Late Period
Arses (Artaxerxes IV)
31st Dynasty (Second Persian Period) · 343-332 BCE
Open full-size illustration →Source: Shaw, Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (2000)
Background
Arses only reached the Persian throne because the courtier Bagoas had just murdered his father and nearly all of his brothers, and he lost it after trying to break free of the same man who had put him there, a pattern of poisoning-and-replacement that would claim one more king before it finally turned on Bagoas himself. Further detail: UCL Digital Egypt.
Dating: Shaw, Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (2000)
Full profile
A brief and turbulent shadow
Arses ascended the Persian throne following the assassination of his father Artaxerxes III. His brief and fragile reign over the Achaemenid Empire was entirely dominated by powerful court intrigue and internal power struggles engineered by the royal eunuch Bagoas. He exercised virtually no independent control over provincial administration in Egypt before he was himself murdered.
A puppet who tried to cut the strings
Bagoas had spared Arses and his brother Bisthanes when he poisoned Artaxerxes III and killed off the rest of the royal sons, installing Arses as a king he expected to control. That arrangement held only as long as Arses tolerated it: when he moved to reduce Bagoas's grip on the court in 336 BCE, the eunuch had him poisoned in turn and placed a more distant relative, Artashata, on the throne as Darius III. Darius broke the cycle Bagoas had run through two kings by forcing him to drink his own poison soon after, a detail ancient writers seem to have relished as fitting punishment for the killer of two Persian kings.
Sources for this profile
- Shaw, I. (Ed.). (2000). The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. Oxford University Press.
- Dodson, A., & Hilton, D. (2004). The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson.
- Leprohon, R. J. (2013). The Great Name: Ancient Egyptian Royal Titulary. Society of Biblical Literature.
- UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology. Chronology. UCLA.
- University College London. Digital Egypt for Universities.
The complete, APA-formatted reference list is on the Academic Sources & Bibliography page.