Egypt 7 - Last Egyptian Rulers and Early Persians Quiz

Answer: Nubian

He is usually considered to be the first king of Dynasty 25 but a minority of Egyptologists say it was his predecessor Kashta. The confusion continues when deciding which period the 25th (and 26th) dynasties were in: some say it was in the late period, some say third intermediate period and some split a dynasty between the two.
He was extremely respectful of the Egyptian gods, particularly Amun.
He ruled in Nubia for a long time, conquered Egypt then went home to Nubia. He seems to have been a horse lover - a stele of his states he was very upset at the sufferings of the horses in the siege of the capital of one of the petty kings of the north.

Answer: He was among the greatest tacticians in the world

Scholars have identified him with Tirhakah, a king of Ethiopia, who fought Sennacherib during the reign of Hezekiah of Judah
He defeated an initial Assyrian invasion but three years later he lost the delta. He supported various enemies of Assyria until he was driven out of Egypt back into Nubia.
Some blocks with his inscriptions were the earliest evidence of building at Philae.

Answer: They are the same person

He and his father, Necho I were originally involved with Taharqa against Assyria, but were captured by the Assyrians. He was given the Assyrian name, Nabushezibanni, before he and his father returned to Egypt and assumed power in the Delta. Psamtik was also known as Psammetikhos to the Greeks. He was the first ruler of the 26th Dynasty. It took him nine years to gain complete control of Egypt. He was able to insert his own daughter, Nitokris, as God's Wife of Amun, which gave him power in Thebes.
He was originally an Assyrian puppet but as Assyria declined he became absolute ruler.
Art (and many customs) in this dynasty and and several others round this time revived archaic forms, so it is sometimes difficult to tell whether an artefact came from this period or from the Old or Middle Kingdoms.

Answer: Lead an army across the Euphrates

Nekau was often known as Necho. He supported the remnants of the Assyrians against the Babylonians. The previous king to cross the Euphrates was Tuthmosis III.
Among his achievements were starting a canal to link the Nile to the Red sea and sending out an expedition of Phoenician seamen who seem to have circumnavigated Africa.
His son and successor Psammetichus II afterwards removed Necho's name from almost all of them for unknown reasons.

Answer: Likeable and popular but a heavy drinker

Ahmose II (often called Amasis) was a usurper. His predecessor sent an army into Libya where it met with disaster. The machimoi (the native Egyptian soldiers) revolted, probably largely because the Greek mercenaries within the Egyptian army were treated better then the Egyptians. Ahmose was sent to put the revolt down but was proclaimed as Pharaoh. When word reached Pharaoh Wahibre (often called Apries) of Ahmoses' treason, he killed the messenger.

He was defeated but maintained control of Upper Egypt until a failed attempt to defeat Ahmose when he fled abroad.

After another attempt with Babylonian support he was captured. Ahmose was criticised for keeping Wahibre alive. When Wahibre died he was given a full royal burial.

Answer: The last two

The Persians were hated by the Egyptians. Herodotus tells us that the Persian ruler Cambyses who conquered Egypt killed and ate the sacred Apis bull (a calf at the time - he remarked it tasted lake ordinary veal and he had Amasis's mummy exhumed and: "subjected to every indignity, such as lashing with whips and the plucking of its hairs, until the executioners were weary.

At last, as the corpse had been embalmed and would not fall to pieces under the blows, Cambyses ordered it burnt". However there is a record of the sacred Apis bull being buried with full honours in year six of Cambyses' reign.

Answer: One

Amenirdisu or Amyrtaeus revolted against Darius II in 411 BC, fighting a guerrilla action in the western delta around his home city of Sais. Following the death of Darius, he declared himself pharaoh in 404 BC. He was defeated by another Egyptian, Nefaarud I in 399BC.
About 60 years earlier his grandfather also called Amenirdisu had revolted against the Persians.
He left no records in hieroglyphs or known monuments.

Answer: Spartans

Nefaarud is also known as Nepherites. He was the first pharaoh of the twenty-ninth Dynasty. He agreed to send Sparta grain and the equipment for 100 warships but the fleet that was to take this passed Rhodes without knowing the Rhodians had sided with Persia, and so was lost.

Answer: False

Hakor was also known as Achoris. He commissioned an enormous number of buildings and carried out extensive restoration work.
Early in his reign, Hakor revolted against his overlord, the Persian King Artaxerxes. In 390 BC, he concluded an alliance with Greeks but the Persians made concessions to the Greeks so the alliance failed. The Persians then turned their attention to Egypt but Hakor, supported by an Athenian general Chabrias and a strengthened fleet, held them off in a three-year war between 385 and 383 BC, then had three years of peace before he died.

Answer: 2,300 years

There were four people who were probably Egyptian who staged revolts and ruled part of Egypt - Khababash ruled during the period of Persian rule. Harwenofre from 205-199 BCE and Ankhwennofre from 199-186 during the rule of Ptolemy V (205-180 BCE). Harsise ruled briefly in 131. The next Egyptian to rule all Egypt was officially General Neguib after the 1952 revolution (but it seems Nasser was really in power).
Muhammad Ali whose dynasty ruled Egypt from 1805 to 1952 was ethnically an Albanian and born in Kavala which is in modern Greece.
Nekhtnebef was placed on the Egyptian throne with help from the Spartan king Agesilaus II, who helped him overthrow his predecessor Teos and a rival pretender. After 17 years and a failed invasion attempt, he was defeated by the Persian king Artaxerxes III, and fled into exile in Nubia, where he vanishes from history. However there is a myth that instead of Nubia he went to the court of Philip II of Macedon in the guise of an Egyptian magician and slept with Philip's wife Olympias, which resulted in Alexander the Great. This appealed to the Egyptians despite Alexander being about 14 when Nekhtnebef fled.