Preface
In 525 BCE, near Pelusium, Cambyses and his Persians fought and routed the army of Egypt, led by Psammenitus (Psamtik III, last pharaoh of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty), then laid siege to Memphis and took control of the country.1 Eighty or so years later, Herodotus saw a miracle (θῶμα δὲ μέγα εἶδον), which is to say that he heard of it from locals (πυθόμενος παρὰ τῶν ἐπιχωρίων):2 the Persian skulls left on the battlefield could be holed by throwing a pebble at them, but the Egyptian skulls from the same battle could hardly be broken with a large stone.
Egyptians—this is the point of the unreliable story—were resilient. Forty years or so after Herodotus’ visit to Egypt, they found a way of departing from the Persian orbit. The skull-cracking came later, in their resistance to multiple invasions over a sixty-year period. Like an old-time pharaoh, Nectanebo I, longest-reigning and most powerful ruler in these years, attributed his success to his goddess Neith, as stated in the stele from Naucratis and its twin from Heracleion:3
She raised his majesty above millions,Appointed him ruler of the Two Lands;She placed her uraeus upon his head,Captured for him the nobles’ hearts;She enslaved for him the people’s hearts,And destroyed all his enemies.Mighty monarch guarding Egypt,Copper wall enclosing Egypt;Powerful one with active arm,Sword master who attacks a host;Fiery-hearted at seeing his foes,Heart gouger of the treason-hearted.
That stele itself, however, its wording echoing the Egypt of long ago, testified to the change which surrounded the Two Lands and would sweep them along with it. Its purpose was to regulate and tax trade with the outside world—and that outside world in the 340s brought Egypt Artaxerxes III, “the king of kings, the king of countries, the king of this earth”;4 then in 332 “Alexander, destroyer of the Persians”,5 who was followed by his successor Ptolemy.
The impact which the outside world had for good and ill on Egypt made the fourth century into a period of transformation for the country. In a conference at Macquarie University in September 2011, the authors whose work is published in this volume met to discuss that transformation under a broad range of headings. Predecessor volumes in this informal series are my and Philippe Guillaume’s Ptolemy II Philadelphus and his World (2008), Joachim Quack’s and Andrea Jördens’ Ägypten zwischen innerem Zwist und äußerem Druck (2011) and Kostas Buraselis, Mary Stefanou, and Dorothy J. Thompson’s The Ptolemies, the Sea and the Nile (2013).
Jennifer Cromwell and I wish to thank those who were present for their enthusiasm and their forbearance, and Dorothy J. Thompson in particular for her encouragement and counsel. We wish to thank Macquarie University for accommodating the conference, and the Ian Potter Foundation for a grant towards the costs.
P.McK.
Macquarie University
Sydney, Australia
November 2017