XXVIe Egyptian dynasty

Benefitting from the troubles of the Assyrians, one of the governors, Psammétique (-663/-609) succeeds in expelling them thanks to Lydian and Greek mercenaries. Psammétique {{Ier}} remakes the unit of the country. Its reign and those of its successors are marked by the “rebirth saïte”: they will imitate the Moyen Empire and even the Ancient Empire.

Néchao {{II}} will try to subject the kingdom of Juda, which leads it to run up against the Babylonians who beat it with Karkemish. It was a precursor of the Suez Canal. It made dig a channel connecting the Nile to the Red Sea and which functioned before being ensablé. He also asked sailors phenicians to leave the delta and to make a tour along the African coast.

The last large king of this dynasty is called Amasis (-568/-525) which must face the xenophobe reactions of the population. It will build in the delta the town of Naucratis, reserved to the Greeks. It will install, on the island of Elephantine, a kind of ghetto for the Jews. But it feels to assemble the Persian danger, this is why it tightens its relations with the Greeks, the Lydians (-546) and the Babylonians (-539). It is also more the philhellene of kings d' Égypte; it finances, for example, the rebuilding of the temple of Apollo.

Cambise {{II}} the Persian king, overcomes the Lydians in -546, the Babylonians in -539 and conquers Egypt in -525.

Economy & company

More than ever the Egyptian company, and particularly the army, appears very cosmopolitan and métissée. Greek and Cariens are added to the Nubie integrated in the past NS and Libyens and also to the quotas Juifs, Syria NS and Phéniciens, the latter very present, with the Greeks of Ionie, in the military navy, as in the merchant fleet.

One notes the development of an armament and an international trade of private initiative, especially of Eastern origin. In the army, the influence of the military clans of Libyan origin remains real, but is balanced by these new forces mercenaries. This opening increased on the Mediterranean involves a reinforcement of the military and commercial bonds with the Greeks (commercial counter of Naucratis). The State saïte benefits from these evolutions: to ensure its safety and its economic prosperity, it levies advantageous taxation of the international trade. It also supports it by arranging the channel of Ouadi Toumilat, which makes it possible to connect the Mediterranean to the Red Sea by the delta. The bureaucracy saïte succeeds in framing this profitable economic expansion between imports of Egée and the Middle East and Egyptian export of cereals, flax cloths and papyrus.

Art & culture

Cultural rebirth for the period saïte (-664/-525), the art of State, which had begun again under Kouchites, develops thanks to the restoration of the order and with economic prosperity. One sees reappearing on the sarcophagi of notable of the sequences of old “the Textes of the pyramids”, and the displacement of the center of the capacity of Know with Memphis makes classicism memphite of the Ancient Empire the artistic model than ever imitated more to affirm the found size.

The monumental activity is strong in Memphis, where the Sérapéum of Saqqarah is increased, whereas the worship of the bull Apis culminates, in the general movement of devotion to the crowned animals, receptacles of the divine power incarnated on ground, substitutes of a royalty prone to so much of sudden starts, to guarantee the walk of the universe.

Constructions are numerous also inside the delta, in particular with Know, cradle of the dynasty, where the large temple of the goddess Neith becomes one of the principal centers of the religious and cultural life, especially famous for its medical school. It is near the Maison of life of the temple of Neith, that in the middle of the O C, Hérodote seeks to penetrate the knowledge of the scribes. It is as at the time saïte as are codified many great corpora of religious and funerary texts (recension saïte of the Livre of Dead the developed with the Nouvel Empire).

Pharaons of the dynasty

The three first are not that kings of Know (or Proto-Saïte)

Ammeris (-715 with -695)
Stephinates or Tefnakht II (-695 with -688)
Nechepso or Nekauba (-688 with -672)
Néchao {{Ier}} (-672 with -664)
Psammétique {{Ier}} (-664 with -610)
Néchao {{II}} (-610 with -595 )
Psammétique {{II}} (-595 with -589)
Apriès (-589 with -570)
Amasis (-571 with -526)
Psammétique {{III}} (-526 with -525)

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