Battle of Pelusium

(525 b.c.)

   A battle fought between the Egyptians and the Persians near Pelusium, a town strategically situated southwest of the Palestinian town of Gaza and east of the Nile delta. (In ancient times, a branch of the Nile emptied into the Mediterranean Sea not far from Pelusium; that branch later dried up.) The Persians were led by their king, Cambyses, son of Cyrus II, who sought to invade Egypt and make it part of the growing Persian Empire. The Egyptian commander was the reigning pharaoh, Psammetichus III. Most of the details of the battle itself are unknown. Ctesias, a fourth-century Greek historian who worked at the Persian court and wrote a history of Persia, which is now lost except for a few fragments, claimed that seven thousand Persians and fifty thousand Egyptians were killed. These numbers may well be exaggerated, but there is no doubt that Cambyses was the victor and went on to capture most of the rest of Egypt. This was confirmed by Herodotus in his own book, which survives. Herodotus writes that he visited Pelusium a few decades later, and "at the place where the battle was fought . . . the bones still lay there, those of the Persian dead separate from those of the Egyptian, just as they were originally divided." (Histories 3.13)

   See also: Cambyses; Egypt; Persian Empire