525 BC

Twenty-seventh Dynasty of Egypt

Cambyses II defeats Psamtik III and incorporates Egypt into the Persian Empire

The famous story of Persian troops advancing behind cats and sacred animals is not in Herodotus. It first appears about seven centuries later.

Pelusium, then Memphis

In spring 525 BCE, Cambyses II's Persian army defeated Pharaoh Psamtik III's forces at Pelusium in the eastern Nile Delta. Amasis had died shortly before the invasion, leaving his recently enthroned son to organise the defence.

Pelusium was the decisive field defeat, but not the end. The Egyptians withdrew to Memphis, where Herodotus says they killed the crew of a Persian herald's boat, endured a siege and eventually surrendered.

Psamtik III, last ruler of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, was captured.

A conqueror crowned in Egyptian forms

By summer Egypt was in Persian hands, and at the end of August Cambyses was formally installed as Egyptian king with pharaonic titles.

A contemporary Egyptian witness, the naval commander and priestly official Udjahorresnet, served both the defeated dynasty and its conqueror; his statue inscription says he helped formulate Cambyses's royal titulary and advised him about the sanctuary of Neith at Sais.

Pharaonic ritual did not make the conquest gentle or restore Egyptian independence. It legitimised foreign rule in Egyptian forms.

The mad-king portrait against the documents

Herodotus, writing decades later, gives the fullest military narrative and a picture of a uniformly mad, sacrilegious Cambyses. Contemporary Egyptian evidence conflicts with it: an Apis bull was given an official burial in a sarcophagus ordered by Cambyses.

The evidence is not one-sided either — a Demotic text reports his reduction of temple revenues.

Egypt was incorporated with Cyprus and Phoenicia into the empire's sixth satrapy, conventionally beginning the Twenty-seventh Dynasty; that First Persian Period ran to about 402 BCE.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 6 sources not yet audited Date corrected

How this was checked

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Date corrected. The research places this at -0525.

What the sources leave uncertain

The year 525 BCE is strongly established in standard chronology, but no exact date is known for either Pelusium or Memphis's surrender.
A revised Egyptian chronology has placed the conquest in 526 BCE, but 525 remains the conventional and widely used date.
The fullest continuous military narrative is Herodotus, written decades afterward. Contemporary Egyptian evidence such as Udjahorresnet's inscription illuminates the change of regime but does not narrate the battle.
Psamtik's ultimate fate is known chiefly through hostile literary tradition; the secure event fact is his defeat and removal.