Psamtik I: The Founder of the Saite Dynasty and the Restorer of Egyptian Independence
Psamtik I stands as one of the most important rulers of Egypt’s Late Period. At a time when the country was fractured, weakened, and overshadowed by foreign powers, Psamtik I achieved what many thought impossible: he reunited Egypt under native rule and ushered in a period of political stability, economic recovery, and cultural revival. His reign marked the beginning of the 26th Dynasty, also known as the Saite Period, named after the Delta city of Sais, which he made his capital.
Psamtik I Name
The Egyptian name psmṯk, pronounced as Psamāṯək, was a short form of p-s-n-mṯk. This means “the man of Meṯek”, with Meṯek presumably a deity.
His name was rendered by the Assyrians as Pishamilki, by the Ancient Greeks as Psammētikhos, and by the Romans as Psammētichus.
Psamtik was also called Nabu-shezibanni (Nabu-šezibanni), which means “O Nabu, save me!” by the Assyrians.
Psamtik I Wives
Psamtik’s chief wife was Mehytenweskhet, the daughter of Harsiese, the vizier of the North and High Priest of Re at Heliopolis. Psamtik and Mehytenweskhet were the parents of Necho II, Merneith, and the Divine Adoratrice Nitocris I.
Psamtik’s father-in-law was married twice: to Sheta, with whom he had a daughter named Naneferheres, and to an unknown woman, by whom he had both Djedkare, who succeeded him as vizier of the North, and Mehytenweskhet.
Egypt Before Psamtik I: A Nation in Crisis
Before the ascendancy of Psamtik I, Egypt was very unstable. The Third Intermediate Period had fragmented the nation into warring centres of power. There was a centralized power as local rulers, high priests and foreign powers all contested power.
Assyrian Domination
In the 7th century BCE, Egypt fell under the influence of the Assyrian Empire, which installed client rulers and intervened militarily. Although Assyrian control was not absolute, it severely limited Egypt’s independence and prestige.
Egypt needed a leader who could navigate this dangerous political landscape. Psamtik I emerged as that figure.
Naophorous Block Statue of a Governor of Sais, Psamtik I
Psamtik I Background
In 671 BCE, the Assyrian king Esarhaddon invaded Egypt. This invasion was directed against the Kushite rulers of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt, who had been in control of Upper Egypt, rather than against the native Egyptian rulers. The Assyrians established a government based on the local Egyptian leaders and established the twelve kinglets that constituted a Dodecarchy that controlled the Nile Delta. They also formed alliances with the ruler of the city of Sais, Necho I, who was the most powerful of the Delta kinglets, as well as with Pakruru, the ruler of the important nome of Per-Sopdu.
In 665 BCE, the Kushite king Tantamani invaded Lower Egypt again, and Necho I and Pakruru resisted the Kushite attack. Necho I died in battle and his son Psamtik I fled to Syria, while Pakruru became the spokesperson of the Delta kinglets during the peace negotiations with Tantamani at Memphis.
The next year, in 664 BCE, the Assyrians under Esarhaddon’s son Ashurbanipal invaded Egypt again, and the Assyrian army retook Memphis, proceeded with the Sack of Thebes, and expelled Tantamani from Egypt. Necho I’s son Psamtik I returned to Egypt with this invading force, was installed by the Assyrians as the ruler of Sais and Memphis, and concluded with the Assyrians an adû agreement, some type of superior-inferior relation, but none of the Assyrian sources details the arrangements.
Sais: The New Capital
Sais city
Psamtik I established Sais as Egypt’s political and administrative capital.
Why Sais?
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Located in the fertile western Delta
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Close to the Mediterranean trade routes
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Strong association with the ancient goddess Neith
Goddess Neith
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Well-positioned for diplomacy and defence
Under Psamtik, Sais became a centre of government, law, religion, and learning.
Psamtik I Reign
For the first two years of his reign, Psamtik I ruled in conformity with the arrangement implemented by the Assyrians in Egypt as one of many vassal kinglets of the Egyptian Dodecarchy. According to Herodotus, during this period, Psamtik unwittingly fulfilled a prophecy by an oracle which promised the kingship of all Egypt to whoever poured a libation from a bronze vessel, after which the other kinglets of the Dodecarchy chased him from Memphis, of which he lost the rule, and he had to flee into the swamps of the Nile Delta.
After being chased from Memphis, Psamtik I received another similar prophecy from the goddess Wadjet of Buto, who promised him the rule over all Egypt should he employ bronze men from the sea. Beginning in 662 BCE, Psamtik I formed contacts with Gyges, the king of the Anatolian kingdom of Lydia, who sent to Egypt the Ionian Greek and Carian mercenaries that Psamtik I used to reconquer Memphis and defeat the other kinglets of the Dodecarchy, some of whom fled to Libya. Psamtik I might have also been aided in these military campaigns by Arabs from the Sinai Peninsula.
Slab of the Egyptian king Psamtik I
After having eliminated all his rivals, Psamtik I reorganised these mercenaries and placed them in key garrisons at Daphnae in the East and Elephantine in the South to prevent a possible Kushite attack and to control trade. This military aid from Lydia lasted until 658 BCE, at which point Gyges faced an impending Cimmerian invasion. By Psamtik I’s 4th regnal year, he completed the forging of an alliance with the powerful family of the Masters of Shipping from Heracleopolis, and by his 8th regnal year in 657 BCE, he was in full control of the Delta.
Interpretations of Psamtik I’s wars as an alliance between Sais and Lydia against Assyria appear to be inaccurate, despite negative attitudes of the Assyrians towards Gyges’s and Psamtik’s actions. The Assyrians had raised Sais into preeminence in Egypt after expelling the Saites’ Kushite enemies from the country, but Psamtik I and Ashurbanipal had signed a treaty with each other, and no hostilities between them are recorded.
Thus Psamtik I and Ashurbanipal had remained allies ever since the former had been put in power with Assyrian military support. The participation of the Arab tribes of the Sinai, who were Assyrian vassals, further attests to the lack of enmity between Sais and Assyria at this period, and the silence of Assyrian sources concerning Psamtik I’s expansion implies there was no hostility, whether overt or covert, between Assyria and Sais during Psamtik I’s unification of Egypt under his rule.
Likewise, Gyges’s military support of Psamtik I was not directed against Assyria and is not mentioned as hostile to Assyria or allied with other countries against Assyria in Assyrian records; the Assyrian disapproval of Gyges’s support for Psamtik I was primarily motivated by Gyges’s refusal to ally with Assyria and his undertaking of these actions independently of Assyria, which the Assyrians interpreted as an act of arrogance, rather than by the support itself.
Statue of Psamtik I
Psamtik I’s campaigns were not directed against Assyrian power and appear to have been conducted only against the rival kinglets of the Delta, and Ashurbanipal’s disapproval of his actions were motivated not by his claim of kingship over Egypt, but by his revocation of the adû agreement between the two kings, as well as by Psamtik I’s elimination of the other kinglets allied to Assyria, especially Pakruru of Per-Sopdu and Šarru-lū-dāri, since Ashurbanipal was aware that he had to rely on those kinglets to maintain Assyrian power in Egypt.
Psamtik I’s 9th regnal year
In Psamtik I’s 9th regnal year, in 656 BCE, he sent an expedition to the city of Thebes which compelled the existing God’s Wife of Amun, Shepenupet II, daughter of the former Kushite Pharaoh Piye, to adopt his daughter Nitocris I as her heiress in the so-called Adoption Stela. This was concluded with the approval of the Theban aristocracy and the tacit support of Mentuemhat, who was the Fourth Priest of Amun and the Mayor of Thebes. Psamtik I had unified all of Egypt under his rule.
In 655 and 654 BCE, that is his 10th and 11th regnal years, Psamtik I carried out a war with Libyan tribes who had seized control of the area from the Oxyrhynchite nome around the Bahr Yussef till the Mediterranean Sea, and who had been joined by Psamtik I’s previously defeated enemies from his wars in the Delta.
The conclusion of this war
Following the successful conclusion of this war, Psamtik I placed an Egyptian garrison at Marea to prevent incursions by Libyans from the desert. Thus, by the end of his first decade of rule in 654 BCE, Psamtik I was firmly in control of all Egypt.
According to Herodotus, Psamtik carried out a twenty-nine-year siege of Ashdod. The exact dating of this siege is uncertain. In the later part of Psamtik I’s reign, the Neo-Assyrian Empire started unravelling following the death of Ashurbanipal in 627 BC, leaving a power vacuum in the Levant which allowed the Assyrians’ former Scythian vassals to overrun the area. Some time between 623 and 616 BCE, the Scythians reached as far south as Judah and Edom until Psamtik I met them and convinced them to turn back by offering them gifts.
Psamtik died in 610 BCE and was succeeded by his son, Necho II.
Discovery of a colossal statue
Egyptian archaeologists and German archaeologists found a massive statue approximately 7.9 metres (26 ft) high on the Heliopolis site of Cairo on 9 March 2017. The statue is composed of quartzite and it was discovered in a broken form with the lower section of the head and the crown buried in groundwater.
Governor of Sais
While the statue was initially speculated to be of Ramesses II, it was later confirmed to be of Psamtik I due to engravings found that mentioned one of Psamtik’s names on the base of the statue. A spokesperson at the time commented that “If it does belong to this king, then it is the largest statue of the Late Period that was ever discovered in Egypt.” The head and torso are expected to be moved to the Grand Egyptian Museum.
The statue was sculpted in the ancient classical style of 2000 BC, establishing a resurgence of the greatness and prosperity of the classical period, and reconstructions bear a strong similarity with a statue of a striding Senusret I (1971–1926 BC), now in the Cairo Museum. However, from the many fragments of quartzite collected (now 6,400 of them), it has been established that the colossus was at some time deliberately destroyed. Certain discoloured and cracked rock fragments show evidence of having been heated to high temperatures then shattered (with cold water), a typical way of destroying ancient colossi.
Conclusion
Psamtik I was not merely a survivor in a dangerous age. He was a builder of nations. Through patience, diplomacy, and strategic reform, he transformed a fragmented land into a unified kingdom once more. By restoring Egypt’s independence while respecting its ancient traditions, Psamtik I created a final golden chapter of native Egyptian rule. His reign proves that renewal does not always come through conquest, but through wisdom, balance, and the ability to adapt without losing identity.
