Assyrian conquest of Egypt

Over roughly a decade in the 670s and 660s BC, the kings of the Neo-Assyrian Empire fought their way into Egypt, drove out the Kushite pharaohs who ruled it, and turned the country into a vassal territory. The campaigns of Esarhaddon and his son Ashurbanipal brought Assyria to its greatest size and ended with the sack of Thebes in 663 BC. Assyrian control proved short-lived, but the war cleared the way for a new native Egyptian dynasty.

At the start of the 7th century BC Egypt was ruled by the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, kings from the Kingdom of Kush in Nubia. The pharaoh Taharqa encouraged unrest among Assyria's subjects in the Levant, as his predecessors had done. Around 701 BC, Judah and several Phoenician and Philistine cities allied with Egypt against Assyria, and the Assyrian king Sennacherib answered by crushing the rebel cities and pushing the Egyptians out of the region.

Sennacherib's son Esarhaddon, who came to the throne in 681 BC, set out to remove the Egyptian threat at its source. An early expedition took him as far as the Brook of Egypt. An invasion in the mid-670s went badly: Babylonian records describe an outright Egyptian victory, and the exhausted Assyrian army, having marched too fast, was apparently beaten near Ashkelon. Esarhaddon withdrew to Nineveh.

In 671 BC he returned with a much larger army and advanced more carefully. After defeating the Egyptians in the field, he captured and plundered Memphis. Taharqa escaped south, but his wife, his son and much of his court were carried off to Assyria as hostages, along with large numbers of other Egyptians. Esarhaddon placed governors loyal to him over the north and recognised Necho I as king at Sais. A victory stele set up afterwards shows Taharqa's young son kneeling in bonds.

The settlement did not last. By 669 BC Taharqa had retaken Memphis and the Delta, and the Assyrian appointees fled. Esarhaddon set out on another campaign but fell ill and died on the way.

His successor Ashurbanipal defeated Taharqa in 667 BC and marched as far as Thebes, punishing cities that had rebelled. He confirmed Necho I as his vassal and also relied on Necho's son Psamtik I, who had been educated at Nineveh. Taharqa died in 664 BC.

His successor Tantamani then marched down the Nile from Nubia, reoccupied Memphis and killed Necho. Ashurbanipal returned in force in 663 BC and, together with Psamtik's troops, defeated Tantamani near Memphis. The Assyrians pursued him to Thebes, which they took and looted. Ashurbanipal's annals boast of enormous booty, including two obelisks plated with electrum, and the city's fall is echoed in the Book of Nahum. Archaeologists, however, have found little physical sign of destruction at Thebes, which suggests the scale may have been exaggerated.

The reconquest ended Kushite rule over Egypt, although Tantamani was still acknowledged in the south until 656 BC, when Psamtik's fleet took control of Thebes peacefully and reunited the country. Psamtik founded the Twenty-sixth Dynasty and, around 655 BC, while Assyria was distracted by civil war, quietly ended his dependence, hiring Carian and Greek mercenaries. Egypt nonetheless stayed on friendly terms with Assyria and later sent forces to help it against Babylonia and the Medes, though these could not prevent Assyria's final collapse in 609 BC.

Our 700 BCE map shows the Assyrian empire and Egypt in the years just before the invasions, and the Third Intermediate Period of Egypt that preceded the conquest. For the land today, see Egypt.