Episode 16. The Flow of Power: Foreign Dominance and the Shifting Sands of Egyptian Supremacy

Uncover the secrets of a bygone era as we navigate the rise and subsequent eclipse of the Nubian Empire, a civilization that emerged from Egypt's weakened grasp to forge its own path of dominance. King Kashta and his descendants rose to the challenge, leaving an indelible mark on history by claiming the Egyptian throne and birthing the 25th dynasty. The tale takes a turn with the entrance of Libyan generals who, despite clinging to Egyptian traditions, could not stave off the eventual fragmentation of power, leaving a priestly class to govern the south.

Venture into the ancient world's power plays and political gambits in the episode's revealing second chapter, where we dissect the ambitious endeavors of Necho II, including his remarkable canal project. This engineering feat not only linked the Nile to the Red Sea but also redefined the strategic significance of the region. The narrative weaves through Assyrian conquests, shifting loyalties, and Egypt's fluctuating independence, culminating in a complex web of ancient Near Eastern geopolitics that set the stage for the era's most monumental shifts.

In our final act, we trace the Persian shadow that crept over Egypt, sparking an economic transformation through the introduction of coinage—an innovation that reshaped trade and wealth in the ancient landscape. Darius I's rule heralded advancements in engineering and fiscal systems, amidst the backdrop of rebellion and pressure from Greek city-states. Join me, Mike D, as we sift through the sands of time to explore these epochal shifts, painting a rich tapestry of the relentless cycle of history that shapes our current world.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome podcast listener. I am Mike D and this is the History of Money, banking and Trade podcast. My goal is to expand your knowledge of the history and evolution of trade, along with money, banking and credit, from ancient civilizations all the way to the present Now. I truly hope you find these episodes to be informative and entertaining and, like Dan Conlon likes to say, I'm not a historian, but I am a fan of history.

Speaker 1: 0:32

When we last left off, egypt was sliding into yet another dark age. Much of that may have been driven by outside forces that they really didn't have any control over, such as climate disruptions caused by a volcano eruption, which ultimately probably led to the Nile running low, and then that resulted in crop yields diminishing, which triggered inflation. The pharaohs were weakening and Egypt was losing clout amongst the people in the Levant and beyond. To the south of Egypt, nubia really took notice of this and they really seemed to notice that, hey, egypt's running into some problems here. So while Egypt was falling apart, the Nubians were getting stronger. Now the people in Nubia didn't really rely on the Nile the same way the Egyptians did, so low inundations probably wouldn't have been as catastrophic to them as it was to their neighbors. In the same way the Egyptians did, so low inundations probably wouldn't have been as catastrophic to them as it was to their neighbors in the north, the Egyptians. However, even though they may not have relied on the Nile the same way the Egyptians did, they still picked up quite a few Egyptian ideas, and their cultural identity evolved around to be very similar to that of Egyptians. Now, a lot of that was probably due to Egypt's hegemony, as they were constantly pushing deeper and deeper into Nubia, but either way, out of the traditional Nubian culture came the kingdom of Kush, and by the end of the 20th dynasty, it was a force to be reckoned with.

Speaker 1: 2:05

Now, in all reality, what happened was you have Egyptian hegemony, and the people to the south in Nubia were essentially just picking up cultural norms that the Egyptians had established over the years, and those cultural norms were solely being adopted by the people of Nubia, or you could call it the Kingdom of Kush, however you want to describe them, but either way, there was this constant evolution that was happening to the South, and what they essentially were doing was they were starting to mirror the Egyptian religious belief systems and then their customs. In fact, the king Kashta, his daughter, was appointed as the god's wife of Amun, who was the highest ranking priestess of the cult of Amun. And as a reminder, amun, god of the air, was one of the eight primordial Egyptian deities. Amun's role evolved over the centuries. Now, during the kingdoms of the Middle Kingdom, he became the king of the deities and in the New Kingdom he became the nationally worshipped god. He eventually merged with Ra, the ancient sun god, to become Amun-Ra Kashta, who is the king of the Kushite empire now.

Speaker 1: 3:27

He began to plot his moves to further expand his influence and in a weird kind of way, his life story kind of reminds me of the Macedonians under their first great king, who was King Philip. And you'll see, like, how King Philip had really great king, who was King Philip, and you'll see how King Philip had really established this powerful empire that people kind of ignored at first because they were these barbarians in the north that they weren't even Greek. They were just these barbarians. We don't have any worries about them. So what I'm getting at is the Nubian King Kashta had a similar arc to that of King Philip of the Macedonians and, to make things even more interesting, the Kushite power was strengthened even further under the reign of Kashta's son, pyrrha, sounds very similar to the Macedonians, where Philip dies and his son, alexander the Great, takes over. But anyway, enough of the comparisons between the Macedonians and the Kushites.

Speaker 1: 4:32

Now, as I said previously, the Kushite belief system was essentially mirroring the belief system of Egypt. The belief system of Egypt, and, to take this a step further, the new king of Kush believed that he was chosen by the chief god, amun, to rectify Egypt's problems and their corruption. Because, by this time, egypt was once again split between two kingdoms, the lower and upper kingdoms, along with some other little minor kingdoms that had grown in power as well. So, essentially, egypt was once again fragmented and it wasn't unified under one, pharaoh and the Kushite king. Well, he can clearly see this, because he was able to successfully campaign to the north and capture Memphis. With Memphis securely in his grasp, pyre soon received tributes from the remaining cities across Egypt and the submission of a few other local warlords. After his successful conquer, pyre left Egypt and sailed back down to the Nile, back to Nubia, and he just never returned. He started Egypt's 25th dynasty. However, the control of Egypt was left in the hands of his vassals, while he remained on the throne of Kush, ruling from his own booming empire.

Speaker 1: 5:57

Prosperity lasted for a few centuries, but the society started to break down again. The south was ruled by priests and the north was in chaos. Around 945 BCE, a group of generals from the present day of Libya took advantage of the Egyptian chaos and they came in to seize power for themselves. The Libyans, just like the Kushites, didn't really want to come in and reshape Egypt, but instead they tried to look and use the already established Egyptian traditions to gain acceptance of the people, and then they would offer items to the Egyptians which they coveted, such as ostrich feathers and eggs, amongst other things. However, in reality it was just a ruse to plunder Egypt, and in the end they just could not unify the country, because Egypt was essentially split between two countries and the Libyans were basically controlling the north, but the south was ruled by a class of priests. South was ruled by a class of priests.

Speaker 1: 7:11

Around 750 BCE, the Kushites from Nubia were able to overtake the Libyans and conquer Egypt for themselves, so now they had the whole entire country in their own hands. And the thing about the Nubians was they had been conquered by Egypt for so long that they essentially thoroughly adapted to Egyptian culture, like I was mentioning previously, including the Egyptian gods. So in reality, what happened was when they conquered Egypt, they were trying to bring back the country to its former glory and by doing so they were able to roll back some of the Libyan customs and they would have reinstituted some classical Egyptian customs, despite the fact that they weren't really Egyptian. But in fact they were the black Africans who had adapted to Egyptian culture. Now, on a side note, it's not really said, but I kind of think that maybe early Egypt was founded by black Africans. They don't really say that per se, but they do say that when Egypt was unified early on in its history, they were darker skinned people from the south. So it's quite possible that Egypt started out as a black African ruled country. So the idea that these black Africans from modern day Sudan in the kingdom of Kush, well, it's quite possible that really what happened was they took Egypt back to its early days of dynasty zero. But anyway, I digress. The fact is is the Nubians were also great traders and what they were able to do was they were able to open up trade with the Greeks from Egypt.

Speaker 1: 8:52

Now, the pharaoh Bakhenranov, who ruled from around 720 to 715 BCE, had issued a decree which would have abolished any debt bondage, which would have abolished any debt bondage, and also he would have annulled any outstanding liabilities for any soldier. Because he would have looked at it from a very practical standpoint, because in his eyes he was like, well, this is kind of crazy, why would I have a much needed soldier dragged off the battlefield or from some important guard duty? And this would have left some kind of gap in the defense of Egypt. So you know he could have been doing it for patriotic reasons right, we love our soldiers, and you know we thank our troops and we're going to make sure that we take care of our soldiers, and blah, blah, blah blah.

Speaker 1: 9:46

But in reality he took it from probably more of a practical standpoint and said hey, listen, this is a defense issue and we can't have certain soldiers that are sent to prison because they have some kind of outstanding debt. It just wouldn't be safe and it wouldn't make a lot of sense for the defense of our Egyptian country. So, in other words, the pharaoh believed it was better for the soldiers to be out there fighting for the country rather than being sent to jail and riding away and still defaulting on their debts anyway. Why do that Makes no sense, and this is a very practical decision that the pharaoh would have made. Now I could see a situation where the lending institution or the lender itself would have been upset by this, but it wouldn't have got your money back if the person's in jail. So why not let them work and eventually pay you back, hopefully, and at the same time, let's keep our country safe. And on a side note now, this may actually be one of the first written mentions of debtor's prison in written history, and in the end, this reminds me a lot of the clean slate degrees that were established in Mesopotamia a few thousand years prior to this Mesopotamia, a few thousand years prior to this, and in reality, a clean slate degree wouldn't be established until the Greeks take over Egypt. So this wasn't really a pure clean slate degree that one would think of, as this was just really for the troops, it wasn't for the ordinary Egyptian citizen.

Speaker 1: 11:22

So while the Nubians were controlling Egypt, it was also during this time period that, if they would have looked a little northeast, they would have noticed that the Assyrians were completely dominating the Mesopotamian region and beyond, and in fact they set their eyes right on Egypt as well, and in fact, in 673 BCE, the Assyrian army had expanded all the way into Egypt. Unlike the Libyans and the Nubians, the Assyrians made it pretty darn clear that they had absolutely no desire to maintain or adopt any Egyptian culture whatsoever. They were there as strictly conquerors looking to plunder and thoroughly dominate the Egyptians. The Libyans and Anubians adopted many of the Egyptian religious cultural norms, but the Assyrians were not about to do that, and they ended up destroying many of the sacred religious sites that were established for thousands of years. The problems at home caused the Assyrians to retreat back to Assyria, but they still left vassals to rule Egypt, and it didn't take long for Egypt to overthrow their Assyrian overlords.

Speaker 1: 12:39

Egypt was reborn again. A renaissance in Egyptian culture happened again. However. Born again, a renaissance in Egyptian culture happened again. However, this time they took mummification a step further, as the Egyptian priests were starting to mummify animals, including dogs, cats, crocodiles and even birds. Nevertheless, the most important mummified animal was the Apis bull, which was a deity in the eyes of many of the Egyptians, as it was being sacrificed and being reborn. Worship of the Apis bull had been around for a long time, as it was first known around the first dynasty in Memphis. Now what they believed was after death, it would become Osiris Apis, as Osiris was the god of the afterlife. When a bull dies, it is mummified, and then the living bull is worshipped, and then the living bull dies and that is mummified while the living bull is worshipped, and so on and so on and so on. This mummified Apis bull would have been buried in elaborate tombs known as the Serapium of Saqqara. Death was becoming a booming business again in Egypt.

Speaker 1: 13:52

Also, while the debt industry was taking off again, silver used as payments was becoming more and more mainstream, as much of the silver was flowing from the treasury of Harasophis and the treasury in Thebes and, after the Persian conquest, the treasury of Ta in Memphis. So in reality, what we start to see is major influences were coming in from the east as the use of silver was becoming more and more of a medium of exchange. The use of silver was becoming more and more of a medium of exchange and let's not forget, the idea of using silver as a medium of exchange had been taking place in Mesopotamia for well over a thousand years prior to this point. So what we have is Egypt has now been evolving so much that it went from a grain as being the more popular use of money to using silver.

Speaker 1: 14:48

By the time we get to the period known as the late Egyptian period, which would have started around 664 BCE, egypt was at a point where it was no longer controlled by native Egyptians who were claiming the throne. So for the past few hundred years or so, various foreign kings had successfully invaded Egypt in one way or another and claimed the throne of Egypt for themselves, whether it was the Libyans or it was the Kushites. In fact it was the Kushite pharaoh named Shabitku who came into direct conflict with the Assyrians because Egypt had provided sanctuary for rebels from Judah who were rebelling against the Assyrians and their king, esarhaddon. Now you might recall from my Assyrian episodes that Esarhaddon had come to the throne because his father, sennacherib, was murdered by his two sons. And by this time Assyria was clearly the dominant player in the Near East and they kind of viewed Egypt as a nuisance. But luckily for Egypt it was far enough away where they probably felt safe from a full-on invasion, or at least a prolonged occupation, by the hands of the Assyrians. Now Sennacherib tried to invade Egypt prior and had some sort of success, but nothing really lasted long, but nothing really lasted long.

Speaker 1: 16:27

Esarhaddon was very well educated and it appears that he was able to study and grasp his father's mistakes during his previous campaigns. This time, esarhaddon would march his army in at a much slower pace to make sure he doesn't overextend his supply lines. Once inside Egypt, he was able to sack Memphis and he was able to capture the royal family, so by this time he basically had control of Egypt. But he realized he couldn't stay in Egypt permanently because he had to get back to Mesopotamia. So instead what he did was he just installed a puppet ruler on the throne by the name of Necho I. Now, as soon as Esarhaddon had left the kingdom, a revolt basically happened as soon as he was gone. As such, esarhaddon was making his way back to Egypt, but he died suddenly on his way. His son, ashurbanipal, basically just picked up where his father had left off and made his way down into Memphis and clashed with the Kushite pharaoh. But he managed to escape and he fled to Thebes.

Speaker 1: 17:35

While pursuing the pharaoh, the Assyrians discovered that a few of the empire's appointed vassals who ruled over lower Egypt, including Nacho I, were plotting to betray him. Some of the people that were part of the plot were executed basically on the spot, and some were deported back to Assyria, and to Nineveh in particular, but the surprising thing for me was the fact that Nacho I was pardoned by Ashurbanipal and he was reinstated as the pharaoh of Egypt. Now, this is something I would not expect from a king of Assyria, as this was very much unlike most of the previous Assyrian kings. So that kind of leads me to believe that maybe there's more to the story than we know. Maybe there was something that was going on behind the scenes, because this does not sound like something that an Assyrian king would ever do.

Speaker 1: 18:30

And a few years later, there was a new Kushite king that was sitting on the Kushite kingdom and he had designs on getting back the Egyptian throne and, as such, he slowly started pushing north, and he made it all the way to Memphis, where he was able to kill Nacho I Now, this absolutely infuriated Ashurbanipal and, as such, he sent his army to march all the way down to Thebes and sack the city and retake it. This time he didn't take any mercy and he basically did what the Assyrians were known for, and that was he was going to deport all the local citizens to other regions of the empire and then take the other deportees and fill them in to Thebes. In the meantime, it was basically a free-for-all for the Assyrians, as they were able to plunder the kingdom entirely and take all its gold. In addition, the Assyrians brought back two large obelisks to Assyria because, like I said, egypt was known for building their massive obelisks. The Assyrians then put Samtik I, who was the son of Netro I, on the throne. The new Egyptian pharaoh was able to form an alliance with the king of Lydia, which was in Anatolia and would become a very wealthy kingdom that we will get to at a later date. Samtik I was able to actually revive some of the old customs of the kingdom, including its art and religion. Also, samtik was able to gain even more autonomy from Assyria because Assyria was having major issues back home and therefore Egypt was able to start to break away from their Assyrian overlords.

Speaker 1: 20:20

Now, egypt wanted to completely break away from the Assyrians, and the Assyrians were currently having issues with their sister culture and the Babylonians. In fact, there was essentially an outright war at this time. However, I find it very interesting in that Egypt could have supported the Babylonians because, well, they weren't the ones that were attacking Egypt all those years, or at the very least they could have remained neutral. But instead Samtik had actually sent reinforcements to Assyria to help them repel the Babylonians. In hindsight this was an absolutely terrible decision, but it could have been made from the fact that Assyria had a long history of being a dominant player in the region. So maybe Samtik thought that this would kind of bring him some favor back home, because he presumed that the Assyrians were eventually going to win the war anyway.

Speaker 1: 21:20

Soon enough, samtik's son, nacho II, would be the pharaoh of Egypt. One of his early ideas was he wanted to commission Phoenician mariners to circumnavigate Africa. He obviously chose the Phoenicians because they were by far the world's greatest sailors at that point. In fact, their sailing abilities were so important that they were generally treated much better by the Assyrians than just about any other group of people that they had conquered. And I'm guessing this is due to the fact that the Phoenicians were vital to facilitating trade for whoever controlled them. So they didn't want to kill the golden goose. Instead they wanted to let them thrive and bring a lot of wealth and prosperity to the kingdom, because they essentially thoroughly dominated long distance trade at this point Arabian Gulf into the Indian Ocean, where they would find fertile patches of soil on the African coast, and they would plant their crops and then wait until the next year's harvest to go retrieve the crops. And then they would be sailed out west through the Pillars of Hercules, which was a strip of sea that would have separated Africa from Spain, and then they would have sold their crops on the market. In fact, according to Herodotus, the Phoenicians were able to sail down the coast of Africa and around it, which means they would have sailed around Africa and southern Cape nearly 2,000 years before the great Portuguese sailor, vasco da Gama.

Speaker 1: 23:01

Also, necho II wanted to find ways to make trade more efficient from the Nile to the Red Sea. So what he did is he came up with this great idea where he would connect the two by commissioning a canal to be built. This canal went by a few names, such as Canal of the Pharaohs or the Ancient Suez Canal. Now, this was a massive infrastructure project which needed to be a deep water canal, and it had to be nearly 70 miles, or 112 kilometers long. Now this idea sounds wonderful and it makes a lot of sense, but there are a lot of issues with this. First of all, it would have been extremely expensive to complete and in reality there probably wasn't any kingdom at the time that could have afforded to pay for this without sending the country into severe, out-of-control debt. I mean, even in modern times this would have been a huge project and we have modern machinery, whereas the ancient Egyptians would have relied purely on muscle power.

Speaker 1: 24:15

Herodotus recorded that Necho's attempt resulted in the deaths of more than 120,000 individuals who were conscripted to perform the work. It also didn't help the fact that when the Nile flooded, it would have sent an extreme amount of sediment and deposited into the canal. So every year there would have to be a massive maintenance project just to keep it from silting up all the way. But that might not even be the worst part, because when the Nile was low its level would have fallen below the Red Sea and that means that seawater would have rushed into the canal and went directly into the Nile, which means the people would have essentially been unable to drink from the Nile because of the excessive salt water, have essentially been unable to drink from the Nile because of the excessive salt water. And, probably just as bad, they couldn't use the Nile to irrigate their crops anymore, because now they would have been sowing salt into the land. So essentially, what I'm saying is that when the Nile was low, its level would have fallen so low that the Red Sea would have allowed the seawater to flow directly into the river and it would have poisoned the drinking water and irrigation sources. So you often hear of stories of ancient kings bragging about how, when they conquered their enemies, they sold salt into the land as a punishment, but this canal may have inadvertently done that to themselves. Lastly, another major problem with this canal was Egypt ran the real risk that, after all this building and all this expenses and all this maintenance, the canal could have been used by their enemies as a means to surround Egypt. Either he or an advisor had come to the realization of the unintended consequences of completing the canal, in addition to draining the treasury. So fast forward a few years and Nacho obviously didn't get it completed, and this canal would have been revitalized and either re-dug or possibly completed by Darius, the Great of the Achaemenid Persian Empire.

Speaker 1: 26:27

Now, outside of this canal, the Red Sea also had a problem with regards to its wind direction for trade. Now, if you recall from the first few episodes of this Egyptian series, you might remember that I said that the great thing about the Nile was it flowed from the south to the north. So one can easily hop on the Nile and just use the stream as a natural propellant. And if you wanted to go from the north to the south, you could use the wind, because the wind would have been blown in that direction. So you just set the sails up and you go south, or you put the sails down and you go north. So that's the issue with the Red Sea was the wind would have blown from the north to the south, so going north would have presented severe challenges with the stiff headwinds. In addition, the ships had to worry about the deadly shoals, which means the sea would become very shallow, and therefore you ran the risk of ripping out the bottom of your ship and sinking due to the jagged objects near the surface. And on top of that, pirates were essentially patrolling the whole entire coast of the Red Sea around this time. So, in other words, you somehow were able to navigate against the headwinds and avoid running your ship into the shoals, but just as you feel safe, pirates will overrun your ship and take everything you have. And if you're lucky, you were able to talk about it later because you lived so after the idea of the canal was scrapped.

Speaker 1: 28:02

So after the idea of the canal was scrapped, necho had a major problem because he was caught in the middle of the Babylonian-Assyrian war and they supported the wrong side. The Egyptians had sent troops to the Levant where they would have faced off against Judah's forces, who had the backing of the Babylonians, the Medes, the Persians and the Scythians. So in reality, the way I kind of look at it was this war was essentially a very much weakened Assyrian military and Egypt versus everybody else. Now the Egyptians did well. At first they were able to make it past Judah and were able to link up with the Assyrians, but by then it was probably too late, as the Assyrians were essentially decimated by then. So now that means that the Egyptians were going to have to face off against the Babylonians and their king, nebuchadnezzar II. By the time this battle happened in northern Syria, it was just basically Egypt by itself and Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians who were able to defeat Egypt and what was left of the Assyrians. Now the end result was the Egyptians were basically expelled from Syria and therefore they had lost any trade networks that were in the region.

Speaker 1: 29:29

But, shockingly, netro II was able to maintain the throne of Egypt and Egypt actually thrived during his rule, and in fact, that's probably why he actually came up with the idea of building that canal connecting the Nile to the Red Sea, because trade was actually thriving, despite the fact that he had participated in a losing war. But either way, he was able to facilitate trade between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean. In addition, natcho II was also able to recruit a number of Ionian Greeks and was able to build a powerful navy along with a bigger trade network. Now, this is an interesting fact because the Egyptians had never really been known for their seafaring abilities or trade for that matter, as they typically just stuck to the Nile. So bringing the Ionian Greeks on board really opened up Egypt's potential hegemony and, more importantly, their long-distance trade.

Speaker 1: 30:32

Now, nacho II, he died sometime in 595 BCE and the throne was passed on to his son, samtic II. And then the throne was passed on to his son, apres. Now, apres, he had sent troops to Jerusalem hoping to assist the city in rebelling Nebuchadnezzar II and the Babylonians. After an 18-month siege, jerusalem fell and this would have resulted in the capture of the Jews, and the nobles were sent into captivity and sent to Babylon, while a lot of other ones would have managed to escape and migrated to Egypt. Civil war would have broken out between the native soldiers and the foreign mercenaries, which would have led to a coup, and the general Amhos II was proclaimed the Egyptian king by the troops. This seemed to have scared Apres, or at least scarred him or something, because he took a chance and he fled to Babylon to seek their support. He returned to Egypt in 567 BCE with an army of Babylonians to reclaim the throne. However, his advances failed. Aprius was killed in battle and the throne was left to the former general Amos II, who now didn't have the threat of the former pharaoh to reclaim the throne, so he was in full control.

Speaker 1: 31:59

Amos II built and restored numerous temples across Egypt. He also oversaw Egypt's agricultural growth and cultivated a close trade relationship with the Greek city-states, and even fended off an invasion by the Babylonians in 567, which I just mentioned. But in the end, it wasn't the Babylonians he had to worry about. It was in fact the Persians that were the next in line to take control of Egypt. So essentially, what happened was if you recall from my series on Mesopotamia, you'll know that Cyrus the Great had Empire and would emerge the Medes and the Persians to form a great Persian Empire. Now he had marched down into Babylonia and was basically conquering city after city after city and essentially took over Babylon, and then from there he basically looked at the Near East and he started taking over more territories and eventually he gazed his eye towards Egypt and said, hey, that's going to be my next great conquest. Now the interesting thing was he never actually set foot in Egypt. Instead, egypt would be soon forced to bow down to Cyrus' son and successor, cambyses II.

Speaker 1: 33:38

Now, the story of Cambyses is an interesting story because, according to the Greek historian, herodotus, cambyses was said to have requested for an Egyptian physician. Someone said that he specifically asked for essentially an eye doctor to serve him and his empire. So, essentially, he chose to comply with the Persian king and the pharaoh forcefully ordered the Egyptian doctor to leave his wife and children behind in Egypt. The doctor was highly upset, so much so that he had essentially plotted against the pharaoh from Persia. He established a close relationship with the Persian king before slowly injecting his negative propaganda to the Persian king. The physician suggested that the king forge a close relationship with Egypt through marriage, by having the Persian king ask for the Egyptian pharaoh for his daughter's hand in marriage. Now, the pharaoh wasn't keen on the idea and, instead of sending his daughter, he sent the daughter of the predecessor, who was Apis' daughter.

Speaker 1: 34:47

Now take a step back for a second here. Think about this clearly and logically. Your father was just killed by another man. He sends you to a foreign king to say that you're someone you're not. Do you honestly think that this is going to last? I mean, if this story is true, this is absolutely crazy. How can anybody logically think that the person that you're sending off to marry, the foreign king isn't going to turn around and say, hey, guess what? I'm not who you think I am, I'm someone else. Of course that's going to happen. So, of course, eventually, she basically betrayed the pharaoh and informed Khan Bayezid who she really was.

Speaker 1: 35:31

The Persian king was really upset by this, of course, which eventually triggered the idea to invade Egypt. Now, this is a fantastic story, but, like a lot of Herodotus' stories, they most likely aren't true. But this is one of those stories I really want to be true because it's really cool. I think it's fascinating, but it's probably not. But anyway, in order for the Persians to get to Egypt, they decided to pass through the Arabian desert, but they needed to negotiate with the local Arabian kings, or more likely Arabian warlords, I don't know. King might be a little bit of a stretch, but either way, they had to negotiate with them to get safe passage through the desert. Luckily for the Persians, the Arabians hated Amhos, so the Arabs were more than happy to allow the Persians to pass through safely, and in fact they were so helpful that they were able to supply the Persians with fresh water and even more troops. So you know, once again, you make enemies of the wrong people and it's going to come back and bite you. So Amos II well, he would never actually square off with the Persians because he had died about six months before the Persian king had actually reached the Nile.

Speaker 1: 36:51

Now, legend has it that within a few days after Asantech III had officially taken the throne, thieves had an unexpected downpour of rain, and it would have been interpreted as a bad omen by the Egyptians. Perhaps it was foreshadowing the fact that the Persians would be raining down on the Egyptians, led by the king, looking for revenge, or maybe it's just a great story. Anyway, it was almost right away that the Phoenicians decided to flip sides and decided to join up with the Persians. So right away the Egyptians had lost their navy and also had lost the one important trade partner that they had that could facilitate long-distance trade and bring in valuable supplies if you were to have a war with a foreign power. And in fact he wasn't going to go square off against a dummy.

Speaker 1: 37:42

Apparently, cambyses did study up on the Egyptian belief systems and their customs, and the one thing he discovered was the fact that they practically worship cats, as they were considered sacred animals to the Egyptians because they were associated with the Egyptian goddess who went by the name of Bastet. So what the Persians did was, before they went to battle, they would have painted pictures of cats on their shields, and in particular the goddess cat. Some have went as far as to say that the Persians actually brought cats and released them onto the battlefield, and the story goes on to say that when the Egyptians saw the images of the goddess on all their shields, the Egyptians just put their swords away and ran. They just retreated from the battlefield because, in their eyes, they didn't want to harm their goddess. That would have been painted on their shields. But this is just a minor story that may or may not have been true. The fact is, the Persians were able to lay siege to Memphis and the pharaoh was taken as prisoner. The one thing about the Persians was they typically treated kings that they captured in a battle fairly well, and this time the pharaoh was no exception. However, the Persians discovered that the pharaoh was planning on revolting, so the Persians basically had no choice but to execute the pharaoh. By 525 BCE, the Persians had conquered all of Egypt with the help of Libyan forces who volunteered to submit themselves to the Persian king. Cambyses II took the Egyptian name of Mazutu Ra and founded the 27th dynasty of Egypt.

Speaker 1: 39:28

Now, it's important to note that Cambyses II was, by no stretch of the measure, a clone of his father, cyrus the Great. While Cyrus was known for his leniency, cambyses II could be a very cruel person, and sometimes to the point where Herodotus would have described him as almost a mad king king. Now, apparently, cambyses II was still upset about the Mara's deception and decided to basically steal Amos' mummified body and completely burn it till it became nothing but ash. But this was just the start. What may have been more upsetting was the fact that, according to Herodotus, cambyses II slayed the sacred Apis Bull of Memphis. Now I wonder, if Cyrus the Great was still around, would he do something like that? I tend to think he wouldn't. But it's also important to note that these are stories told by Herodotus, so one really never knows if they are true or not, but either way, it does make for a great story. Now, it is also quite possible that these stories were fed to Herodotus from the priests of the temple, because Cambyses II thought it was silly that people would pay taxes to the temples. So it's quite possible that the priests were more or less trying to get back at Cambyses a second years later to disparage his legacy.

Speaker 1: 40:55

Now, in the spring of 522 BCE, cambyses had to hurry back to Persia because there was some kind of rebellion going on, and while he was readying to leave and take care of the problems back home, he had died mysteriously, and from there, darius I, through different means of convincing people that he was actually a descendant of Cyrus the Great, had essentially created the accumulated Persian Empire. Now, under Darius I, he was able to bring new aquatic engineering to Egypt that had been established by the Persians over thousands of years prior, and these new water systems would enable the Egyptians to scale up their crop production even more and thus make Egypt even more wealthier and, more importantly, increase trade with other kingdoms. Now with trade came the first royal coins that were appearing at this time period, because we'll get into it, but Lydia had created these coins. These coins would have been adopted by the Persians and they also would have been adopted by the Greeks. And what happens is it is believed that these coins had initially come from either the Aegean islands or potentially also from the Persians through Lydia, but some speculate that it was more the Minoan traders from the Isle of Crete that would have actually brought these new coinage to the empire. However, coinage was actually first minted in Egypt through the Persians, and these coins would have had the owl-shaped head that would have been likely used to actually pay Greek soldiers that were serving the Egyptian king.

Speaker 1: 42:55

I know now it's starting to get a little complicated because now we're starting to get more international. You got the Persians bringing in coins, you got the people of the Isle of Crete bringing in coins. Now they're creating their own coins that are mimicking the Greek coins that are being paid to the Greek mercenaries, greek coins that are being paid to pay the Greek mercenaries and in addition, we also see that there were also Persian coins that were minted by the Persian king, artaxerxes III, most likely in Memphis. So we have all sorts of different coinage that were being produced for various means and they were being used to pay for either mercenaries or now they're actually being used by the local Egyptians and they would have replicated either a Greek-style coin or it would have been a Persian-style coin. So Egypt was essentially finally catching up to the rest of the Near East, who would have had coins for quite a while by this point, because coinage would have actually started around 600 BCE in Lydia, and by the time we get to this point this is nearly 100 years later Egypt is finally getting to the point to start using them as well. Egypt is finally getting to the point to start using them as well.

Speaker 1: 44:13

But also, if you remember, previously, before they started using coinage, egypt sort of started adopting a similar system to that in Mesopotamia, where they were pricing items according to their weights in gold or silver. So in other words, if Egyptians didn't have any gold or silver ingots or any kind of gold dust or silver dust or any kind of measurable gold or silver. They would have used grains that would have paid for certain products or services that were priced in gold or silver equivalents. Or, if they didn't have any gold or silver handy, they could have essentially purchased the goods on credit to pay back later in either gold or silver or whatever commodity that the person would have taken as a form of payment. Now to trade objects of a significant value, the Egyptians typically relied on the equivalent in the value of a certain weight of gold, and this was kind of customary even in Mesopotamia, where if you're going to have high priced goods being sold, it wouldn't have been sold in the weight of silver. It would have actually been sold in the weight of gold. So this use of gold and silver would have carried its way into Egypt from Mesopotamia itself.

Speaker 1: 45:27

So, as a reminder, egypt was always using wheat or some kind of grain as their primary source of payments, whether it's for food or tax or whatever right. So you work for wheat or you would pay your tax in wheat or whatever right, because the Egyptians were very practical in nature and they could produce a ton of wheat and other grains. So using a grain would have made a lot of sense for years, because you would have been able to store it for an extended period of time and it was obviously used for its consumption. So there was a lot of practical purposes for this. But the one thing about storage of wheat was or any kind of grain was the fact that there is going to be a storage cost and it depreciated over time because of natural degradation. And this would have been where cornage would have been superior, because you wouldn't have had that natural degradation that you have with any kind of grains. Now, obviously, the one problem with coins is it can be stolen, but they're also easier to be transported, as you wouldn't have needed as many coins to make up the price of some sort of grain. So a little bit of gold could have paid for a lot of stuff where you would have needed a lot of grain to pay for that same service or product.

Speaker 1: 46:45

So, while Egypt was changing and evolving, the one thing that really never went away with Egypt was the fact that there was always a constant rebellion. There would be a rebellion here, there would be a rebellion there, things would be calm, things would be stable, but then there would be rebellion. So these are things that never really left their system. So the Egyptians would rebel and the Persians would put down rebellion, and then they would have to put in a local governor who would ensure that Egypt was loyal to the Persians, and eventually there'd be more peace, and then a rebellion would break out again, and it just kind of went on and on and on, but in the end the Egyptians could never overthrow the Persians. However, in the grand scheme of things, the Persians had a much bigger, pressing issue to deal with than the Egyptians. Persia had been dealing with the Greek city-states for really ever since they became a dominant kingdom in the Near East. But the fact is is the Greek city-states would ultimately be a major thorn in the sides of the Persians, especially when the Greek city-states decided to actually work together instead of fighting each other. But ultimately, it was the people from the north, the Macedonians, who would be the biggest threat to the Persians.

Speaker 1: 48:03

And before I leave this subject matter with the Persians, I think it's important to know that the thing that Persians had done was they had developed an extremely efficient road system throughout their whole entire empire, which would have been known as the Persian Royal Road. Now, this road was designed to facilitate communication throughout the empire. And in fact, the Greek historian Herodotus stated that royal messengers would have been able to get a message whether it was through rain, sleet or snow or night. And well, essentially they sound like the United States Postal Service, but that's probably where they got their motto from.

Speaker 1: 48:45

As a matter of fact, now, I bring this up here because the Persians were able to extend their road system all the way down into Egypt, and their road system didn't just disappear when the new ruler or state takes over. So, in other words, once you build this road, it's a great tool for trade, no matter who is actually controlling the region. So the Persians would have built this great road that would have extended down into Egypt, and then subsequent rulers, whoever was in control of the region, would have built upon this road and would have made it even more efficient and therefore would have helped facilitate trade and communication throughout the Near East and all the way down into Egypt, of which Egypt would have fully taken advantage of. So, in other words, egypt would have used this royal road that was created by the Persians to continuous trade throughout the Near East and all the way into Iran, even when the Persians were no longer controlling the region, and now we're at a point where this young upstart named Alexander would overthrow the Persians and control the Near East and all of what Persia had controlled before, and now he was looking at Egypt as his next great conquest.

Speaker 1: 50:09

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