E
YEWITNESS OF
A
LEXANDER
’
S CONQUEST
With the long lens of history, the Persian invasion of 341 BC seems like a cataclysmic event, for it brought to an abrupt end the pattern of pharaonic government that had served ancient Egypt for a period of nearly 3,000 years. However, the events of the mid-fourth century BC may not have appeared as traumatic to those who lived through them. That, at least, is the impression given by one man who not only survived the Persian invasion and its aftermath, but evidently prospered under successive regimes.
Sematawytefnakht, like his namesake of three centuries earlier (no. 91), came from Herakleopolis (ancient Hnes) in Middle Egypt. He was named after one of the local gods, Sematawy (‘He who unites the Two Lands’), whose sanctuary lay inside the town of Herakleopolis. The chief local deity, however, was the ram-god Herishef. Sematawytefnakht’s devotion to this latter god ran as a continuous thread throughout his life.
He began his career in the reign of Nakhthorheb (no. 95), and witnessed at first hand the Persian invasion. Although he later described this as a disaster, at the time he showed no hesitation in making his peace and ingratiating himself with the Persian ruler, Artaxerxes III. Indeed, Sematawytefnakht was appointed Chief Priest of Sekhmet: in effect, royal physician. In this capacity, Sematawytefnakht took his place at the heart of Artaxerxes III’s court and accompanied his master back to Persia. From this vantage point, only a few years later, he witnessed the defeat of Artaxerxes’ successor, Darius III, by the forces of Alexander the Great at the Battle of Issus in 333 BC. Once again, Sematawytefnakht found himself caught up in major events; once again, he escaped unscathed. He attributed his good fortune to the benevolent protection of his god Herishef:
‘You protected me in the combat of the Greeks
When you repulsed those of Asia.
They slew a million at my sides
And no one raised an arm against me.’
Without doubt, good luck and political adroitness also played their part.
Sematawytefnakht’s gleeful description of the Persian defeat seems curiously at odds with his personal advancement under Persian rule; but he was ever the loyal servant of those in power, and under Macedonian rule it would have been extremely unwise to express anything other than deep hostility to the memory of the Persians.
For much of the Egyptian population, who had suffered privations and brutality under Persian rule, Alexander the Great was welcomed as a liberator. Sematawytefnakht, too, saw the way the wind was blowing, and decided to return to Egypt. He reached his home town safe and sound, his head ‘not robbed of a hair’. By the end of his career, he had accumulated a dazzling array of honours and offices. Besides royal physician, he was also Supervisor of the Riverbank; priest of the gods of the Oryx-nome (province); priest of Horus, lord of Hebnu; and priest of Sematawy, the god after whom he had been named. So, in his own words, he ended his life ‘blessed by his lord, revered in his nome’.
Above all, Sematawytefnakht was a survivor. History may dub him a collaborator, but he was content to ascribe his good fortune to his god:
‘As my beginning was good through you,
So have you made my end complete.
You gave me a long lifetime in gladness.’
97 | Padiusir (Petosiris)
D
EVOTED SERVANT OF HIS LOCAL GOD
While some Egyptians, like Sematawytefnakht (no. 96), may have actively collaborated with the Persian conquerors, others, particularly in the provinces, evidently hunkered down, continued with normal life as far as possible, and quietly maintained native traditions in steely defiance of the foreign invaders. One such was Padiusir (Petosiris in Greek) of Hermopolis, known to his friends as Ankhefenkhons.
Padiusir came from a powerful local family intimately connected with the city’s temple of Thoth. Padiusir’s grandfather, Djedthothiuefankh (‘Thoth says he will live’), and father, Nes-Shu, had served in turn as High Priest of Thoth under the pharaohs of the 30th Dynasty. In Padiusir’s own generation, the office passed first to his elder brother Djedthothiuefankh and then to Padiusir himself. Padiusir and his brother lived through the Persian invasion of 341 BC. Indeed, it was during this very period that Padiusir succeeded as ‘the High Priest who sees the god in his shrine, who carries his lord and follows his lord, who enters into the holy of holies, who performs his functions together with the great prophets.’ His conduct and accomplishments during a politically difficult time are a testament to his personal piety and his determination to maintain Egypt’s age-old traditions. His own description of events cannot be bettered:
‘I spent seven years as controller for this god, administering his endowment without fault being found, while the ruler of foreign lands was protector of Egypt, and nothing was in its former place, since fighting had started inside Egypt, the South being in turmoil, the North in revolt…, all temples without their servants; the priests fled, not knowing what was happening.
‘When I became controller for Thoth, lord of Hermopolis, I put the temple of Thoth back in its former condition, I caused every rite to be as before, every priest to serve in his proper time… I made splendid what was found ruined anywhere. I restored what had decayed long ago, and was no longer in its place.’
In a stark illustration of the collapse of traditional Egyptian kingship, Padiusir even carried out a temple foundation ceremony usually reserved for the pharaoh:
‘I stretched the cord, released the line, to found the temple of Ra in the park. I built it of fine white limestone, and finished with all kinds of work; its doors are of pine, inlaid with Asiatic copper.
‘I made an enclosure around the park, lest it be trampled by the rabble.’
Under Persian rule, there was an ever-present risk of social unrest. Nevertheless, Padiusir maintained all the traditional rites as best he could, taking pains to ‘consult the scholars’ to ensure that everything was done by the book.
To compound the political and social upheaval of the Persian occupation, Padiusir’s personal life was struck by tragedy when his son Thothrekh (‘Thoth knows’) died young. Private sadness combined with piety to produce in Padiusir an unusually thoughtful outlook on life, recorded in inscriptions on the walls of his magnificent family tomb at Tuna el-Gebel. He emphasized, above all, that life should be lived according to ‘the way of god’: law-abiding and pious, but also successful and happy. In return for a lifetime of loyal service to his town and his god, Padiusir asked for a few simple rewards: ‘Length of lifetime in gladness of heart; a good burial after old age; my corpse interred in this tomb beside my father and elder brother.’ This simple statement encapsulated the Egyptians’ most deeply held wishes: a strong family and a blessed afterlife. That Padiusir achieved both demonstrates the resilience of the ancient Egyptian governing class and of pharaonic culture against the vicissitudes of history.
98 | Ptolemy I
M
ACEDONIAN GENERAL WHO FOUNDED A DYNASTY
When Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 BC, he was welcomed as a saviour. He might not have been an Egyptian, but he had delivered the country from the harsh rule of the hated Persians, and that was cause enough to recognize him as a legitimate pharaoh. For the next three centuries, until its absorption into the Roman world, Egypt was ruled by a Greek-speaking elite, but one that, as far as we can tell, was largely accepted as legitimate by the native population. This was due in large measure to the efforts and character of the man who set Egypt on its new course, and after whom the period of Greek rule is named: Ptolemy.
Ptolemy son of Lagus was born in 367 or 366 BC, in the kingdom of Macedon. His mother Arsinoe may have been related to the royal family and as a boy Ptolemy was enrolled in the corps of pages at the court of King Philip. He therefore came into contact with Philip’s son and heir, Alexander, and the two became close childhood friends. Ptolemy’s name (Ptolemaios) derived from the epic form of the Greek word for war, polemos, and the boy was true to his designation. He excelled in martial activities, and fought alongside Alexander when, as king, the latter conquered most of the known world, from the shores of the Aegean to the jungles of India. As a distinguished general, Ptolemy was chosen to be one of Alexander’s seven bodyguards, the inner circle of the king’s most trusted companions.
Alexander’s sudden death in Babylon in June 323 BC threw his empire, and his advisers, into turmoil. For the next eighteen years, Ptolemy was embroiled in the complex world of Macedonian politics, as Alexander’s heirs struggled over the division of his enormous territory. Ptolemy’s initial move was to prove far-sighted, or perhaps it was mere luck. Five months after Alexander’s death, he arrived in Egypt to rule as satrap (governor), having been appointed to this position – no doubt after much urging – by Alexander’s half-brother and successor, Philip Arrhidaeus. Ptolemy was about forty-four years old, but he was certainly in no mood to hang up his sword and live out his days in luxury.
Ptolemy’s greatest rival was Perdiccas, the man who had inherited Alexander’s signet-ring and thus effectively controlled the Council of State set up to rule the empire. Perdiccas had exploited his position by seizing Alexander’s Babylonian territories, and proceeded to annex the Greek colony of Cyrene, on the coast of Libya, towards the end of 322 BC. This was a direct challenge to Ptolemy, since Cyrene could provide a forward base for an attack on Egypt itself. Indeed, this attack came a year later, but Ptolemy was ready. Perdiccas was stopped in his tracks and assassinated. Ptolemy was confirmed as ruler of Egypt and Cyrene. He hijacked Alexander’s body as it made its way from Babylon back to Macedon, and brought it to Egypt as a totem to legitimize his own rule.
But Ptolemy the general was still restless for further military glories. Over the next sixteen years, he involved himself in campaign after campaign, winning territory and losing it again in a seemingly endless succession of battles. Lebanon, Palestine, Cyprus, even the Cyclades: all were fought over, all lost. By 306 BC, Ptolemy seems to have decided to consolidate his rule and satisfy himself with Egypt and Cyrene: easily defended, wealthy, and undeniably prestigious. However, setting himself up as a new pharaoh was not entirely straightforward. Under Philip Arrhidaeus and his successor Alexander IV (Alexander the Great’s posthumous son by Roxane), Ptolemy had technically been only satrap of Egypt. None of Alexander the Great’s heirs had gone so far as to claim royal titles. Even when Alexander IV was murdered, in 311 BC, Ptolemy continued to have documents dated by his reign, for another six years. This official fiction gave Ptolemy some breathing space, as he worked out how he wished to rule Egypt, now that the Macedonian royal line was extinct. He gave a clear sign of his intentions in a proclamation of 311, carved in hieroglyphics, in which he restored the land and possessions of two of Egypt’s most important cult temples. The rebirth of pharaonic rule was in the offing.
