The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt

by Toby Wilkinson

  As for the Persians, they never accepted the secession of their most affluent province. No amount of temple building, mummification of sacred animals, or pharaonic posturing would deflect them from their aim of recapturing the Nile Valley. Back in 373, Nakhtnebef had successfully repelled an attempted Persian invasion directed against the delta. Thirty years later, his grandson Nakhthorheb was not so lucky. The forces of the great king Artaxerxes III captured Pelusium, on the Mediterranean coast, with relative ease, and marched southward to Memphis. By the late summer of 343, the Egyptian capital had fallen, resistance had crumbled, and independence had been extinguished. Nakhthorheb, the last native-born Egyptian until the modern era to rule unchallenged over his homeland, fled abroad. In the end, his piety and politicking were no match for the sheer strength of Artaxerxes’s army. The clock had been turned back seven decades, and Egypt was once again a satrapy of the mighty Persian Empire.

  HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO

  IF ANYONE ALIVE DURING THE PERSIAN INVASION OF 343 COULD HAVE remembered Cambyses’s conquest 180 years earlier, they would have had an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. Yet, for most, grown accustomed to a precarious independence, the country’s forced reabsorption into a foreign realm must have seemed a genuine disaster. Many Egyptians, especially in the provinces, adopted a head-in-the-sand approach to the latest reversal of fortune. They hunkered down and continued with normal life as much as possible, quietly maintaining their native traditions as far as they could, in quiet defiance of their alien masters. A fine example of this tendency was Padiusir, a pious devotee of Thoth who lived in Khmun, the god’s principal cult center. Day in, day out, as the thousands of sacred ibises squawked and screeched in the nearby feeding grounds, Padiusir carried out his duties in the temple with exemplary diligence—while, beyond his narrow horizons, the country seethed with unrest:

  I spent seven years as controller for this god, administering his endowment without fault being found, while the ruler of foreign lands was protector in Egypt, and nothing was in its former place, since fighting had started inside Egypt, the South being in turmoil, the North in revolt …, all temples without their servants; the priests fled, not knowing what was happening.13

  Egypt’s unshakeable confidence in its own traditions was both its genius and its undoing. What had been the country’s greatest strength in happier, more settled times became its fatal weakness in the face of unfamiliar forces. The customs and solutions that had maintained Egyptian civilization in the third and second millennia were no longer up to the job. Egypt had lost its preeminence and was now just another country—albeit a wealthy one—to be fought over by younger, nimbler empires. Padiusir’s conscientious resignation was thus a symptom of a wider malaise. Frightened and bewildered by the rapidly changing global situation, most Egyptians preferred to look the other way, put their trust in their old gods, and carry on regardless.

  The last, feeble gasp of Egypt’s once proud spirit of independence came at the end of 338. The stimulus was the death of yet another Persian great king. As the court in Persepolis mourned the passing of Artaxerxes III and prepared to crown his successor, the last in a long line of Egyptian freedom fighters stepped forward to liberate his country. Little is known for certain about the mysterious Khababash, his obscurity reflecting the hopelessness of his cause. He seems to have been a native of Memphis, or at least to have had a close association with the capital, and the city was one of the first places in Egypt to recognize his “kingship.” But Khababash’s popularity was not confined to Lower Egypt. Thebes, too, threw its weight behind his attempt to seize the throne. From the upper reaches of the Nile Valley to the shores of the delta, the whole country was anxious to cast off the Persian yoke. Khababash was the best—the only—bet. Recognizing that Persian retaliation was likely to be in the form of a seaborne invasion, he headed straight for the strategically important harbor city of Per-Wadjet, “crossing the marshlands that were in all its districts, penetrating the morass of Lower Egypt, and inspecting every estuary leading to the Great Green [that is, the Mediterranean Sea] in order to repel the Asiatic fleet from Egypt.”14 It was a sensible enough strategy, but a rebel leader, even one with the hopes and aspirations of Egypt riding on his shoulders, was no match for the Persian army at its mightiest and most determined. Khababash’s insurrection lasted barely eighteen months. His fate, like most things about him, remains a mystery. The final outcome was renewed Persian control, under a new great king, Darius III (336–332 in Egypt, 336–331 in Persia).

  Egypt had never been more vital to the Persians. Its wealth was desperately needed to buy mercenary support for an increasingly embattled empire. For a century and a half, Persia had been grappling with the Greek world for control of the Aegean and Anatolia. Sparta and Athens had proved persistent thorns, putting up heroic resistance and humbling the great king’s armies with acts of bravery and defiance. Now attention had swung northward to the mountainous kingdom of Macedon, which had recently taken on the mantle of Panhellenic leadership against the Persians. In the late summer of 336, at precisely the same time that Darius III was being enthroned at Persepolis, the new young king of Macedon, Alexander III, was winning recognition throughout Greece as head of the League of Corinth and commander of the Persian expedition initiated by his father. The world was at a turning point, if only Darius could have sensed it.

  By the spring of 334, Alexander had crossed the Hellespont, into Persia’s western province, and marched southward to engage the massed ranks of the imperial army. The epic battle at the river Granikos in May that year signaled the beginning of the end for Da-rius and for Persia. Further campaigns in Anatolia followed during the summer, culminating in the siege of Halicarnassus. Autumn and winter saw Alexander’s forces moving along the coast, sweeping all before them. In November 333, a second pitched battle between the two opposing armies was fought at Issos, in Cilicia. Ironically, the Persians counted a sizeable number of Egyptians among their multiethnic forces. Ordinary soldiers no doubt fought for whoever paid them. But the willing collaboration extended also to members of the elite, including the eldest son of the exiled Nakhthorheb, who apparently saw no contradiction in supporting the very army that had defeated his father. As it had shown time and again, the Egyptian military, even in its upper echelons, had one overriding wish—to align itself with the winning side. History is written by the victors, as the Egyptians, with a history longer than most, well knew.

  Now, however, history was running out for the Persians. An Egyptian collaborator, Sematawytefnakht, watched from the sidelines as Darius suffered another crushing defeat. Suddenly, Alexander looked unstoppable. Overcome with homesickness, or a powerful desire to save his own skin, Sematawytefnakht fled the battlefield and returned to Egypt, there to await the installation of a new regime and further opportunities for advancement.

  As news reached the Nile Valley of Alexander, his thirst for glory and his invincible army, the Egyptians began to wonder whether he could be the strongman they were looking for to rid them of the hated Persians. In the absence of a native-born hero, and faced with a stark choice between Darius and Alexander, the Macedonian looked like the lesser of two evils. For sure, there could be no illusions about his methods. After the seven-month siege of Tyre in the first half of 332, Alexander had shown exemplary cruelty to those who had dared to oppose him, ordering the public crucifixion of the survivors. A few months later, the unfortunate governor of Gaza, a city that had also shut its gates against Alexander, suffered an even worse fate. The governor was tied to a chariot while still alive and driven around the city walls until he died from his wounds in excruciating agony. Nothing and no one would be allowed to stand in Alexander’s way. But the Egyptians had always been used to despotic rulers. Authoritarian dictators had been the norm in the Nile Valley for the best part of three thousand years. As the country looked back to its glorious past with increasing nostalgia, it must have seemed that Alexander was a man very much in the traditional pharaonic mold, a rut
hless tyrant, to be respected and feared. More important still, he was a proven winner, and Egypt longed for victory, if only by proxy.

  In the dying weeks of 332, Alexander marched across the Egyptian border and seized power without a fight. The Persians simply melted away. Here he was, the conqueror of the known world in the land of the pharaohs. Whether by instinct or through careful advice, he knew what was expected of him. One of his first acts on reaching Memphis was to pay his respects to the sacred Apis bull. The great beast was brought out from its stall into the adjoining courtyard for the curious Macedonian to inspect. For Alexander’s hosts, it was a sign that the old ways had returned. Here was a king who understood the demands of piety.

  Yet, for Alexander himself, an interest in ancient Egypt’s religious traditions was more than just a public relations exercise. Like all previous invaders, he was entranced by the country’s age-old culture. Egypt was casting its inimitable, irresistible spell. Thus far, nothing had been allowed to delay or detain Alexander in his military crusade. Each victory had been the spur to another, giving the enemy no respite or time to regroup. Now, against all expectation, he deliberately turned his back on the Persians. In the early spring of 331, after founding the city that would bear his name for eternity, Alexander headed not eastward to engage Darius a third time but westward into the sandy wastes of the Sahara. His destination, three hundred miles distant, was the Siwa Oasis with its famed oracle of Amun. Whatever passed between god and king remained a mystery, but Alexander emerged from the encounter a changed man—indeed, no longer a man but a living god, descended from the creator himself. “He put his question to the oracle and received (or so he said) the answer that his soul desired.”15

  Thus did the ruler of Macedon become king of Egypt. The Nile Valley would not be ruled by one of its own sons for another twenty-two centuries, yet the allure of pharaonic civilization was as influential as ever.

  Padiusir and his ilk had been proved right.

  CHAPTER 23

  THE LONG GOODBYE

  THE GLITTERING PRIZE

  ALEXANDER LEFT EGYPT IN APRIL 331, NEVER TO RETURN. HIS STAY had lasted barely four months. Yet, in that brief time, he had not merely added the land of the pharaohs to his growing list of conquests and had himself recognized as a living god. With an eye on his empire’s destiny, as well as his own, he had also put in place farsighted administrative arrangements to ensure strong government in the Nile Valley after his departure. Alexander recognized that, although won by the sword, Egypt would not flourish under a military junta, so he ensured a clear separation of powers, leaving the military command in Macedonian hands, while civil matters were entrusted to two governors, one Egyptian and one Persian. Proud of his Greek inheritance, Alexander was nonetheless intent on building a multicultural empire, a world of opportunity where talented individuals of all ethnic backgrounds could rise to the top. The Nile Valley might now be Macedonian territory, but an Egyptian dignitary such as Sematawytefnakht could still amass honors and offices, confident of being “blessed by his lord, revered in his nome.”1 As Alexander’s public display of piety to the Apis bull had been intended to emphasize, he wanted to present himself as a liberator, and an enlightened ruler who respected and honored Egypt’s ancient traditions and beliefs. In this spirit, the Macedonian commander of the occupying forces, Peukestas, had a notice pinned up at the sacred animal necropolis at Saqqara, forbidding his troops from entering the ritual area. It survives to this day as one of the oldest known Greek documents on papyrus, and as a vivid demonstration of Alexander’s inclusive ethos.

  Not everyone in Alexander’s retinue, however, shared his broad-mindedness and his interest in good government. Very soon his carefully laid plans began to fall apart as his subordinates’ competing ambitions came to the surface. The Egyptian governor resigned, leaving his Persian counterpart in sole charge of the civilian administration. Before long, he was sidelined in turn, as the Greek commander in charge of the eastern border area and the country’s finances, Kleomenes of Naukratis, won promotion to the post of satrap, with comprehensive powers. Despite Alexander’s best endeavors, Egypt was on its way back to being a dictatorship.

  Alexander’s untimely death, just eight years later, on June 10, 323, sealed the country’s fate. As Alexander’s closest lieutenants squabbled over the division of his vast empire, a general named Ptolemy, son of Lagus, succeeded in being allocated the satrapy of Egypt. Since he had accompanied his childhood friend Alexander on the visit to the oracle of Amun, Ptolemy may have been able to argue that he had some claim to the province. He certainly knew that it was the wealthiest and easiest to defend of Alexander’s many conquests—ideally suited, in other words, to become, once again, a powerful kingdom in its own right. Without delay, Ptolemy traveled to Egypt, removed the unpopular Kleomenes, and set about consolidating his own authority.

  Taking charge of the Two Lands posed a knotty problem. Ptolemy might have held the reins of political and economic power, but he lacked the moral and spiritual authority that Alexander had possessed to reign over Egypt as pharaoh. With the great conqueror dead, the Egyptians might balk at another Macedonian monarch. Ptolemy knew that Alexander’s imprimatur would be essential if he, a commoner, were to win recognition as a legitimate ruler. It had been Alexander’s dying wish to be buried within the sacred precinct of the temple of Amun at Siwa; but the new regent of Macedon, Perdiccas, had decided for political reasons that the dead hero should be interred in the dynastic necropolis of the Macedonian kings at Aegina. Everyone, it seemed, wanted Alexander’s body as a talisman of legitimacy.

  Employing all his tactical skills, honed on the battlefields of the Near East, Ptolemy hatched an audacious plan to steal Alexander’s corpse from right under Perdiccas’s nose. As the funeral cortège made its way from Babylon, bound for the Hellespont, Ptolemy’s army hijacked it in Syria and forced it to divert to Egypt. Once the hero’s body was safely on Egyptian soil, Ptolemy showed his true colors. Rather than carrying out Alexander’s wishes, he had the body buried at Memphis, traditional capital of the pharaohs. With Alexander’s aura cast over the seat of government, nobody could now deny Ptolemy his right to rule.

  It is not surprising that the deception incensed Perdiccas, provoking an immediate conflict between Macedon and Egypt—the first in a wearying series of internecine wars between Alexander’s successors that would drag on for thirty-five years. At the same time, the Greek penchant for deadly family feuds showed itself, laying waste to Alexander’s surviving relatives within twelve years of his own death. First, his heir and half brother Philip III was murdered at the behest of Alexander’s mother, Olympias. Then, Alexander’s posthumous son, Alexander IV, was murdered by his guardian.

  In Egypt (where the unvarnished truth had never been allowed to get in the way of decorum), dates continued to be reckoned as if the younger Alexander were still alive and reigning. But it was nothing more than a political fig leaf, designed to conceal Ptolemy’s real intentions beneath a veneer of loyalty. A year earlier, Ptolemy had moved his residence to Alexandria, Alexander’s city by the sea. When the new capital was ready, the general made his move. On January 12, 304, he proclaimed himself king. One of his first acts as monarch was to have Alexander’s body moved to Alexandria and reinterred in a glass-sided coffin in a lavish new tomb. There Alexander would lie for all eternity as a founding father and patron deity, not just of a new city, but also of a new dynasty. The house of Ptolemy had arrived.

  The next eighty years, under the first three Ptolemies, were the golden age of Ptolemaic rule. Though elevated to king, Ptolemy I lost none of his general’s touch, using the interminable Wars of the Successors to carve out an empire in the eastern Mediterranean. He acquired Cyprus in 313, followed by strategic footholds in Anatolia and the Aegean. These he added to Cyrenaica (coastal Libya), which he had already annexed to Egypt just a year after Alexander’s death. In the early 280s, Ptolemy won recognition as head of the Island League, securing his hegemony o
ver the Cyclades. And he made strategic alliances with Macedon through diplomatic marriages to the daughters of two important families. When he died in the winter of 283–282, at the ripe old age of eighty-four, Ptolemy I had succeeded in creating a buffer zone against invasion that would last for another two and a half centuries.

  The eventual outcome of the conflict between Alexander’s successors was a threefold division of his realm. In the northwest, Macedon, his ancestral homeland, remained an independent kingdom. In the south, the Ptolemies ruled over Egypt, Cyrenaica, and Cyprus. The great central swath of territory, comprising southern Anatolia, the Near East, Mesopotamia, and Persia, had fallen to another of Alexander’s generals, Seleucus, and the Seleucid Kingdom emerged as a powerful rival to the Ptolemaic Empire. Territorial disputes between these three Hellenistic monarchies continued under Ptolemy II and III (285–246 and 246–221), erupting into the full-scale Syrian Wars between the Ptolemaic and Seleucid powers. These periodic conflicts provided opportunities for a wealthy and well-defended state such as Egypt to extend its power still further. With the aid of a large naval fleet, Ptolemy II added southern and western Anatolia to his conquests; his successor Ptolemy III won control of the Ionian coast, the Hellespont, and southern Thrace.