Ancient Egypt (Rawlinson)/Three Desperate Revolts

The first revolt of the Egyptians against their conquerors, appears to have been provoked by the news of the battle of Marathon. Egypt heard, in B.C. 490, that the arms of the oppressor, as she ever determined to consider Darius, had met with a reverse in European Greece, where 200,000 Medes and Persians had been completely defeated by 20,000 Athenians and Platæns. Darius, it was understood, had taken greatly to heart this reverse, and was bent on avenging it. The strength of the Persian Empire was about to be employed towards the West, and an excellent opportunity seemed to have arisen for a defection on the South. Accordingly Egypt, after making secret preparations for three years, in B.C. 487 broke out in open revolt. She probably overpowered and massacred the Persian garrison in Memphis, which is said to have numbered 120,000 men, and, proclaiming herself independent, set up a native sovereign.

The Egyptian monuments suggest that this monarch bore the foreign-sounding name of Khabash. He fortified the coast of Egypt against attempts which might be made upon it by the Persian fleet, and doubtless prepared himself also to resist an invasion by land. But he was quite unable to do anything effectual. Though Darius died in the year after the revolt, B.C. 486, yet its suppression was immediately undertaken by his son and successor, Xerxes, who invaded Egypt in the next year, easily crushed all resistance, and placed the province under a severer rule than any that it had previously experienced. Achæmenes, his brother, was made satrap.

Twenty-five years of tranquillity followed, during which the Egyptians were submissive subjects of the Persian crown, and even showed remarkable courage and skill in the Persian military expeditions. Egypt furnished as many as two hundred triremes to the fleet which was brought against Greece by Xerxes, and the squadron particularly distinguished itself in the sea-fights off Artemisium, where they actually captured five Grecian vessels with their crews. Mardonius, moreover, set so high a value on the marines who fought on board the Egyptian ships, that he retained them as land-troops when the Persian fleet returned to Asia after Salamis.

No further defection took place during the reign of Xerxes; but in B.C. 460, after the throne had been occupied for about five years by Xerxes' son, Artaxerxes, a second rebellion broke out, which led to a long and terrible struggle. A certain Inarus, who bore rule over some of the African tribes on the western border of Egypt, and who may have been a descendant of the Psamatiks, headed the insurrection, and in conjunction with an Egyptian, named Amyrtæus, suddenly attacked the Persian garrison stationed in Egypt, the ordinary strength of which was 120,000 men. A great battle was fought at Papremis, in the Delta, wherein the Persians were completely defeated, and their leader, Achæmenes, perished by the hand of Inarus himself. Memphis, however, the capital, still resisted, and the struggle thus remained doubtful. Inarus and Amyrtæus implored the assistance of Athens, which had the most powerful navy of the time, and could lend most important aid by taking possession of the river. Athens, which was under the influence of the farsighted Pericles, cheerfully responded to the call, and sent two hundred triremes, manned by at least forty thousand men, to assist the rebels, and to do as much injury as possible to the Persians. On sailing up the Nile, the Athenian fleet found a Persian squadron already moored in the Nile waters, but it swept this obstacle from its path without any difficulty. Memphis was then blockaded both by land and water; the city was taken, and only the citadel. Leucon-Teichos, or "the White Fortress," held out. A formal siege of the citadel was commenced, and the allies lay before it for months, but without result. Meanwhile, Artaxerxes was not idle. Having collected an army of 300,000 men, he gave the command of it to Megabyzus, one of his best generals, and sent him to Egypt against the rebels. Megabyzus marched upon Memphis, defeated the Egyptians and their allies in a great battle under the walls of the town, relieved the Persian garrison which held the citadel, and recovered possession of the place. The Athenians retreated to the tract called Prosopitis, a sort of island in the Delta, surrounded by two of the branch streams of the Nile, which they held with their ships. Here Megabyzus besieged them without success for eighteen months; but at last he bethought himself of a stratagem like that whereby Cyrus is said to have captured Babylon, and adapted it to his purpose. Having blocked the course of one of the branch streams, and diverted its waters into a new channel, he laid bare the river-bed, captured the triremes that were stuck fast in the soft ooze, marched his men into the island, and overwhelmed the unhappy Greeks by sheer force of numbers. A few only escaped, and made their way to Cyrene. The entire fleet of two hundred vessels fell into the hands of the conqueror; and fifty others, sent as a reinforcement, having soon afterwards entered the river, were attacked unawares and defeated, with the loss of more than half their number. Inarus, the Libyan monarch, became a fugitive, but was betrayed by some of his followers, surrendered, and crucified. Amyrtæus, who had been recognized as king of Egypt during the six years that the struggle lasted, took refuge in the Nile marshes, where he dragged out a miserable existence for another term of six years. The Egyptians offered no further resistance; and Egypt became once more a Persian satrapy (B.C. 455).

It was at about this time that Herodotus, the earliest Greek historian, the Father of History, as he has been called, visited Egypt in pursuance of his plan of gathering information for his great work. He was a young man, probably not far from thirty years of age (for he was born between the dates of the battles of Marathon and Thermopylæ). He travelled through the land as far as Elephantine, viewing with his observant eyes the wonders with which the "Story of Egypt" has been so much occupied; and he described them with the enthusiasm that we have occasionally noted. He saw the battle-field on which Inarus had just been defeated--the ground strewn with the skulls and other bones of the slain; he made his longest stay at Memphis, then at the acme of its greatness; he visited the quarries on the east of the Nile whence the stone had been dug for the pyramids, and he gazed upon the great monuments themselves, on the opposite side of the stream. We have seen that he visited Lake Mœris, and examined the famous Labyrinth, which he thought even more wonderful than the pyramids themselves. Finally, he sailed away for Tyre, and Egypt was again closed to travellers from Greece.

A second period of tranquillity followed, which covered the space of about half a century. Nothing is known of Egypt during this interval; and it might have been thought that she had grown contented with her lot, and that her aspirations after independence were over. For fifty years she had made no sign. Even the troubled time between the death of Artaxerxes I. and the accession of Darius II. had not tempted her to strike a blow for freedom. But still she was, in reality, irreconcilable. She was biding her time, and preparing herself for a last desperate effort.

In B.C. 406 or 405, towards the close of the reign of Darius Nothus, the third rebellion of Egypt against Persia broke out. A native of Mendes, by name Nepheritis, or more properly Nefaa-rut, raised the banner of independence, and commenced a war, which must have lasted for some years, but which terminated in the expulsion of the Persian garrison, and the reestablishment of the throne of the Pharaohs. It is unfortunate that no ancient authority gives any account of the struggle. We only know that, after a time, the power of Nefaa-rut was established; that Persia left him in undisturbed possession of Egypt, and that he reigned quietly for the space of six years, employing himself in the repair and restoration of the temple of Ammon at Karnak. Nothing that can be called a revival, or renaissance, distinguished his reign; and we must view his success rather as the result of Persian weakness, than of his own energy. His revolt, however, inaugurated a period of independence, which lasted about sixty years, and which threw over the last years of the doomed monarchy a gleam of sunshine, that for a brief space recalled the glories of earlier and happier ages.