In West Asia, after Ashurbanipal’s death in 627 BC the Assyrian army was defeated by the increasingly powerful Chaldaean Nabopollassar of Babylon. Egypt was afraid of the “illiterate barbarians” (Chaldaeans, Scythians and Medes) and so began to support the Assyrians as the lesser threat! However, Nineveh fell in 612 BC. The Egyptians under Necho II (610-595 BC) tried to help them and to reassert their power by returning to Palestine in 609 BC. However, after four years the new powerful Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar (605-561 BC) drove them out of Palestine. He continued south but was stopped by the Egyptian army at its border in about 600 BC and Nebuchadnezzar returned to Babylon.

Necho II was the Pharaoh who commissioned the Phoenicians to sail round Africa, using trireme (three rows of oars) ships designed by Greeks. They set off from the Red Sea and 3 years later arrived at Gibraltar, (the “Pillars of Hercules”). He also built a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea to promote trade, a forerunner of the Suez Canal, (although previous ones had been built, for example, by Ramesses II.

Pharaoh Apries, (589-570 BC), tried to help Judah against the Babylonians, but failed and Jerusalem was destroyed in 587 BC. There was a civil war in the Delta Region around 570 BC over the presence of so many Greek immigrants in Egypt. Pharaoh Amasis (570-526 BC), a skilful politician who deposed Apries, set up a wholly Greek town called Naucratis to satisfy the Egyptian natives. The Ionian mercenaries took back stories of Egypt to the west coast of Asia Minor in the 6^th century BC, making people there very curious. Herodotus (484-430 BC), who Cicero called the “father of history”, was a tourist in 450 BC going as far as the first cataract. He wrote a great deal about his trip – sometimes inaccurately. At about this time the population of Egypt had reached a massive 7.5 million, thanks partly to the influx of foreigners. It was not until 2,500 years later in the 19^th century AD that it finally passed 8 million.

Around 550 BC, when the Persians became the next threat, Egypt turned to Greece for support, as it was also an enemy of Persia. The Greeks had held the Egyptians in high esteem during the 7^th and early 6^th centuries BC, but their interest subsequently waned. In 525 BC the Persians attacked and Egypt was overrun, becoming a province of the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire, with Cambyses II, the Persian leader as the founder of the 27^th Dynasty. Cambyses II left a Satrap in charge of Egypt and returned to Asia in 522 BC. The Egyptians promptly killed their Satrap so the next Persian Emperor, Darius the Great (521-485 BC) returned, killed the Egyptian usurpers, restored Persian control and based himself in Sais.  He acted as a Pharaoh, building temples and other buildings to Egyptian gods. He had Egyptian wise men write down Egyptian laws for everyone to follow. From the start of the Late Period the Egyptians wrote in Demotic for vernacular and literary works, while the Persians wrote in Aramaic. Darius is also said to have built a canal between the Red Sea and the Nile, but more probably he completed the one started by Necho II. In 486 BC Xerxes, Darius’s second son but by his chief wife, became his successor, and had to put down a revolt in the Delta Region cities. After Xerxes murder in 465 BC, probably by his uncle, a supporter of his son and successor Artaxerxes (465-424 BC), the Egyptians revolted again. With the help of the Greeks who sent 200 ships from Cyprus, the Egyptians captured Memphis, apart from the citadel, in 461BC. The Satrap, Achaemenes, Xerxes brother, was killed in 460 BC. The Persian army returned in 454 BC and defeated the Egyptian army, and the Greeks retreated to Cyrene in North Africa. A peace treaty was signed between Persia and Greece in 448 BC so the Greeks formally withdrew their military support, but it allowed the Greeks to visit Egypt in large numbers as “tourists”.