—the son and protector of his father, taking the inheritance of Geb, and uniting the two portions while still a youth. (11.1-4)
This devotion to the gods could not be confined to statements of intent. Both Psamtek and his successors engaged in architectural work on sacred installations to express their devotion and maintain the goodwill and support of the gods. Saite buildings are poorly preserved in the archaeological record, to a considerable extent because they were constructed in the Delta, where conditions for survival are much less favourable than in Upper Egypt. Nevertheless, enough information is preserved in Herodotus, inscriptions, and the building fragments to demonstrate that the Saite rulers did everything they could to fidfil this part of the agenda of kingship. It is claimed that Psamtek I constructed the south pylon of the temple of Ptah at Memphis and also built on behalf of the Apis bull in the same shrine; his successor Nekau II is known to have been responsible for monuments in honour of Apis in the same city, and there is inscriptional evidence of his endeavours in the limestone quarries in the Mokattam Hills, where Psamtek II (595-589 Bc) has also left signs of quarrying work. Ahmose II was also extremely active in Sais, the home of the dynasty, where he erected a pylon for the temple of Neith, set up colossal statues, and manufactured human-headed sphinxes for a processional way. Indeed, the evidence leaves us with a powerful impression of the ecclesiastical splendours of this city in the Late Period that must have owed much to the work of these Saite kings. The chief focus was the sacred enclosure of Neith, which contained the main cult centre (the ‘Mansion of Neith’) and provision for a host of associated gods (Osiris, Horns, Sobek, Atum, Amun, Bastet, Isis, Nekhbet, Wadjet, and Hathor). There was, in particular, a burial place of Osiris and a sacred lake on which the rituals of the Festival of the Resurrection of Osiris were celebrated, and the site was richly embellished with features such as obelisks of which the sad ruins of Sais give little hint today.
The city of Sais was, however, just one recipient of 26th Dynasty largesse. We also hear, for instance, of Ahmose setting up colossi at Memphis (two of granite), building a temple of Isis in the same city.
And working at Philae, Elephantine, Nebesha, Abydos, and the oases, while he also made contributions to earlier structures on many other sites, including Kamak, Mendes, the Tanta area. Tell el-Maskhuta, Benha, Sohag, el-Mansha, and Edfu. This intense building activity is in turn reflected in quarry inscriptions at Tura and Elephantine.
The ideology of kingship not only encompasses the world of the living but also gives the king a critical function beyond the grave: the living king is the embodiment of Horns and rules the living; the deceased king is Osiris, king of the dead, but, at the same time, since Osiris in this context was assimilated to Ra, the king expected to participate in the cycle of cosmic action. In order to propel the king into his life beyond the grave and maintain him there, an elaborate programme of ritual was devised, the most spectacular surviving illustrations of which are the pyramids of the Old and Middle kingdoms and the New Kingdom tombs in the Valley of the Kings with their attendant cult temples. The rulers of the 26th Dynasty built no funerary monuments as spectacular as these but operated firmly within Late Period tradition. From the end of the New Kingdom, kings had been buried in chapel tombs in temple courtyards, partly, no doubt, for security reasons, but also possibly as a reflection of a sense of dependence on and devotion to the deities in question. Following this practice, the kings of the 26th Dynasty were interred in chapel tombs in the courtyard of the temple of Neith at Sais. None of these structures has survived, but there is no difficulty in reconstructing them from the description of Herodotus and obvious earlier parallels at Medinet Habu and Tanis. They consisted of two elements: above ground a mortuary chapel was constructed that was entered by way of a double door from a columned portico. The walls of this structure were probably decorated with painted relief sculpture relating to the mortuary cult of the deceased king that was celebrated in the chapel. Beneath was the burial vault containing the royal sarcophagus, and this too was probably decorated. Grave goods, to judge from Tanite precedents, would have been relatively restricted, but certainly included the traditional royal shabtis and canopic jars.
To date in this chapter we have concentrated largely on Saite policies and actions within Egypt, but, given the grim history of recurrent invasion in the 25th Dynasty, we cannot be far wrong in assuming that the major issue for the rulers of this period was the task of keeping the frontiers of Egypt free from foreign invaders. The most critical area was Asia, where initially the problem was the defence of Egypt’s border against a possible renewal of Assyrian attempts to gain control of
Egypt, but difficulties much closer to their homeland made this impossible for the Assyrians to achieve. While evidence of Egyptian military activity in Asia at this stage is far from plentiful, Psamtek’s operations clearly met with considerable success, despite the setback of a horde invasion of the Near East by Cimmerian barbarians in c.630 bc, which he countered with the eminently sensible expedient of buying them off We hear of a successful, if protracted, siege of Ashdod (probably c.655-630 Bc), and late in his reign we encounter Egyptian forces operating in Asia even further afield than in the heady days of the i8th-Dynasty rulers Thutmose I and III. This startling phenomenon was the consequence of the double threat to Assyria’s very existence posed, on the one hand, by the rise of the Chaldaeans in southern Iraq and, on the other, by the growing menace of Media to the east in Iran. This speedily led to an abrupt Assyrian volte-face in relation to Egypt, in the form of an alliance between the two nations as a result of which we find Egyptian forces operating against the Chaldaeans inside Iraq itself in 616 BC. Henceforth, until the last decades of the 26th Dynasty, it was the Chaldaeans who were the major enemy of Egypt.
Psamtek’s successor, Nekau II, continued his father’s policy in the north. Initially things went well, and again we are confronted with the spectacle of Egyptian forces campaigning east of the Euphrates against the Chaldaeans, defeating en passant Josiah of Judah in 609 bc. The result was that the Egyptians were able to establish themselves on the Euphrates for a short while, but this position was soon lost in 605 bc as a result of their catastophic reverse at Carchemish, which was followed by a brusque retreat to the eastern frontier of Egypt. The Egyptians kept the Chaldaeans at bay, and on this occasion the border was not breached. A small recovery seems to have been made in the reign of Psamtek 11, who was certainly able to mount some sort of expedition into Palestine during the fourth year of his reign. In addition, his diplomacy helped foment a general Levantine revolt against the Babylonians that involved, amongst others, Zedekiah of Judah. Herodotus makes it clear that the Near Eastern operations of these rulers were by no means entirely land orientated, indicating that Nekau constructed a fleet of ramming war galleys that may have been an early type of trireme and some of which were used in the Mediterranean and others in the Red Sea. Indeed, it may be that the abortive Red Sea canal was intended, in part, to facilitate the transfer of naval forces from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean as circumstances required.
Apries addressed himself vigorously to the Chaldaean problem. Initially he undertook large-scale operations against the Chaldaeans in Conjunction with Phoenician cities and Zedekiah of Judah. These activities led to disaster and possibly invasion of Egypt in the late 580s BC. Subsequently a strategically well-conceived series of campaigns was directed against Cyprus and Phoenicia (c.574-570 BC) in which good use was made of the fleet. Ahmose II, who succeeded Apries, was nothing if not lucky. He was able to defeat a Chaldaean invasion of Egypt in the fourth year of his reign, and after that the Chaldaeans had sufficient problems within the empire to keep them fully occupied for the early part of his reign. In due course, however, he was faced with a much more dangerous enemy created by the rise of Persia under Cyrus the Great, who ascended the throne in 559 bc. To deal with this menace a grand alliance of threatened nations was created, which consisted of Egypt, Croesus of Lydia, Sparta, and the Chaldaeans. With consummate strategic skill Cyrus knocked out the link between the scattered allies by destroying Lydia in 546 bc. He then turned on the Chaldaeans and took their capital Babylon in 538 bc, leaving Ahmose with no major Near Eastern allies. Ahmose reacted by developing a policy of cultivating close relations with Greek states to strengthen his hand against the impending onslaught, and again he was lucky. He died in 526 bc before the storm broke, leaving his son Psamtek III (526-525 bc) to face the Achaemenid assault.
The south was not such an acute threat as the north, but the Nubians could not be ignored, not least because they had certainly not given up their ambitions to rule Egypt. There is no firm evidence of military action against them in the reign of Psamtek I—indeed, the introduction to the Nitiqret Adoption Stele suggests that he was prepared to forget his differences with the Nubians, which included the death of his father in battle against them, and that he adopted a conciliatory policy. This stance may well have persisted to the end of his reign, but we should be wary of assuming too much, given the highly defective nature of our evidence. The situation was certainly different in the reign of Nekau, who at some undefinable date was forced to turn his attention to what a fragmentary text indicates was a rebellion in Nubia; but the best-known Saite military commitment by far is that of Psamtek 11, who dispatched a great expedition in the third year of his reign. This operation, which was designed to forestall a Nubian assault on Egypt, seems to have taken the Egyptian army at least to the fourth Nile cataract. It appears to have been successful, and we hear nothing more in the dynasty of major military operations to the south, although a demotic papyrus of the reign of Ahmose II describes the king as sending into Nubia a small expedition, the character of which is quite unclear, and there is archaeological evidence of an Egyptian garrison at Dorginarti in Lower Nubia during the Saite and Persian periods.
Relations with the Libyans were not consistently good during the Saite Dynasty. The Saqqara Stele of the eleventh year of the reign of Psamtek I, despite its damaged state, provides evidence of problems with Libyan tribes to the west. These he seems to have defeated, and they do not appear to have been a problem subsequently—quite the contrary! About 571 bc we find the Libyans asking for Egyptian assistance in dealing with the expansionist policy of Cyrene, a Greek colony that had been founded in their territory about 630 BC. At the end of the reign of Apries this city embarked on a programme of expansion that brought them into collision with Egyptian interests, and in the ensuing war Egypt was catastrophically defeated. Ahmose II adopted a totally different approach to the Cyrene problem. As early as 567 bc we find him forming an alliance with them against the Chaldaeans, and this diplomatic link was cemented by marriage to a Cyrenean woman who was alleged by some of Herodotus’ sources, with considerable plausibility, to have been a princess. This alliance stood the test of time surprisingly well and was still in place at the time of the Persian invasion in 525 bc.
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