HistoryKush and PersiaIn 525 BC, Persia, under Cambyses defeated Egyptian pharaoh Psammetic II at the battle of Pelusiumruler and ruled Egypt. This took part during the reign of the Kushite King Amani-natake-lebte (538-519 BC)1. Various historical records mention military frictions between Kush and Persia2. Herodotus, the Greek historian and geographer, reprted that Cambyses wanted to conquer Kush so he sent to the king of Kush“spies” as messengers bearing gifts. The king of Kush, as Herodotus explains, is aware of the fact that the Persian messengers are in fact spies. However the king of Nubia made a ridicule of Cambyses gifts. He farther insulted him by sending him a bow back with the messengers telling him “when the Persians draw their bows (of equal size as mine) as easily as I do this, then he”-(Cambyses)-“should march against the long lived Ethiopians,”(Herodotus iii. 21)3.
Having heard this, Cambysus got frustrated and in response led a large army towards Kush. However when he “had passed over the fifth part of the way,”(Herodotus iii. 25) to Kush, his army ran out of supplies in the barren deserts of Nubia. Herodotus writes that his army got so hungry that they started to eat each other. Due to the miserable circumstances Cambysus decided to turn back and gave up the expedition. Latter in the first century AD, the Roman writer Strabo, writes that when Cambyses was traveling from the city of Premnis (Karanog in Lower Nubia) with his army to conquer Kush, he was “overwhelmed by the setting in of a whirlwind”(Strabo xvii. 54)4 and was forced to head back. According to Herodotus, Kush did not pay tribute to Persia but instead they constantly sent the Persian King precious gifts including gold, ebony and elephant tusks. We also know from Herodotus as well as from other Greek reporters that part of the Persian army of King Xerxes (486-465 BC) was composed of Kushite archers (Herodotus vii.69-70).
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