Late Period
Darius III
31st Dynasty (Second Persian Period) · 343-332 BCE
Open full-size illustration →Source: Shaw, Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (2000)
Background
Darius III lost Egypt without a battle being fought there at all: the province's Persian garrison had already been stripped away and destroyed at Issus, leaving his satrap nothing to defend it with when Alexander the Great arrived. Background from: UCL Digital Egypt.
Reign dates: Shaw, Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (2000)
Full profile
The collapse of the empire
Darius III became the final Achaemenid king of the 31st Dynasty during a period of terminal crisis for the Persian Empire. While attempting to manage widespread internal instability and mounting military pressure from Alexander the Great, his grip on Egypt rapidly deteriorated. Following crushing defeats on the battlefield, the last Persian satrap in Egypt surrendered the province peacefully to Alexander in 332 BCE, permanently ending Persian rule.
A province with no one left to defend it
Egypt's fall was largely decided a year earlier and hundreds of miles away, at the Battle of Issus in 333 BCE, where the previous satrap, Sabaces, was killed fighting for Darius and took most of Egypt's garrison troops down with him. When Alexander's forces reached Pelusium in December 332 BCE, the new satrap, Mazaces, had no army left capable of resisting and, on the advice of an official named Amminapes who knew Alexander personally, handed over the country along with roughly 800 talents of gold rather than fight a battle he had no way to win. Ancient accounts describe Egyptians turning out to greet Alexander as a liberator from Persian rule rather than as a conqueror.
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.