Most of the detailed evidence for the political and military history of this period derives from Greek sources, which inevitably means that they reflect the interests of classical observers and readers. They paint a convincing picture of a period dominated by two recurrent issues: instability at home and the ever-present spectre of aggressive Persian power abroad. The grizzly panorama of intra - and inter-familial strife between aspirants to the throne emerges with stark clarity in the case of the 29th and 30th Dynasties. In the murky history of these two families we are confronted with a situation that we can only suspect for earlier Egyptian history but that, we can be confident, was not infrequently lurking behind the ideological mirage projected by pharaonic inscriptional evidence. Classical commentators, writing from quite a different perspective, reveal without compunction the complex interaction of individual ambition untrammelled by loyalty or ideological factors whereby ambitious political figures seize any opportunity for advancement provided by the sectional interests of the native Egyptian warrior class, Greek mercenary captains, and, less obviously, the Egyptian priesthood. For the 29th Dynasty our evidence is far from full, but it demonstrates unequivocally that almost every ruler had a short reign and suggests that all of them, with the exception of Hakor (393-380 bc), may have been deposed, sometimes probably worse. The classical sources are particularly revealing for the succeeding dynasty. The founder, Nectanebo 1 (380-362 bc), a general and apparently a member of a military family, almost certainly came to the throne as the result of a military coup, and we are unlikely to be guessing badly if we suspect that this experience motivated him in establishing his successor Teos (362-360 bc) as co-regent before his own death in order to strengthen the chances of a smooth family succession. Ultimately, this availed him nothing, because Teos was deposed in circumstances of which we are graphically informed. Indeed, nothing could give us the flavour of the politics of this period better than Plutarch’s version of these events:
Then, having joined Tachos [i. e. Teos], who was making preparations for his campaign [against Persia], he [Agesilaus] was not appointed commander of the entire force, as he was hoping, but only given command of the mercenaries, whilst Chabrias the Athenian was put in charge of the fleet. Tachos himself was commander-inchief. This was the first thing which vexed Agesilaus; then, whilst he found the prince’s arrogance and empty pretensions hard to bear, he was compelled to put up with them. He even sailed with him against the Phoenicians, and, setting aside his sense of dignity and his natural instincts, he showed deference and subservience, until he found his opportunity. For Tachos’ cousin Nectanabis [i. e. the future Necta-nebo II], who commanded part of the forces, rebelled, and, having been proclaimed king by the Egyptians and having sent to Agesilaus begging him for help, he made the same appeal to Chabrias, offering both men great rewards. Tachos presently learned of this and begged them to stand by him, whereupon Chabrias tried by persuasion and exhortation to keep Agesilaus on good terms with Tachos. ... The Spartans sent a secret dispatch to Agesilaus ordering him to see to it that he did what was in Sparta’s best interests, so Agesilaus took his mercenaries and transferred his
Allegiance to Nectanabis____Tachos, deserted by his mercenaries, took to flight, but
Meanwhile another pretender rose up against Nectanabis in the province of Mendes and was declared king. (Plutarch, Life of Agesilaus 36-9)
Egyptian evidence, though far from copious, provides intriguing insights into the self-perception of these last native rulers. If we consider the titularies of the rulers of the 29th Dynasty, we find that Nepherites I bears a Horus name borrowed from Psamtek I and a Golden Horus name taken from Ahmose II, while Hakor uses the Horus and nebty names of Psamtek I and the Golden Horus name of Ahmose II. These phenomena demonstrate unequivocally that both of these pharaohs were determined to associate themselves with the great rulers of the 26th Dynasty, the most recent ‘golden age’ in Eg)q)t’s history.
Service to the gods is also a recurrent feature; Nepherites I has left evidence of work at Mendes, Saqqara, Sohag, Akhmim, and Kamak (where his son Psammuthis was also active), and Hakor’s building operations can be identified throughout the country. In the 30th Dynasty, efforts were particularly spectacular: Nectanebo I built at Damanhur, Sais, Philae, Karnak, Hermopolis (where he significantly set up a stele before a pylon of Ramesses II), and Edfu, and we have evidence of Nectanebo ITs personal participation in the burial of an Apis at Saqqara, as also of his role in raising the status of the Buchis bull of Armant to that of the Apis bull of Memphis; there is also inscriptional evidence of acts of piety to Isis of Behbeit el-Hagar, for whom he began the construction of an enormous temple. The cynicism of modern scholars has frequently led them to argue that these activities were very much the result of a determination to keep the support of the priests, and there is probably some truth in this, but it would be a mistake to deny that there was also genuine religious Fervour. In the Hermopolis stele of Nectanebo I the traditional reciprocal relationship between gods and the king is asserted: the king makes offerings to Thoth and Nehmetawy in return for the support that he believes they gave him in gaining control of the kingdom; the king also makes the traditional claim that his work in the temple restored what he found in ruins—in other words, he is reaffirming the old doctrine of the ‘cosmicizing’ role of pharaoh. In the Naukratis stele of this same ruler we find him attributing his success to Neith, the great goddess of Sais (again an affinity with the 26th Dynasty), insisting that wealth is the gift of the goddess, and emphasizing that he is preserving what his ancestors had done. There is surely no reason to argue that these ancient concepts had lost any of their force to motivate a ruler or to deny the sincerity of the gratitude expressed by reciprocating the beneficence of the gods.
When we turn to foreign policy, the dominant consideration is Persia, for which the loss of Egypt was never—and could not be—an accomplished fact. Fortunately for these last native pharaohs, pressing Persian concerns nearer home meant that the recovery of Egypt made it difficult for the Great King to give such a distant province his undivided attention until 374/3 bc, when Artaxerxes II (405-359 bc) embarked on the first major attempt to recover the country. The Egyptian approach to the Achaemenid threat oscillated between using diplomatic means to keep the Persians at bay and having recourse to large-scale military operations. Since Egypt’s preferred role was generally that of paymaster, direct military intervention by units of the army or navy is infrequent and occurs only when prompted by necessity or invincible ambition. The ease with which this policy could be conducted is explained by the fact that it unfolded as part of a much greater game, since all this Egyptian activity took place against the backdrop of the struggle for independence of other western provinces of the Achaemenid empire and the long-standing rivalry between Sparta and Persia to define their respective spheres of influence in the Aegean, Asia Minor, and the eastern Mediterranean. This created a lethal interplay of move and counter-move in which Egypt never had any difficulty in finding enthusiastic support. Indeed, its prominence in these operations was such that, even if the Persians had been prepared to let sleeping dogs lie, they could not have done so, since an independent Egypt would always have been a threat to the strategic equilibrium of the western empire. It is, therefore, hardly surprising that Artaxerxes III (343-338 bc) organized no fewer than three major assaults to recover this lost but highly dangerous province.
We are fortunate in knowing a great deal of the organization and character of the military operations of these sixty years of confrontation. At this time Egyptian military resources were made up of three main elements. In the first place, we frequently encounter Greek mercenaries, Egypt’s rulers having, in the main, a keen perception of reality marked, amongst other things, by the firm conviction that Egypt’s interests were best served by paying others to do its fighting for it. We therefore find Hakor putting together a large force of such troops in the 380s bc and Teos employing 10,000 picked mercenaries in 361/0 BC, while Nectanebo II is said to have had 20,000 when Artaxerxes III invaded the country in 343/2 bc. These troops showed a clear superiority over the native Egyptian machimoi (militia) in the civil war between Nectanebo II and Teos, but proved unreliable during the successfiil Persian invasion of Egypt in 343/2 bc. In addition to these troops we hear on a number of occasions of large forces of machimoi. Plutarch describes them at one point in somewhat disparaging terms as ‘a rabble of artisans whose inexperience made them worthy of nothing but contempt’, but they were certainly capable of effective mUitary action: Diodorus comments on the effectiveness of their skirmishing tactics against the forces of Artaxerxes in 374/3 bc, while in the civil war of 360 bc they initially performed well against Agesilaus and Nectanebo II, even if they were ultimately both outgeneralled and outfought by their Greek opponents. On the negative side, that conflict also clearly demonstrates that they were of unpredictable loyalty and far from averse to playing the kingmaker, particularly if the promised rewards were right.
The third ingredient in Egyptian military resources was allied troops; the assets of the rebel Persian admiral Glo (in fact an Egyptian) brought a significant increment to the forces of Hakor in 380 bc; the Spartans were allies of Teos in 361/0 BC and sent 1,000 heavy infantry with Agesilaus to Egypt, though they subsequently switched their support to Nectanebo; the Phoenicians appear as allies of Nectanebo II in his struggle against Artaxerxes III; and Nectanebo availed himself of the services of c.20,000 Libyans in the same context. The troops featured in our Greek sources are generally infantry, but cavalry are also mentioned explicitly on one occasion. As we should expect, we have evidence of considerable Egyptian skill at military engineering in exploiting the defensive possibilities of the terrain. Nectanebo I is described as fortifying the coast and the north-east Delta very elaborately in 374/3 BC. All entrances were blocked off by land and sea: at each of the seven mouths there was a town with large towers and a Wooden bridge dominating the entrance; Pelusium had a ditch around it with fortified points of access by water that were blocked by moles, and all the land approaches were flooded, whilst the town at the Men-desian mouth had both a surrounding wall and a fort inside. The Egyptians’ expertise in this area also emerges in their operations against Agesilaus and Nectanebo in 360 bc, and in the measures taken by Nectanebo 11 to counter the assault of Artaxerxes III in 343/2 BC. Too often, however, it was the high command of the Egyptian army that proved the Achilles’ heel, jealousy between Egyptian and foreign generals easily becoming a flashpoint. Whilst Hakor hired theAthenian Chabrias as general c.385 bc without untoward results, Teos’ undiplomatic arrangements in 360 bc were not so happy, in that Agesilaus was given command of the Greeks only whilst Teos controlled the Egyptian troops and also retained overall command of the army. Martial failings on the part of the pharaoh could also be critical and eventually lost Egypt its freedom, for our sources make it clear that the major factor here was the ineptitude and cowardice of Nectanebo II himself These military confrontations were not confined to operations by land. Naval activity features prominently, as indeed it was bound to do, since one of the classic strategic techniques used by the Persians was, where possible, to shadow the movements of their armies by fleet movements along their flank. The best-known example of this is the invasion of Greece by Xerxes in 480 bc, but any large-scale attack on Egypt would present a perfect opportunity for such two-pronged operations. The Egyptians, therefore, needed to be able to counter Persian fleet movements as well as those of forces coming south by land. However, even beyond this specific context it should be remembered that the possession of effective naval units greatly strengthened the strategic and tactical mobility of Egyptian forces in the east Mediterranean theatre. Fleets are, therefore, a frequent matter of comment in our sources: for example, in 400 bc we find a rebel Persian admiral called Tamos (certainly Egyptian!) taking refuge in Egypt with his fleet and promptly being murdered by an enigmatic Egyptian ruler (probably Amyrtaios) specifically to gain possession of his naval assets, and in 361/0 a substantial fleet is prepared alongside the army to participate in the general revolt of the western provinces of the Persian empire. The technical sophistication of these forces was evidently high. Whenever Egyptian warships are mentioned they are called triremes; ramming war galleys propelled by three superimposed banks of oars, the classic first-rate battleship of the Mediterranean world at this period. In 396 bc we find Nepherites sending Agesilaus of Sparta the equipment for 100 triremes—clearly he had enough and to spare in his arsenals. We are told that the Cypriot rebel Evagoras acquired fifty triremes from Hakor in 381BC; and in 361-360 BC we are told that Teos prepared a fleet of 200 such warships which were very well equipped. Although the Egyptian ships are always described as triremes, we should note that the Persian fleet collected for operations against Egypt in 374 BC consisted of 300 triremes and 200 triakontors (single-banked galleys with thirty oarsmen), and the Egyptian navy must also have contained such lighter units. That native Egyptian commanders could achieve the rank of admiral in the Persian fleet is a sufficient testimony to their quality, but the Egyptian navy at this time could recognize ability wherever it lay, and Teos had no hesitation in appointing the superb Athenian admiral Chabrias to command his naval units in 361 BC.
The re-establishment of Persian control in Egypt, which was completed no later than 341 bc, was attended by plundering of temples and a policy of consolidation that took the form of demolishing the defences of major cities and setting up once more a Persian provincial administration staffed in part by local Egyptian officials such as Som-tutefnakht. Evidently the intention was a return to the arrangements of the previous occupation, but the outcome was a regime of recurrent viciousness and incompetence that soon raised the level of disaffection to the point of armed rebellion. It is surely here, perhaps about 339/8 BC, that the uprising of the much-discussed Khababash must be placed, a rebellion so successful that it gave him at least partial control of the country and a claim to the pharaonic office. In 333 bc there is an equally signal example of disaffection in the enthusiasm with which the appearance of the Macedonian rebel Amyntas was welcomed in the country. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that, when Alexander the Great invaded the country late in 332 bc, he had no difficulty in quickly terminating the hated rule of Persia.
World History
