According to the traditional history, based largely on Herodotus, the Saite Dynasty ended in 525 B.C. when Cambyses arrived in Egypt and defeated the Egyptian army of Psamtik III at Pelusium in the eastern Delta. Psamtik escaped the battle and retreated to Memphis which very quickly fell to the Persians. The captive Psamtik soon lost his life. It is further claimed that Psamtik's father Ahmose-sa-Neit had died of natural causes late in 526 B.C. and that his son, who adopted the throne name Ankhkanra, ruled Egypt for only six months. Following the Saite dynasty practice of predating, the balance of Ahmose's final year was counted as Psamtik's 1st regnal year, and the few months he reigned in 525 B.C. constituted a second year. It is therefore not surprising to Egyptologists that documents dated to Psamtik's second year should be discovered.
Since the beginning of the 20th century it has been claimed by scholars that three demotic papyri, P. Loeb 41 & 43 and P. Strassburg 2, all dated in the 1st or 2nd year of a king Psamtik, belong to this abbreviated reign of Psamtik III. These three papyri are part of a group referred to collectively as the Diospolis Parva documents.
In 1902 Spiegelberg published three early demotic texts from the Strasbourg papyrus collection: P. Strasb. 2,4,5. These texts clearly belong together because they deal with goose-herds of the temple of Amun, living in that part of the domain of Amun which is situated in the district of Diospolis Parva .... Some thirty years later, Spiegelberg published a group of demotic papyri from the papyrus collection of Munchen. Of these papyri, the early-demotic P. Loeb 41 and 43-50 (and perhaps also P. Loeb 51 ... have so many similarities to the Strasbourg papyri that it has been suggested that all these papyri were found on the same spot and actually belong together, mainly because goose-herds of the temple of Amun frequently occur in both groups of text. [18]The majority of the dated Diospolis Parva documents originate from the latter part of the reign of Darius I. Several of them (P. Loeb 46,47,48 and P. Strassburg 4,5) are specifically dated to that king's 34th and 35th years (488 & 487 B.C.). The three papyri bearing Psamtik's name are thus almost four decades earlier than the balance of the collection. For the better part of the last century the attribution of these three documents remained unchallenged. These three papyri are constantly cited in secondary literature as the only known demotic documents dating from the reign of Psamtik III. That situation changed abruptly in 1980 when the American Egyptologist Eugene Cruz-Uribe speculated on the possibility of an alternative identification for two of the documents. P. Loeb 43 might still belong to the reign of Psamtik III, since it bears similarities to documents from the late Saite or early Persian period, but not the other two papyri.[19]
According to Cruz-Uribe, P. Loeb 41, for palaeographic reasons, should be dated instead to the reign of Psamtik II (or possibly even Psamtik I). In particular he noted similarities between P. Loeb 41 and the demotic papyrus P. Berlin 13571, a document clearly dated to the 5th year of a king Psamtik, especially in its writing of the king's name. Since Psamtik III did not live past his second year, the Berlin papyrus is generally credited to the reign of Psamtik II, and thus also P. Loeb 41 in the estimation of Cruz-Uribe.
It is in his identification of the Psamtik named in P. Strassbourg 2 that Cruz-Uribe broke radically with tradition. Noting similarities between this papyrus and P. Strassbourg 5, a papyrus bearing the year date "34th year of Darius (I)", he reached the conclusion that the Psamtik document must be dated very soon after Darius' 34th year. His analysis begins by noting paleographical similarities between the two documents and then proceeds to argue on the basis of the internal content:
Another factor which suggests a close affinity between P. Strassburg 2 and 5 is the content of the documents. In both contracts Party A is "the Goose Herder of the Estate of Amun, "P'-ti-Imn-sm'-t'wy, son of P'-whr". Griffith in his inventory of early demotic documents states that since P'-ti-Imn-sm'-t'wy is seen in both documents, he must have had a career as goose herder which spanned at least 40 years. This fact, while not impossible, is suspicious since unmentioned by Griffith is the fact that the man who received the payment in each document is one D-hr. That we have the same two parties in two documents separated by forty years makes this author feel uncomfortable. If on the other hand, one takes into consideration all the similarities between P. Strassburg 2 and the documents dated to the latter part of the reign of Darius I, we may date P. Strassburg 2 on paleographic grounds to sometime soon after the reign of Darius I. In this manner the paleographical and contextual difficulties would be lessened.[20]According to Cruz-Uribe the only possible time when a king Psamtik might have reigned in the years "soon after the reign of Darius I" was the brief duration of the Egyptian rebellion which began late in Darius' reign and was subdued by Xerxes in 484 B.C. He proposes therefore that this rebellion was led by a king Psamtik, and since this Psamtik postdates the reign of Psamtik III by forty years, he is numbered as Psamtik IV. "On the basis of the evidence I would conclude that a Pharaoh Psammetichus IV did exist and ruled Egypt following a revolt against the Persians in 486 BC and ruled until the reconquest of Egypt by Xerxes in January of 484 BC".
A new pharaoh is born!
In a later responsive article, the demotic specialist P.W. Pestman expanded on the analysis of Cruz-Uribe, essentially agreeing with his conclusions, though disagreeing with some of his palaeographical arguments. Pestman differs from Cruz-Uribe in only one significant point - he not only dates P. Strassburg 2 within the reign of the hypothetical Psamik IV, but P. Loeb 41 and P. Loeb 43 as well.
Summing up, we may state that although it is not entirely impossible that the Psammetichus documents were written under Psammetichus III in 525 B.C., it is much more likely that they were written in the same period as the Darius documents. In this case we must accept, with Cruz-Uribe, the existence of a Psammetichus IV.[21]In the revised history Psamtik II "ruled" Egypt from 474-468 B.C. His first and second years are only a dozen years removed from the dates assumed by Cruz-Uribe and Pestman for their Psamtik IV. There can be no objection to dating the three critical Diospolic Parva papyri to this slightly later date. We argue that Psamtik IV does not exist. His assumed existence is a case of mistaken identity, forced on the two named scholars by the errant placment of the Saite dynasty in the traditional history. With the dates for the Saite dynasty lowered by 121 years Psamtik II emerges naturally as the solution to the dilemna posed by the papyri P. Loeb 41, 43 and P. Strassburg 2. Already in his analysis Cruz Uribe had correctly compared P. Loeb 41 with P. Berlin 13571, dated to the 5th year of Psamtik II. He was not wrong; it does belong in that king's reign. Neither was Pestman wrong when he dated that same document to the reign of Psamtik IV. It is the Saite dynasty dates which continue to confound the scholars. With the equation Psamtik IV = Psamtik II the problem is solved.
It is important to note, before we leave the goose-herders behind, that this removal of P.Loeb 41, 43 and P. Strassburg 2 from the list of documents attesting the reign of Psamtik III leaves precious little documentation for that king, and almost nothing which connects him with the end of the reign of Ahmose-sa-Neith. The only remaining link with those years is about to be severed.