Early career

Cambyses was the oldest son of Cyrus the Great, the first king of the Achaemenid empire (559-530). The name of Cambyses' mother is not known. The Greek researcher Herodotus of Halicarnassus calls her Cassandane, but Ctesias of Cnidus states she was Amytis, the daughter of the last king of independent Media, Astyages.

Cyrus' career was dazzling. In 559, he became king of Persia; in 550, he subdued his overlord, Astyages the Mede. Three years later, he conquered Lydia (western Turkey) and in 539, he added Babylonia to his empire.

Babylonia was an ancient kingdom, and its king played an important role in the religious and cultural life of the ancient Near East. If Cyrus were to rule Babylonia, he ought to act as a Babylonian king. In his official propaganda (the Cyrus cylinder) he did indeed present himself as the one chosen by the Babylonian supreme god Marduk.

However, the great king was not in the position to be present when the Babylonians celebrated the Akitu festival. This was a problem, because the last king of independent Babylonia, Nabonidus, had lost much credit by not attending the festival for several years. To prevent similar troubles, Cyrus appointed his son Cambyses as king of Babylon, and in this quality, Cambyses was present during the ceremonies. A contemporary source, the Chronicle of Nabonidus, states:

When, on the fourth day [27 March 538] Cambyses, son of Cyrus, went to the temple of [unintelligible], the priest of Nabû who [lacuna]the bull [lacuna] They came and made the weaving by means of the handles and when he led the image of Nabû [lacuna]spears and leather quivers, from [lacuna] Nabû returned to Esagila, sheep offerings in front of Bêl and the god Mârbîti.

The lacunas in the text make it hard to understand what happened exactly, but it seems that there was an incident because Cambyses was incorrectly dressed: he and his men were armed, which was forbidden. Fortunately, the error was corrected and the statue of the god Nabû was brought to the Esagila temple according to the ritual regulations.

Cambyses' reign in Babylon lasted for only one year. It is not known why he resigned or what forced him to resign. The incident during the New Year's festival may have played a role. We simply do not know. It is possible that Cambyses was now made satrap of Bactria; in the next two generations, every crown prince served in that region. However, this is nothing but speculation.

Cyrus fell in a battle against the Massagetes in the last weeks of 530; the last letter that is dated to his reign was written in November. Before he left, he had appointed Cambyses as his successor. The first letter dated to the reign of Cambyses was written on 31 August 530.

Every Persian king needed to secure the support of the nobility. One of the means to achieve this, was a dynastic marriage. Herodotus tells us that Cambyses married Phaedymia, the daughter of Otanes. This Otanes may have been the brother of Cassandane, who was, still according to Herodotus, Cambyses' mother. If Herodotus is right, Cambyses' queen was also his cousin. However, Herodotus makes at least one mistake in his description of the family tree (he calls Otanes' father Pharnaspes instead of Thukra), so we must be skeptical.

Two other marriages were concluded with his sisters. One of them was -according to Ctesias- called Roxane; the other was called Atossa and was later to marry Cambyses' successor Darius. Herodotus thinks that these marriages are an example of Cambyses' madness, but if we assume that the Persian king was a Zoroastrian, there is nothing strange about it.

The conquest of Egypt

The most important event during Cambyses' reign was the conquest of Egypt. This meant that the king was away from Persia for some time. The Histories of Herodotus, our most important source, and the Persian Behistun inscription agree that Cambyses ordered, as a kind of safety measure, Cambyses ordered his brother to be executed (section 10); Herodotus calls this brother Smerdis, the Behistun inscription calls him Bardiya, which is more or less the same name. The two sources disagree about the moment of the murder: the Greek researcher dates it during the Egyptian campaign, the inscription states that it happened before Cambyses left Persia.

A son of Cyrus, named Cambyses, one of our dynasty, was king here [...]. That Cambyses had a brother, Smerdis by name, of the same mother and the same father as Cambyses. Afterwards, Cambyses slew this Smerdis. When Cambyses slew Smerdis, it was not known unto the people that Smerdis was slain. Thereupon Cambyses went to Egypt.

Probably, the inscription is correct. As we will see below, Herodotus has constructed a part of his Egyptian narrative as a catalogue of crimes and may well have postdated the fratricide. (The colorful narrative of Ctesias of Cnidus about the killing can be ignored as historical source. It is full of errors: for example, he calls Cambyses' victim Tanyoxarkes and wants us to believe that bull's blood is a deadly poison.)

Egypt was well-prepared for the war. Its pharaoh Amasis (Egyptian name Khnemibre Ahmose-si-Neit) had enlisted Carian and Greek mercenaries and had allied himself with Polycrates of Samos, who owned a large navy. This could be a great help, because marines could easily perform actions against the Persians when they were marching from Gaza to Pelusium, a vulnerable desert road along the coast. Shortly before the war broke out, Polycrates switched sides. Herodotus writes:

Without the knowledge of the Samians, Polycrates sent an envoy to Cambyses the son of Cyrus (who was gathering an army to attack Egypt) and asked him to send a messenger to him in Samos to ask for an armed force. When Cambyses heard this, he sent an envoy to the Samians and requested a naval force to join him in the war against Egypt. So Polycrates selected those of the citizens whom he most suspected of desiring to rise against him, and sent them away in forty warships, charging Cambyses not to send them back.

[Herodotus, Histories 3.44]

It is not clear whether these people ever joined Cambyses' Phoenician navy, but in any case, Amasis could not count on their support.

We happen to possess the autobiography of the admiral of the Egyptian fleet, Wedjahor-Resne. It is written on a small statue now in the Vatican Museums in Rome. One element is curiously absent from this text: Wedjahor-Resne does not mention a naval battle. Herodotus does not mention fighting at sea either. It is possible that the Persians had bribed the Egyptian admiral and offered him an important function, because after the conquest, Wedjahor-Resne was Cambyses' right-hand man. Ctesias of Cnidus, who is not known for his reliability, explicitly mentions a traitor, although he calls him Combaphis (Persica, §10).

Amasis died during the preparations of the war, probably in November 526, and was succeeded by his son Psammetichus III (Ankhkaenre Psamtik). Six months later, the Persian invaders and their Arabian allies reached Pelusium. The Egyptians were defeated and Cambyses' men continued to the Egyptian capital Memphis, which they took after a long siege. Psammetichus was captured alive and received a honorable treatment.

Cambyses was recognized as the new pharaoh. Wedjahor-Resne tells:

The great king of all foreign countries Cambyses came to Egypt, taking the foreigners of every foreign country with him. When he had taken possession of the entire country, they settled themselves down therein, and he was made great sovereign of Egypt and great king of all foreign countries. His Majesty appointed me his chief physician and caused me to stay with him in my quality of companion and director of the palace, and ordered me to compose his titulary, his name as king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Mesuti-Ra [born of Re].

Stated differently, Wedjahor-Resne helped Cambyses behave like a true Egyptian king. (Cyrus had done his best to behave himself as a native king when he had conquered Babylon; his son followed his example in the ancient kingdom along the Nile.) For example, Wedjahor-Resne persuaded Cambyses to direct the Persian garrison in the holy city of Sais to another camp, making sure that the sanctuary of Neit, the mother of the supreme god Re, and the shrine of Osiris were purified. His autobiography also makes it clear that the conquest of Egypt was accompanied with great misery.

I am the benefactor of my city. I have saved its inhabitants from the very large troubles which had come over the whole country and which had not yet existed before in this country. I defended the meek against the powerful; I saved those who were afraid after an accident had happened to them; I gave them all useful things when they were unable to take care of themselves.

Human suffering must have been immense. Probably, every soldier in the Persian army was rewarded with an Egyptian slave. This can be illustrated with a contract from Babylon: on 31 December 524, the veteran soldier Idin-Nabû sold his Egyptian slave with her baby, who was three months old. (The conclusion that Idin-Nabû sold his own child seems inescapable.)

A very late source, Iamblichus (c.245-c.330), tells us that among the slaves was the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, who was forced to spend twelve years in Babylon before he was allowed to return his own country. This may well be true.

Having conquered Lower Egypt, Cambyses sent out a small expeditionary force against the oases in the western desert. According to Herodotus, it reached the beautiful Bahariya oasis. But when the soldiers marched to Siwa, they were overtaken by the simoon storm and killed.

Cambyses and a part of his army went to the south (524/523). The capital of Upper Egypt, Thebes, was occupied and the army continued along the Nile until it reached the first cataract, where a garrison was posted. (The soldiers were Jews who had a temple of their own.) When Cambyses had reached the second cataract, he founded a town called 'market of Cambyses'. It may have been a fortified trading place where the Persians, Egyptians and Kushites (Nubian) could exchange commodities.

According to Herodotus, Cambyses intended to conquer Kush, but this is not very likely. Egypt was not completely pacified and it would have been foolish to leave the country before it was a safe possession of the Achaemenid empire. It is perhaps better to see the campaign to the border zone from an Egyptian point of view: the pharaoh had to go there at least once in his life to show himself as the true king.

A Persian embassy was sent to the Kushite capital, and the Kushites started to pay tribute (or continued an earlier trade). They are portrayed in Persepolis, bringing incense, ivory and an okapi for the great king's zoo.

Disquieting news forced Cambyses to return to Lower Egypt (Autumn 523). Psammetichus had organized a revolt against the new overlord. The Persian army could easily suppress the revolt, but its revenge was bloody and destructive. The Greek geographer Strabo of Amasia visited Thebes in 24 BCE and saw the ruins of several temples that had been destroyed. Perhaps this story was made up by the Egyptian priests, who had good reasons to hate Cambyses.

Pharaoh Amasis had offered great gifts to the temples, but Cambyses considered this outrageous. He may have tried to 'defend the meek against the powerful' by remitting the taxes that the Egyptians had to pay to the temples. A papyrus (now in the French Bibliothèque nationale) gives a summary of Cambyses' instructions:

Of the cattle that once were given by the people to the temples of the gods, let they give only half of it. [...] Regarding the poultry, do not give it to them any more. The priests are perfectly capable of rearing their own geese.

So the priests, who now had to breed their own geese, had good reason to hate the Persian king.

The madness of Cambyses

Although Cambyses had reduced the temple taxes, he did his best to behave as an Egyptian pharaoh. This is proven by the autobiography of Wedjahor-Resne, one of the few contemporary documents. He also made a wise decision when he appointed Aryandes as satrap of Egypt. This man ruled the country for more than twenty years, and possible almost thirty.

The Greek researcher Herodotus, living almost a century after the conquest of Egypt, offers a completely different picture. In his view, Cambyses' behavior is almost criminal. He gives a complete catalogue of evildoings. In Sais, he had violated the corpse of Amasis:

When Cambyses had entered the palace of Amasis, he gave command to take the corpse of Amasis out of his burial-place. When this had been done, he ordered [his courtiers] to scourge it and pluck out the hair and stab it, and to dishonor it in every other possible way. When they had done this too, they were wearied out, for the corpse was embalmed and held out against the violence and did not fall to pieces. Cambyses gave command to consume it with fire, a thing that was not permitted by his own religion. The Persians hold fire to be a god and to consume corpses with fire is by no means according to the Persian or Egyptian custom.

[Herodotus, Histories 3.16]

According to Herodotus, this happened almost immediately after the conquest of Egypt, in the summer of 525. A new sacrilege was committed after the expedition to Upper Egypt: Cambyses killed the Apis bull. This was a manifestation of the god Ptah and therefore a sacred animal. After the death of the Apis bull, the priests started to search for a new Apis, and when they had found it, every Egyptian joined the celebrations.

When Cambyses arrived at Memphis, Apis appeared to the Egyptians [...] and they began to wear their fairest garments and organized festivities. Cambyses saw the Egyptians doing thus and supposed that they were rejoicing because he had fared ill. Therefore, he called for the officers who had charge of Memphis, and when they had arrived, he asked them why the Egyptians had done nothing of this kind when he was at Memphis on the former occasion, but were now, when he came there after losing a large part of his army, very glad. They said that a god had appeared to them [...] and that whenever he appeared, they all rejoiced and kept festival. Hearing this Cambyses said that they were lying, and as liars he condemned them to death.

[Herodotus, Histories 3.27]

After the execution, Cambyses called the priests and the sacred bull into his presence.

When the priests brought Apis, Cambyses -being somewhat affected with madness- drew his sword, and aiming at the belly of Apis, struck his thigh. Then he laughed [...] and ordered those whose duty it was to do such things, to scourge the priests without mercy, and to put to death any one of the other Egyptians whom they should find keeping the festival. Thus the festival of the Egyptians was brought to an end, the priests were chastised, and Apis [...] lay dying in the temple. When he had died because of the wound, the priests buried him without the knowledge of Cambyses.

[Herodotus, Histories 3.27]

Egyptologists have refuted Herodotus' story. It is a fact that an Apis bull died in September 524, but he received a normal burial in the Serapeum at Saqqara (near Memphis). The funeral monument shows Cambyses worshipping the divine bull.

The next crime on Herodotus' list is the killing of his brother Smerdis. We have already seen above that this happened before Cambyses went to Egypt. Herodotus' claims that Cambyses' next victim was the son of one of his courtiers, Prexaspes. Twelve Persian noblemen were buried alive, courtiers were executed, statues of Egyptian gods were ridiculed. Herodotus concludes with a remark that this last crime shows that Cambyses was completely out of his mind, because only a madman would mock the ancient laws and customs of a foreign country (text).

This conclusion tells a lot about Herodotus, who had great respect for foreign cultures. The question is what its says about Cambyses, and the answer is: nothing. Herodotus is interested in the moral aspect of his story and did not check his spokesmen, the Egyptian priests who had, as we have already seen above, every reason to hate the Persian king.

However, it is too easy to conclude that Cambyses' behavior was completely normal and Herodotus is simply mistaken. The Apis was buried comparatively late, which may suggest that something unusual had happened. Many inscriptions mentioning Amasis were damaged, and although we do not know why and when, it certainly makes sense if we assume that Cambyses wanted to eradicate Amasis' reign. We simply do and can not know what happened in Egypt between 525 and 522.

The revolt of Gaumâta

Herodotus and the Behistun inscription agree that Cambyses' stay in Egypt was interrupted in the spring of 522 by the news that a Magian named Gaumâta had seized power in the Achaemenid empire, claiming to be Smerdis. (Gaumâta could do this, because the real Smerdis had been killed secretly.) According to the Behistun inscription:

When Cambyses had departed into Egypt, the people became hostile, and the lie multiplied in the land, even in Persia and Media, and in the other provinces. Afterwards, there was a certain man, a Magian, Gaumâta by name, who raised a rebellion in Paishiyâuvâdâ, in a mountain called Arakadriš. On the fourteenth day of the month Viyaxana[11 March 522] did he rebel. He lied to the people, saying: 'I am Smerdis, the son of Cyrus, the brother of Cambyses.' Then were all the people in revolt, and from Cambyses they went over unto him, both Persia and Media, and the other provinces. He seized the kingdom; on the ninth day of the month Garmapada [1 July 522] he seized the kingdom. Afterwards, Cambyses died uvamaršiyuš.

The word uvamaršiyuš means 'his own death'. Nobody knows how to understand this: some scholars have argued that Cambyses died of natural causes, others maintain that it means suicide. The second alternative seems more plausible, because otherwise 'he died' would have been sufficient.

Herodotus offers no real help. He tells that Cambyses, on hearing the news of the rebellion, rushed back to Persia. But when he jumped into the saddle of his horse, the cap fell of the sheath of his sword and exposed the blade, which pierced his thigh. The Greek historian does not fail to stress that this was just the spot where Cambyses had wounded the Apis. According to Herodotus, the Persian king died not much later. The idea that Cambyses died by his own sword may or may not corroborate the interpretation that uvamaršiyuš means suicide.

The last letter that is dated to Cambyses' reign was written on 18 April 522. It was found in Babylon, and it merely proves that Gaumâta was recognized as king in April or May. Cambyses probably was still alive. He may have died in July. The court official with the title of arštibara, "lance carrier", must have replaced him as commander. His name was Darius son of Hystaspes.

According to both Herodotus and the Behistun inscription, Darius and six noblemen killed the Magian Gaumâta on 29 September 522. The first regnal year of the new king saw nineteen battles in an intense civil war, but at the end of that long but single year, Darius was victorious and was recognized as the true successor of Cyrus the Great and Cambyses.