Battle of Pelusium (525 BC): Cambyses II Conquers Egypt

The Battle of Pelusium, fought in 525 BC near the eastern edge of the Nile Delta, was the decisive clash in the Persian conquest of Egypt. The Persian king Cambyses II, son of Cyrus the Great, defeated the army of the new pharaoh Psamtik III, then took the capital Memphis. Egypt became a province of the Achaemenid Empire, and for the first time a single state ruled from the Nile to Central Asia.

Background: Egypt and Persia

Egypt in the 6th century BC was ruled by the 26th, or Saite, dynasty, which had restored Egyptian independence after Assyrian domination. Its long-reigning king Amasis (Ahmose II, r. 570-526 BC) relied heavily on Greek and Carian mercenaries and had close ties with Greek cities, including an alliance with Croesus of Lydia.

Cyrus the Great had conquered Lydia and Babylon, as told in Fall of Babylon to Cyrus the Great, but he died in 530 BC before turning to Egypt, as described in Death of Cyrus the Great. His son Cambyses II inherited the empire and prepared a major expedition.

Herodotus gives several stories about the cause of the war, including a quarrel over a request by Cambyses to marry a daughter of Amasis. These tales are typical of Greek explanations and are not reliable. The underlying reason was simpler: Egypt was the last great independent power in the region, rich and close to Persia’s new lands in Syria and the Levant.

Preparations

According to Herodotus, a Greek mercenary commander named Phanes of Halicarnassus deserted from Amasis and went over to Cambyses. He advised the Persian king on how to cross the desert between Gaza and Egypt. Cambyses made an agreement with an Arab king who supplied water, carried in skins on camels, along the desert route.

The Persians also had a fleet, drawn from Phoenician cities, Cyprus and Ionian Greeks, now subject to Persia. Polycrates, ruler of the island of Samos, sent ships to support Cambyses. The navy allowed the Persians to supply their army along the coast.

Amasis died around 526 BC, before the Persians arrived. His son Psamtik III (Psammenitus in Greek) had reigned only about six months when the invasion came.

The battle

The Egyptian army, including its Greek and Carian mercenaries, met the Persians near Pelusium, the fortress guarding the Nile’s easternmost (Pelusiac) branch. The battle is usually dated to spring 525 BC.

Herodotus says that before the fighting the mercenaries, angry at Phanes’s betrayal, brought out his sons, who had been left in Egypt. They killed them in front of both armies, mixed their blood with wine and water in a bowl and drank it. This is one of the more lurid stories in Herodotus and cannot be verified.

The battle itself was hard-fought, but the Egyptians were defeated and fled. Herodotus gives no casualty figures. He claims to have visited the battlefield decades later and seen the bones of the dead still lying in two separate heaps, Persian and Egyptian. He reports that local people told him Egyptian skulls were much thicker than Persian ones, which they explained by Egyptians shaving their heads and exposing them to the sun from childhood.

The cat legend

A popular modern story says that Cambyses had his soldiers carry cats, or paint images of cats on their shields, knowing that the Egyptians would not harm animals sacred to the goddess Bastet. This tale appears only in the Stratagems of Polyaenus, written in the 2nd century AD, about 700 years after the battle. Herodotus says nothing about it, and historians regard it as a later legend.

The fall of Memphis

The defeated Egyptians retreated to Memphis. Cambyses sent a ship with a herald to demand surrender, but the Egyptians attacked it and killed the crew. The Persians then besieged the city, which surrendered after some time. Psamtik III was captured.

Herodotus says Cambyses tested Psamtik’s endurance by having his daughter dressed as a slave and his son led to execution, and that the former pharaoh broke down only on seeing an old friend reduced to begging. He adds that Psamtik was at first treated with honour but later executed after trying to stir up a revolt. The Libyans to the west and the Greek cities of Cyrene and Barca submitted voluntarily.

Key people

• Cambyses II: King of Persia from 530 to 522 BC and son of Cyrus the Great, who led the invasion in person.
• Psamtik III: The last pharaoh of the 26th dynasty, who reigned for only about six months before his defeat.
• Phanes of Halicarnassus: A Greek mercenary officer who, according to Herodotus, deserted Amasis and guided the Persians.
• Udjahorresnet: An Egyptian naval commander and priest who entered Persian service and helped shape Cambyses’s image as a legitimate pharaoh.
• Polycrates of Samos: The ruler of Samos, who sent ships to support the Persian campaign.

Cambyses as pharaoh

Cambyses took the titles of an Egyptian king and is counted as the first ruler of the 27th dynasty. An important witness is Udjahorresnet, an Egyptian naval commander under Amasis and Psamtik III. His inscribed statue, now in the Vatican Museums, says he served Cambyses, composed his Egyptian throne name, Mesutire, and persuaded him to restore the temple of the goddess Neith at Sais.

Herodotus describes Cambyses as a madman who mocked Egyptian gods and stabbed the sacred Apis bull of Memphis. However, an inscription from the Serapeum at Saqqara records the burial of an Apis bull with full honours in the sixth year of Cambyses (524 BC). Most historians conclude that the stories of his sacrilege reflect hostile Egyptian priestly traditions, perhaps provoked by his reduction of temple revenues.

Cambyses also sent expeditions to the oasis of Siwa and south against Kush (Herodotus’s “Ethiopians”). Herodotus says the army sent to Siwa, 50,000 men strong, vanished in a sandstorm, and that the southern campaign failed for lack of supplies. The lost army has never been found and the story may be exaggerated.

Consequences

Egypt became a Persian satrapy (province), governed from Memphis, and remained under Persian rule until about 404 BC. Under Darius I, Persia invested in Egypt, completing the Canal of Darius between the Nile and the Red Sea.

Cambyses left Egypt in 522 BC on hearing of a revolt in Persia and died on the way home. The crisis that followed brought Darius I to power, as told in Darius I Seizes the Persian Throne.

Timeline

• 570 BC: Amasis becomes pharaoh of Egypt.
• 530 BC: Cyrus the Great dies; Cambyses II becomes king of Persia.
• c. 526 BC: Amasis dies; his son Psamtik III succeeds him.
• 525 BC, spring: Battle of Pelusium; the Persians defeat the Egyptian army.
• 525 BC: Memphis falls after a siege; Psamtik III is captured.
• 524 BC: An Apis bull is buried at Saqqara in Cambyses’s sixth year.
• 522 BC: Cambyses leaves Egypt and dies on the way home.
• c. 404 BC: Egypt regains independence under Amyrtaeus.

Why it matters

The Battle of Pelusium ended the independence of one of the world’s oldest kingdoms and made the Achaemenid Empire the largest state yet seen. It began nearly two centuries of Persian rule in Egypt, interrupted by revolts. The battle is also a case study in how history was written: Herodotus’s colourful stories about Cambyses shaped his image for centuries, while Egyptian evidence tells a more complex story.