Battle of Pelusium (525 BCE)

In 525 BC the Persian king Cambyses II invaded Egypt and crushed the army of the pharaoh Psamtik III near Pelusium, a fortified city on the easternmost branch of the Nile Delta, about 30 kilometres south-east of today's Port Said. It was the first great clash between the Achaemenid Empire and Egypt. The victory opened the way to Memphis, ended the native Twenty-sixth Dynasty and made the Persian king pharaoh.

Most of what is known about the background comes from Greek writers, above all Herodotus, who explained the war through personal quarrels. In his telling, Cambyses asked the pharaoh Amasis II for a daughter in marriage; Amasis, unwilling to part with his own child, sent instead Nitetis, a daughter of his overthrown predecessor Apries, and Cambyses swore revenge when the trick came to light. Herodotus also names Phanes of Halicarnassus, a former adviser to Amasis who fled to Persia after a falling-out and helped the Persian king plan the campaign.

Whatever the personal motives, Persia already controlled the former lands of Babylonia, including northern Arabia. To cross the desert between Gaza and Pelusium, Cambyses secured the help of an Arabian king who was hostile to Amasis and who granted safe passage and even supplied troops. Gaza alone resisted and was taken after a long siege.

Amasis died about six months before the Persians arrived, leaving the defence to his son Psamtik III, who gathered the army and posted it on the eastern frontier. He had hoped for Greek help, but it melted away: the Cypriot cities went over to Persia, and Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, sent 40 warships to Cambyses. Herodotus relates a gruesome story that Psamtik, before the battle, had the sons of the defector Phanes killed and made his councillors drink their blood.

Little detail survives about the fighting itself. The Egyptians broke and fled, and their retreat turned into a rout that ended behind the walls of Memphis. The later Greek writer Ctesias put the Egyptian dead at 50,000 and the Persian losses at 7,000; these figures cannot be checked. When Herodotus later visited the field, bones still lay scattered there, and he claimed the Egyptian skulls were noticeably harder than the Persian ones.

A far more colourful story comes from Polyaenus, writing some 700 years later, who claimed that Cambyses' soldiers advanced holding cats and other animals sacred to the Egyptians, so that the defenders dared not shoot. Herodotus says nothing of this, and the tale is generally treated with suspicion.

According to Herodotus, Cambyses sent a herald by ship to Memphis to demand surrender, but the Egyptians attacked the vessel and killed everyone aboard. The city was then besieged and taken, and Herodotus says ten Egyptians were put to death for every one of the 200 men from Mytilene who had been killed. Psamtik was captured and at first allowed to live under guard, but later died by suicide after trying to raise a revolt. Herodotus's further stories of Cambyses' cruelty in Egypt, such as burning the mummy of Amasis, are rejected as false by the historian Pierre Briant.

The Libyans offered terms, and Egypt became a province of the Persian Empire. The Achaemenid kings were recognised as pharaohs and are counted as the Twenty-seventh Dynasty, the first Persian period of Egyptian history.

Our 500 BC map shows Egypt as part of the Achaemenid Empire, a generation after Cambyses' conquest.