Monuments of the Persian rule in Egypt are exceedingly scanty. The inscriptions of Pefteuauneit, priest of Neith at Sais, and from his position the native authority who was most likely to be consulted by Cambyses and Darius, tells of his relations with these two kings. For the following reigns Egyptian documents hardly exist, but some papyri written in Aramaic have been found at Elephantine and at Memphis. Those from the former locality show that a colony of Jews with a temple dedicated to Yahweh (Jehovah) had established themselves at that garrison and trading post (see [Assuan]). Herodotus visited Egypt in the reign of Artaxerxes, about 440 b.c. His description of Egypt, partly founded on Hecataeus, who had been there about fifty years earlier, is the chief source of information for the history of the Saite kings and for the manners of the times, but his statements prove to be far from correct when they can be checked by the scanty native evidence.
(F. Ll. G.)
Amyrtaeus (Amnertais) of Sais, perhaps a son of Pausiris and grandson of the earlier Amyrtaeus, revolted from Darius II. c. 405 b.c., and Egypt regained its independence for about sixty years. The next king Nefeurēt Dynasties XXVIII.-XXXI. (Nepherites I.) was a Mendesian and founded the XXIXth Dynasty. After Hakor and Nefeurēt II. the sovereignty passed to Dynasty XXX., the last native Egyptian line. Monuments of all these kings are known, and art flourished particularly under the Mendesian kings Nekhtharheb (Nectanebes or Nectanebus I.) and Nekhtnebf (Nectanebes II.). The former came to the throne when a Persian invasion was imminent, 378 b.c. Hakor had already formed a powerful army, largely composed of Greek mercenaries. This army Nekhtharheb entrusted to the Athenian Chabrias. The Persians, however, succeeded in causing his recall and in gaining the services of his fellow-countryman Iphicrates. The invading army consisted of 200,000 barbarians under Pharnabazus and 20,000 Greeks under Iphicrates. After the Egyptians had experienced a reverse, Iphicrates counselled an immediate advance on Memphis. His advice was not followed by Pharnabazus; the Egyptian king collected his forces and won a pitched battle near Mendes. Pharnabazus retreated and Egypt was free.
Nekhtharheb was succeeded by Tachos or Teos, whose short reign was occupied by a war with Persia, in which the king of Egypt secured the services of a body of Greek mercenaries under the Spartan king Agesilaus and a fleet under the Athenian general Chabrias. He entered Phoenicia with every prospect of success, but having offended Agesilaus he was dethroned in a military revolt which gave the crown to Nekhtnebf or Nectanebes II., the last native king of Egypt. At this moment a revolt broke out. The prince of Mendes almost succeeded in overthrowing the new king. Agesilaus defeated the rival pretender and left Nekhtnebf established on the throne. But the opportunity of a decisive blow against Persia was lost. The new king, Artaxerxes III. Ochus, determined to reduce Egypt. A first expedition was defeated by the Greek mercenaries of Nekhtnebf, but a second, commanded by Ochus himself, subdued Egypt with no further resistance than that of the Greek garrison of Pelusium. Nekhtnebf, instead of endeavouring to relieve them, retreated to Memphis and fled thence to Ethiopia, 340 (?) b.c. Thus miserably fell the monarchy of the Pharaohs, after an unexampled duration of 3000 years, or as some think far longer. More than 2000 years have since passed, and though Egypt has from time to time been independent, not one native prince has sat on the throne of the Pharaohs. “There shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt” (Ezek. xxx. 13) was prophesied in the days of Apries as the final state of the land.
Ochus treated his conquest barbarously. From this brief re-establishment of Persian dominion (counted by Manetho as Dynasty XXXI.) no document survives except one papyrus that appears to be dated in the reign of Darius III.
See J. H. Breasted, A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest (New York and London, 1905); A History of the Ancient Egyptians (New York and London, 1908); Ancient Records of Egypt: Historical Documents from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest, collected, edited and translated (5 vols., Chicago, 1906-1907); W. M. F. Petrie, A History of Egypt (from the earliest times to the XXXth Dynasty) (3 vols., London, 1899-1905); E. A. W. Budge, A History of Egypt, vols. i-vii. (London, 1902); G. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’orient (6th ed., 1904), The Dawn of Civilization, The Struggle of the Nations, The Passing of the Empires (London, 1904, &c.); P. E. Newberry and J. Garstang, A Short History of Ancient Egypt (London, 1904); G. Steindorff, Die Blütezeit des Pharaonenreiches (Dyn. XVIII.) (Bielefeld and Leipzig, 1900); H. Winckler, The Tell el Amarna Letters (Berlin, London and New York, 1896).
The Conquest by Alexander.—When, in 332 b.c., after the battle of Issus, Alexander entered Egypt, he was welcomed as a deliverer. The Persian governor had not forces enough to oppose him, and he nowhere experienced even the show of resistance. He visited Memphis, founded Alexandria, and went on pilgrimage to the oracle of Ammon (Oasis of Siwa). The god declared him to be his son, renewing thus an old Egyptian convention or belief; Olympias was supposed to have been in converse with Ammon, even as the mothers of Hatshepsut and Amenophis III. are represented in the inscriptions of the Theban temples to have received the divine essence. At this stage of his career the treasure and tribute of Egypt were of great importance to the Macedonian conqueror. He conciliated the inhabitants by the respect which he showed for their religion; he organized the government of the natives under two officers, who must have been already known to them (of these Petisis, an Egyptian, soon resigned his share into the charge of his colleague Doloaspis, who bears a Persian name.) But Alexander designed his Greek foundation of Alexandria to be the capital, and entrusted the taxation of Egypt and the control of its army and navy to Greeks. Early in 331 b.c. he was ready to depart, and led his forces away to Phoenicia. A granite gateway to the temple of Khnūm at Elephantine bears his name in hieroglyphic, and demotic documents are found dated in his reign.
The Ptolemaic Period.—On the division of Alexander’s dominions in 323 b.c., Egypt fell to Ptolemy the son of Lagus, the founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty (see [Ptolemies]). Under these rulers the rich kingdom was heavily taxed to supply the sinews of war and to support every kind of lavish expenditure. Officials, and the higher ones were nearly all Greeks, were legion, but the whole system was so judiciously worked that there was little discontent amongst the patient peasantry. During the reign of Philadelphus the land gained from the bed of the lake of Moeris was assigned to veteran soldiers; the great armies of the Ptolemies were rewarded or supported by grants of farm lands, and men of Macedonian, Greek and Hellenistic extraction were planted in colonies and garrisons or settled themselves in the villages throughout the country. Upper Egypt, farthest from the centre of government, was probably least affected by the new influences, though the first Ptolemy established the Greek colony of Ptolemais to be its capital. Intermarriages, however, gradually had their effect; after the revolt of the natives in the reign of Ptolemy V., we find the Greek and Egyptian elements closely intermingled. Ptolemy I. had established the cult of the Memphite Serapis in a Graeco-Egyptian form, affording a common ground for native and Hellenistic worshippers. The greater number of the temples to the native deities in Upper Egypt and in Nubia (to 50 m. south of the Cataract, within the Dodecaschoenus) were built under the Ptolemies. No serious effort was made to extend the Ptolemaic rule into Ethiopia, and Ergamenes, the Hellenizing king of Ethiopia, was evidently in alliance with Philopator; in the next reign two native kings, probably supported by Ethiopia, reigned in succession at Thebes. That famous city lost all except its religious importance under the Ptolemies; after the “destruction” or dismantling by Lathyrus it formed only a series of villages. The population of Egypt in the time of Ptolemy I. is put at 7,000,000 by Diodorus, who also says that it was greater then than it ever was before; at the end of the dynasty, in his own day, it was not much less though somewhat diminished. Civil wars and revolts must have greatly injured both Upper and Lower Egypt. It is remarkable that, while the building and decoration of temples continued in the reigns of Ptolemy Auletes and the later Ptolemies and Cleopatra, papyri of those times whether Greek or Egyptian are scarcely to be found.
The Roman Period.—In 30 b.c. Augustus took Egypt as the prize of conquest. He treated it as a part of his personal domain, free from any interference by the senate. In the main lines the Ptolemaic organization was preserved, but Romans were gradually introduced into the highest offices. On Egypt Rome depended for its supplies of corn; entrenched there, a revolting general would be difficult to attack, and by simply holding back the grain ships could threaten Rome with starvation. No senator therefore was permitted to take office or even to set foot in the country without the emperor’s special leave, and by way of precaution the highest position, that of prefect, was filled by a Roman of equestrian rank only. As the representative of the emperor, this officer assumed the place occupied by the king under the old order, except that his power was limited by the right of appeal to Caesar. The first prefect, Cornelius Gallus, tamed the natives of Upper Egypt to the new yoke by force of arms, and meeting ambassadors from Ethiopia at Philae, established a nominal protectorate of Rome over the frontier district, which had been abandoned by the later Ptolemies. The third prefect, Gaius Petronius, cleared the neglected canals for irrigation; he also repelled an invasion of the Ethiopians and pursued them far up the Nile, finally storming the capital of Napata. But no attempt was made to hold Ethiopia. In succeeding reigns much trouble was caused by jealousies and quarrels between the Greeks and the Jews, to whom Augustus had granted privileges as valuable as those accorded to the Greeks. Aiming at the spice trade, Aelius Gallus, the second prefect of Egypt under Augustus, had made an unsuccessful expedition to conquer Arabia Felix; the valuable Indian trade, however, was secured by Claudius for Egypt at the expense of Arabia, and the Red Sea routes were improved. Nero’s reign especially marks the commencement of an era of prosperity which lasted about a century. Under Vespasian the Jewish temple at Leontopolis in the Delta, which Onias had founded in the reign of Ptolemy Philometor, was closed; worse still, a great Jewish revolt and massacre of the Greeks in the reign of Trajan resulted, after a stubborn conflict of many months with the Roman army under Marcius Livianus Turbo, in the virtual extermination of the Jews in Alexandria and the loss of all their privileges. Hadrian, who twice visited Egypt (a.d. 130, 134), founded Antinoë in memory of his drowned favourite. From this reign onwards buildings in the Graeco-Roman style were erected throughout the country. A new Sothic cycle began in a.d. 139. Under Marcus Aurelius a revolt of the Bucolic or native troops recruited for home service was taken up by the whole of the native population and was suppressed only after several years of fighting. The Bucolic war caused infinite damage to the agriculture of the country and marks the beginning of its rapid decline under a burdensome taxation. The province of Africa was now of equal importance with Egypt for the grain supply of the capital. Avidius Cassius, who led the Roman forces in the war, usurped the purple, and was acknowledged by the armies of Syria and Egypt. On the approach of Marcus Aurelius, the adherents of Cassius slew him, and the clemency of the emperor restored peace. After the downfall of the house of the Antonines, Pescennius Niger, who commanded the forces in Egypt, was proclaimed emperor on the death of Pertinax (a.d. 193). Severus overthrew his rival (a.d. 194) and, the revolt having been a military one, did not punish the province; in 202 he gave a constitution to Alexandria and the nome capitals. In his reign the Christians of Egypt suffered the first of their many persecutions. When Christianity was planted in the country we do not know, but it must very early have gained adherents among the Christianity. learned Jews of Alexandria, whose school of thought was in some respects ready to welcome it. From them it rapidly passed to the Greeks. Ultimately the new religion spread to the Egyptians; their own creed was worn out, and they found in Christianity a doctrine of the future life for which their old belief had made them not unready; while the social teaching of Christianity came with special fitness to a subject race. The history of the Coptic Version has yet to be written. It presents some features of great antiquity, and, unlike all others, has the truly popular character of being written in the three dialects of the language. Side by side there grew up an Alexandrian church, philosophic, disputative, ambitious, the very centre of Christian learning, and an Egyptian church, ascetic, contemplative, mystical. The two at length influenced one another; still we can generally trace the philosophic teachers to a Greek origin, the mystics to an Egyptian.
Caracalla, in revenge for an affront, massacred all the men capable of bearing arms in Alexandria. His granting of the Roman citizenship to all Egyptians in common with the other provincials was only to extort more taxes. Under Decius, a.d. 250, the Christians again suffered from persecution. When the empire broke up in the weak reign of Gallienus, the prefect Aemilianus, who took the surname Alexander or Alexandrinus, was made emperor by the troops at Alexandria, but was conquered by the forces of Gallienus. In his brief reign of only a few months he had driven back an invasion of the Blemmyes. This predatory tribe, issuing from Nubia, was long to be the terror of Upper Egypt. Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, after an unsuccessful invasion, on a second attempt conquered Egypt, which she added to her empire, but lost it when Aurelian made war upon her (a.d. 272). The province was, however, unsettled, and the conquest of Palmyra was followed in the same year by the suppression of a revolt in Egypt (a.d. 273). Probus, who had governed Egypt for Aurelian and Tacitus, was subsequently chosen by the troops to succeed Tacitus, and is the first governor of this province who obtained the whole of the empire. He expelled the Blemmyes, who were dominating the whole of the Thebaid. Diocletian invited the Nobatae to settle in the Dodecaschoenus as a barrier against their incursions, and subsidized both Blemmyes and Nobatae. The country, however, was still disturbed, and in a.d. 296 a formidable revolt broke out, led by Achilleus, who as emperor took the name Domitius Domitianus. Diocletian, finding his troops unable to determine the struggle, came to Egypt, captured Alexandria and put his rival to death (296). He then reorganized the whole province, and the well-known “Pompey’s Pillar” was set up by the grateful and repentant Alexandrians to commemorate his gift to them of part of the corn tribute.