Egypt of the Saite pharaohs, 664–525 BC

by Roger Forshaw

In the 660s BC Egypt was a politically fragmented and occupied country. However, this was to change when a family of local rulers from the city of Sais declared independence from the Assyrian Empire, and in a few short years succeeded in bringing about the reunification of Egypt. The Saites established central government, reformed the economy and promoted trade. The country became prosperous, achieving a pre-eminent role in the Mediterranean world. This is the first monograph devoted entirely to a detailed exploration of the Saite Dynasty. It reveals the dynamic nature of the period, the astuteness of the Saite rulers and their considerable achievements in the political, economic, administrative and cultural spheres. It will appeal not only to students of Egyptology but also, because of the interactions of the Saite Dynasty with the Aegean and Mesopotamia worlds, to anyone interested in ancient history.

248 pages, Hardcover

Published May 22, 2019

Reviews

[Sense of History]

When we talk about classical Egyptian civilization, it is almost always captured in the sequence of the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms, spread over no less than 2,000 years, from about 3000 to 1000 BCE. After that, it seems as if that civilization had completely faded away, and was but a shadow of its former self. This is partly due to the lack of source material (after 1000 BCE, much more was written on perishable materials), but also because Egypt in the first half of the first millennium BCE apparently came into foreign hands: Libyans first, followed by so-called Kushites, from the south (what is now Sudan). Incidentally, the black African origins of the latter played a role in the disdainful treatment by the nascent academic Egyptology in the 19th and part of the 20th century. The curious thing is that these foreigners (who were not really foreigners) cherished, preserved, and imitated as much as possible the gigantic legacy of the millennia before. I know “Archaism” is a problematic concept, but in Ancient Egypt the 'imitation' of what was seen as the heyday of the pharaonic civilization was always on the agenda, even in the Middle and New Kingdoms, and certainly afterwards. And, of course, it was not just imitation, but rather creative adaptation.

This became even more the case when Egypt was threatened and subsequently occupied by a real foreign power, shortly before the middle of the first millennium: first the Assyrians (in the 7th century bce) and then the Babylonians (in the 6th century bce). It was this confrontation with a civilization that was perhaps slightly less glorious, but certainly as old as the pharaonic one, that initiated a movement in Egypt to further emphasize its own identity. I read earlier in Jan Assmann’s brillant book The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs that it was in this period, that of the Saite dynasty (664-525 BCE), that archaism was once again the order of the day, and even more, that systematic attempts were made to canonize all kinds of facets of Ancient Egyptian civilization, to record them in a so-called definitive form. This was the case, for example, for the Ancient Egyptian book par excellence: the Book of the Dead. And furthermore I learned that it was this canonized form that flowed through to the Greeks and determined the image that we in the West subsequently received from those Greeks of pharaonic Egypt.

It was with this in mind that I started this book by Roger Forshaw. Unfortunately, I remained unsatisfied. Forshaw does paint a solid and detailed picture of the political-military developments under the Saite dynasty, but culture remains almost completely out of the picture. For example, he does point out that the Book of the Dead was thoroughly revised, but no more than that. Forshaw is not the man of grand interpretations and visions (as Assmann sometimes was a bit too much): he keeps it dry and factual. Meritorious, certainly, but no more than that. So, I'm certainly gonna stay on the lookout to explore more of this very interesting period (coincidentally - or not - coinciding with the so-called Axian Age?).

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit dry and academic, with lots of footnotes. Forshaw strives for completeness, although he also was critical towards his sources. The focus is on political-military history and curiously also on the building politics of the pharaohs, two things leaders of early societies always boasted about. I read this to get to know more about the culture of the time, that is said to be the age Egyptian culture was canonized. But unfortunately that was not the author's scope. More on this extremely interesting phenomenon in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....

[Comes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice narrative and theme based overlook at the Saite period. Each chapter has the notes at the end and it's a relatively short book.