Piye

Piye, whose name has also been read as Piankhi, was a king of Kush in Nubia, in what is now Sudan, who in the eighth century BC marched north and forced the rival rulers of a divided Egypt to submit to him. Regarded as the founder of Egypt's Twenty-fifth Dynasty, the line of Nubian pharaohs, he ruled from Napata, far up the Nile, during roughly 744 to 714 BC, though modern estimates of his dates differ by a few years. Most of what is known about his conquest comes from his own great victory inscription.

Piye was a son of the Kushite king Kashta, who had already extended Nubian influence into southern Egypt, and probably of a queen named Pebatjma. Like other Kushite kings he was a devoted worshipper of the god Amun. He rebuilt and enlarged the great temple of Amun at Jebel Barkal, near Napata, originally founded by the Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose III, bringing in sculptors and masons from Egypt. He installed his sister Amenirdis I as God's Wife of Amun at Thebes, giving the dynasty a firm hold on Upper Egypt. He used the throne names Usimare and Sneferre.

Egypt at this time was split among local kings and chiefs, especially in the Nile Delta, a period historians call the Third Intermediate Period. Tefnakht of Sais, a ruler of Libyan descent in the western Delta, built a coalition of Delta princes, won over Nimlot of Hermopolis, nominally Piye's ally, and advanced south to besiege Herakleopolis. Its king, Peftjauawybast, and the Nubian officers stationed nearby called on Piye to intervene.

According to the stele, Piye first sent his commanders north with orders to purify themselves before battle, presenting the war as a sacred duty to Amun. Angered when Nimlot of Hermopolis slipped away, he then led the army himself in his twentieth regnal year, stopping at Thebes to take part in the Opet festival. His forces relieved Herakleopolis, took Hermopolis after a siege of about five months, and stormed Memphis after hard fighting. The Delta kings, including Osorkon IV of Tanis and Iuput II of Leontopolis, came to submit, and the stele shows them kneeling before him. Tefnakht, who had fled to an island in the Delta, sent a letter of surrender but did not come in person. The inscription portrays Piye as pious, merciful and a lover of horses.

Piye recorded the campaign on a granite stele, about six feet high, set up at Jebel Barkal in his twenty-first year. Found in 1862 and now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, it is written in classical Middle Egyptian and designed to present a Nubian king as Egypt's rightful, divinely chosen ruler. As royal propaganda, its account of events and of Piye's mercy reflects his own point of view.

After the campaign Piye sailed home to Napata and, as far as is known, never returned to Egypt. His real authority reached only from Thebes to Herakleopolis, and the Delta princes soon went their own way; it was left to his successor Shebitku to defeat Tefnakht's successor at Sais. Piye's length of reign is debated: dated documents run to at least his year 24, and reliefs at Jebel Barkal show a jubilee usually held in a king's thirtieth year; Kenneth Kitchen has proposed a reign of at least 31 years. He was buried in a pyramid tomb at el-Kurru, near Jebel Barkal, with four of his favourite horses buried nearby. His son Taharqa later came to the throne after Piye's brother Shabaka and Shebitku.

Our 700 BCE map shows the period of Kushite rule over Egypt that his conquest began; the 1000 BCE map shows the divided Third Intermediate Period of Egypt that preceded it.