The 30th Dynasty of Egypt

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Original Historical Documents

Ummubaydah
Dynasty 21st
The Last of the Pharaohs

The 30th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt

The History of Nakhtnebef Kheperkare

Persia

ca. 480 BC Arsames as Pekida

Southern Egypt

ca. 455 BC - Psamtek

ca. 424 BC - Nekhthoreb

Northern Egypt

ca. 440 BC - Nekhtnebef

ca. 420 BC - Nesunebded at Tanis

Decline/End of Egyptian Revenues for Persia - Rise of the 20th Dynasty in Egypt

ca. 407 BC - Arsames dies.

ca. 380-369 BC - Persia and its allies invade Egypt to be defeated by Ramses III.

In recent times more and more artifacts have been found which can be attributed to the ancient person of `Nakhtnebef', by modern scholars identified as `Nectanebo I' but who we believe was an official under the stringent auspices of the Persian pekida `Arsames'. For this reason we include this file to present what has been found so far and how it relates to the identity of this significant person and the chronological aspects surrounding his time.

As we showed already on the subject of `Nakhthoreb', another official working for Arsames of this time period, these individuals were powerful rulers of assigned regions in Egypt with the task to procure rich revenue for the Persian crown. As such they had no native Egyptian superiors and acted as virtual pharaonic kings in their domain. This is expressed by wearing traditional pharaonic crowns, producing stela, inscriptions and writing their name in a cartouche. In that capacity the southern and northern pekidas coexisted as long as their life span allowed them to function in their business.

That their temples and names have been found in the territory surrounding the Great Oasis Siwa indicates that they controlled the caravan routes and must have collected income from these merchants as well as acting as protectors of these routes. But significantly, there is no evidence that `Nekhtnebef' was involved in any wars like that against the Persian and Greek invaders of Egypt. We maintain that both, `Nekhtnebef' and `Nakhthoreb', have been mis-identified and mis-placed on the BC time scale and that Ramses III and Ramses VI fulfill the role of the Egyptian kings called Nectanebo I and Nectanebo II respectively by ancient Greek writers of the history before their time.

All We Can Find About Nectanebo (conv. 380-362 BC)

News reports provided this recent information:

"Pharaonic temple discovered in Egypt's desert - Image

20-metre long temple destroyed, buried in western desert's sand will help archaeologists' knowledge of oases in ancient times.

By Michel Sailhan - CAIRO

Archaeologists have discovered the ruins of a Pharaonic temple in Egypt's western desert that will help their knowledge of oases in ancient times.
"Now destroyed and buried in sand in the middle of the desert, this temple which was about 20 meters (66 feet) long is located 140 kilometres (85 miles east) from Siwa on the banks of an ancient abandoned oasis", Italian Egyptologist Paolo Gallo said.
"The major deities of the Egyptian pantheon are represented in very beautiful painted relief" on blocks from the collapsed walls of the temple, Gallo said.
His mission is working to save the most important blocks, which are threatened by erosion due to the region's strong winds.
The oldest part of the temple was built and decorated by the Pharaoh Nectanebo I (380-361 BC), said Gallo, of the archaeological mission of Turin University.

Comment: This is based on fragment we have on file bearing the partial cartouche of Nakhtnebef who is interpreted to have been Pharaoh Nectanebo I.

"Thanks to the hieroglyphic inscriptions at the site, we have been able to identify the name which the oasis was given in antiquity: Imespep," he said.
"This find is of considerable historical importance", the archaeologist said, pointing out that it was the first known monument of Nectanebo I in the Siwa region.
Gallo explained that the find "reveals the political will of this ruler to develop the zone of the western oases of Egypt and improve the caravan links with the Nile Valley."
The site itself was uncovered in the 1920s in the oasis called nowadays Bahrein, which means in Arabic the two seas, or lakes. "But the existence of this temple was not known at all," he said.
"The sanctuary was dedicated to a special cult of the god Amun, who was called here 'Amun who gives strength'", said the archaeologist.
Next to the temple, a hall supported by six pillars was added to the sanctuary, probably under the Ptolemies (323-30 BC).
Bahrein, or Imespep, was in antiquity a caravan city on the road between the oasis of Bahariya to the oasis of Siwa, both of which are still populated.
It lies in an area of the western desert called the Great Sand Sea because of gigantic dunes under which the lost army of Persian emperor Cambyses is said to be buried.
Herodotus, the leading source of original information about the history of Greece and Egypt between 550 and 479 BC, said Cambyses' 50,000 strong army vanished there on their way to plunder Siwa.
Cambyses invaded Egypt in 525, overthrowing the native Egyptian pharaoh Psamtek III, last ruler of Egypt's 26th Dynasty, to become the first ruler of Egypt's 27th Persian Dynasty.
Gallo said Bahrein was deserted in Byzantine times (395-640 AD) as caravan traffic declined, and was never populated again because the region is one of the world's most hostile places for people to live.
Gallo created in 1997 the Italian Archaeological Mission of Alexandria (CMAIA) which is also working on Nelson island, off the coast of the Mediterranean city.
It discovered there last November the remains of a Macedonian fortress built by settlers who came with Alexander the Great."

Books

The Inscriptions of Nectanebo

Canadian archaeologists have recently found the remains of a large wall surrounding an area measuring some 770 x 1155 feet in the eastern Nile Delta. They found similarities between this wall and that found at Dendera in southern Egypt, and Behbeit el-Hagar, north of Cairo. Gregory Mumford of the University of Toronto said that such structures must have protected a significant structure. The existence of an even older temple at Tell Tebilla has been susupected since the 1820's when the British explorer James Burton mentioned seeing granite blocks on the ground during a visit to the area. Tell Tebilla remained virtually untouched until 1988 when the Egyptian government mounted a salvage excavation because a water treatment plant was being built on the site.

Since 1999 the Canadian team has documented nearly 400 stone blocks from the New Kingdom, and later periods, a cemetary and mastaba tombs, beads, amulets and bronze figurines, such as the seated Horus the Child as well as imported pottery and jewelry, the latter of which suggesting that Tell Tebilla was a thriving seaside port serving the provinvial capital of Mendes, 7 miles to the south. [See Field Notes in Archaeology Odyssey, M/J 2004, p. 16]

Gestimates are that the structure was ereceted either by Nectanebo I or II but so far their name does not seem to have been found there. Attributing buildings to these two individuals is based on statements that during their time constructions were carried on in the region. In revised view they were the Egyptian governing representatives for the Persian overlord. There was no royal lineage pharaonic king in Egypt at the time and so they were represented as the kings of Egypt. Kings in ancient times were not infrequently more like the officials responsible to carry on the governing of the land.

This first volume of final reports on the ongoing excavation project at Tell el-Balamun in the Nile Delta, site of the most northerly city of Ancient Egypt, deals with the first four seasons. The strategy was to proceed from topographic survey to the excavation of major public buildings, followed by the investigation of settlements. The state of preservation of the tell mound allowed the dating of settlement areas through an examination of the surface ceramics as an extension of the survey. The name Balamun derives from the N.K. toponym pA-iw-n-imn and can be identified with "the northern Behdet."
In chapter 1 the topography of the site is described, the present conditions as well as the ancient settlement patterns from surface remains, which contained post-pharaonic pottery and glass as well as pharaonic ceramics, which come from the very extensive pharaonic areas of settlement on the site. Notes on the pottery drawn in the plate section are given here.
Chapter 2 is devoted to the temple enclosure walls. Two mud-brick enclosure walls around the temple area have been discovered, an inner wall probably dating from the XXVIth Dynasty and another with a slightly greater perimeter, which is tentatively attributed to the reign of Nectanebo (I or II?). The position of the main temple "A" was clear owing to its destruction in the Late Roman Period. The foundations of two more, relatively small temples, later destroyed by quarrying, have been discovered. Nakhthoreb/Nectanebo II(?) - Actually this would be the cartouche of a 4th century Persian governor/ administrator of Egypt, representative of the so-called 30th Dynasty. The find of foundation deposits permitted to identify the builders of temple "B" and "C" as, respectively, Nectanebo (I or II?) and Psammetichus I. The subsidiary temple B was constructed as a bark station in front of the main temple, at right-angles to the axis of temple A. The small temple of Psammetichus I was built close to the king's other building projects, i.e. the fort and its annexe, in the inner enclosure. A building phase of the T.I.P. has been discovered below the XXXth Dynasty remains.
This fortified camp of Psammetichus I is the subject of chapter 4. It is one of three known examples of this type of building from the Delta, the others being located at Naukratis and Daphnae (Tell Defenneh), which were possibly destined for the housing of the king's mercenary troops. Inside the temple enclosure a late T.I.P. to early XXVIth Dynasty settlement has been found. The discovery of Ptolemaic housing within the enclosure was unexpected, particularly as the settlement seems to have been established in the 3rd century B.C., when the main temple of Amun "A" was probably still in use.
The catalogue of finds in ch. 6 contains descriptions of all objects discovered in the different areas. They are arranged according to material: stone (nos. 1-15); faience (16-49); jewellery (50-57); metal objects (58-77); pottery objects (78-95); ivory and bone (96).
Included in the catalogue are the foundation deposits of Nectanebo (I or II?) (groups 97-98) and Psammetichus I (groups 99-104). The deposits of Psammmetichus I add significantly to the very small number of recorded deposits of this king and contain objects of types not previously found in such contexts.
Chapter 7 presents the corpus of Late Dynastic pottery. Pottery of other dates, such as Ptolemaic or Late Roman, is described in the account of the excavations.

SPENCER, A.J., Excavations at Tell el-Balamun 1991-1994, London, Published for the Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum Press, 1996. (21 x 30 cm; 100 p., plan, fig., pl. incl. colour). ISBN 0-7141-0991-6; pr. Ł 50

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