Third Intermediate Period
Piye (Piankhi)
25th Dynasty (Kushite/Nubian) · 747-656 BCE
Open full-size illustration →Source: Shaw, Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (2000)
Background
Piye conquered a fractured Egypt while positioning himself as the true defender of its traditions, famously caring more about a rival's neglected horses than his rebellion, and archaeologists later found that same devotion to horses reflected in his own burial in Nubia. Additional detail: UCL Digital Egypt.
Dynastic chronology: Shaw, Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (2000)
Full profile
The Nubian conquest
Piye was the Kushite king ruling from Napata who launched a massive military campaign to conquer a politically fractured Egypt. Viewing himself as the true preserver of traditional Egyptian religion, he marched north to crush the Libyan coalition led by Tefnakht. He successfully laid siege to Hermopolis and captured the heavily fortified city of Memphis using a brilliant naval assault, using the masts of his ships to scale the city walls.
The victory stele and the horses
Much of what is known about this campaign comes from the Victory Stele of Piye, a 159-line inscription written in classic Middle Kingdom literary style. Following the surrender of Hermopolis, the stele records that Piye inspected the stables of the defeated King Nimlot. Discovering the animals were malnourished from the siege, Piye furiously reprimanded Nimlot, stating that starving the horses was a worse crime than the political rebellion itself. After forcing the northern kings to submit as vassals, Piye returned to Nubia and ruled from afar.
Buried with his horses
Piye was laid to rest beneath a pyramid at El-Kurru, the royal Kushite cemetery near Napata, in one of the earliest burials of its kind excavated there by the American archaeologist George Reisner in 1918 and 1919. Nearby, Reisner uncovered the graves of 24 horses, four of which were identified as Piye's own, buried standing upright and decked out in gold and silver trappings as though ready to carry their king onward, a striking echo of the same concern for royal horses that defines his most famous inscription.
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.