Show Notes
In 673 BC, the mighty Assyrian Empire marched against Egypt, determined to achieve a conquest greater than any Assyrian king had accomplished before. Instead, its army suffered a humiliating defeat.
My voice is a bit different because I am recovering from a bad cold. Editing is probably more choppy than usual. Such is life.
But why did King Esarhaddon invade Egypt in the first place? And how had Egypt, after centuries of political fragmentation, become powerful enough to resist the greatest empire in the ancient Near East?
In this episode of Oldest Stories, we explore the remarkable reign of Pharaoh Taharqa, the Kushite ruler of Egypt's Twenty-Fifth Dynasty. Under Taharqa, Egypt experienced a revival of wealth, monumental construction, religious life, and royal authority. Meanwhile, the small kingdoms of the Levant increasingly found themselves caught between the growing influence of Egypt and the crushing demands of Assyrian imperial rule.
We examine the uncertain extent of Egyptian involvement in Levantine rebellions, the strategic ambitions of the Assyrian kings, and the political calculations of the minor rulers who struggled to preserve their independence. Finally, we follow Esarhaddon's ill-fated expedition across the Sinai and into Egypt, where the Assyrian army met a defeat that its own royal records preferred to forget.
For an emperor who had promised extraordinary greatness under the favor of the gods, this was a serious problem.
More from Oldest Stories
The Pedubastis Cycle is a group of ancient Egyptian heroic tales centered on Pharaoh Pedubastis, Inaros, Petechonsis, Pemaus, and the powerful local rulers of Egypt during the centuries surrounding the Assyrian invasions. Preserved mainly in fragmentary Demotic Egyptian manuscripts from later periods, these stories transform an obscure era of Egyptian political fragmentation into a legendary age of heroes, feuds, enchanted objects, battles, divine intervention, and dynastic rivalry.
How did ancient Assyria use divination, astrology, and animal livers to make decisions of war, government, and royal policy? Under King Esarhaddon, the Neo-Assyrian Empire developed one of the ancient world’s most sophisticated systems of omen interpretation, combining centuries of recorded observations with extispicy, celestial omens, ritual expertise, and consultation with the gods.
The Cimmerians were among the first great horse nomad powers to crash into the civilizations of the ancient Near East. Emerging from the Scytho-Siberian world north of the Caucasus, they struck Urartu, devastated Phrygia and Lydia, raided deep into the Near East, and became legendary in Greek memory as one of the great barbarian terrors of antiquity.
Esarhaddon inherited the Neo-Assyrian Empire at the height of its power—but his kingship looked very different from that of the warrior-kings who came before him. Plagued by questions of legitimacy, surrounded by prophets and diviners, and often absent from his own military campaigns, Esarhaddon nevertheless presided over an extraordinarily aggressive and successful Assyrian state.
The ancient story of Ahiqar follows a legendary wise man and royal adviser at the court of the Assyrian king Sennacherib. After adopting his nephew Nadan and teaching him a long collection of proverbs, Ahiqar is betrayed, falsely accused of treason, condemned to death, and forced to hide beneath his own house. His eventual return leads to a strange contest of riddles with the Pharaoh of Egypt and a final confrontation with the student who rejected his wisdom.