Battle of Pelusium

Background

Herodotus on motives and background

The most common recounting of the events leading to the battle of Pelusium is from Greek historians, particularly Herodotus. According to Herodotus, the conflict between the Pharaoh Amasis II of Egypt and Cambyses II of Persia was a gradual process involving multiple personalities, mostly Egyptians. According to Herodotus, an Egyptian physician was requested by Cambyses from Amasis on good terms, to which Amasis complied. The physician (most likely an ancient ophthalmologist) resented the forced labour that Amasis had imposed on him, and in retaliation, persuaded Cambyses to ask of Amasis a daughter in marriage, knowing how Amasis would dislike losing his daughter to a Persian. Cambyses complied, requesting the hand of the daughter of Amasis in marriage.

Amasis, unable to let go of his offspring, and unwilling to start a conflict with the Persians, instead sent an Egyptian girl named Nitetis, who was a daughter of an Egyptian named Apries. According to Herodotus, Apries was the previous pharaoh whom Amasis had defeated and killed, and whose daughter was now to be sent in place of Amasis's own offspring. Once greeted by Cambyses as "the daughter of Amasis", Nitetis explained the trickery employed by Amasis to avoid giving away his own daughter to the king. This infuriated Cambyses, who vowed to avenge the insult.

According to Herodotus, another motivation that solidified Cambyses's expedition into Egypt was Phanes of Halicarnassus. Originally a council man and advisor to Amasis, an unknown course of events led to bitterness developing between them to the point that Amasis sent an Egyptian eunuch after Phanes, pursuing him to Lydia. Phanes was captured in Lycia but outwitted his guards by getting them drunk and escaped to Persia, and assisted the Persian king in all manners of strategy, and was instrumental in shaping his resolve for conquest of Egypt.

Despite having full control over the Neo-Babylonian empire and its sub-regions including northern Arabia, Cambyses sent a message to the King of Arabia requesting safe passage through the desert road from Gaza to Pelusium. The Arabian king, himself an enemy of Amasis and glad to facilitate his destruction, granted safe passage to Cambyses and even supplied him with troops.

Siege of Gaza

According to Polybius, even with all the precautions taken on entering the border of Egypt, only the city of Gaza resisted the Persians, which fell after a long siege.

Preparations for the battle

When the news of the impending battle reached Egypt, Psamtik III (Psammenitus), son and heir of Amasis II, gathered the Egyptian army, stationing it along the fork of the Red Sea and the river Nile. Amasis himself had died six months before Cambyses reached Egypt.

Psamtik had hoped that Egypt would be able to withstand the threat of the Persian attack by an alliance with the Greeks, but this hope failed, as the Cypriot towns and the tyrant Polycrates of Samos, who possessed a large fleet, now preferred to join the Persians. That one of Egypt's most prominent tactical advisers, Phanes of Halicarnassus, had already gone over to the Persian side meant that Psamtik was entirely dependent on his own limited military experience. Polycrates sent 40 triremes to the Persians. Psamtik, in a violent act of revenge prior to the confrontation with the Persian army, arrested all the sons of Phanes and stood them between two bowls. He then cut them one by one, draining their blood and mixing it with wine. Psamtik then drank of it and made every other councilman drink their blood before the battles.