In view of the notoriety of Piankhi, as evidenced by the events narrated on the stela, we should expect that he was an important figure in Egyptian history. If so, we would be disappointed. As we shall see, his life and times are shrouded in mystery.

        When the Piankhi stela was first read by scholars it was immediately recognized that the dignitaries named therein belonged to the late 22^nd and 23^rd dynasties, and that the rebel Tefnakht must be the father of Bocchoris, the sole occupant of Manetho's 24^th dynasty. With confidence early Egyptologists dated the insurrection of Tefnakht and the response by Piankhi to the last quarter of the 8^th century B.C.  Flinders Petrie, the eminent and influential British Egyptologist, writing at the turn of the 20^th century, dated the "invasion" to the year 720 B.C., with the reigns of the 25^th dynasty kings Shabaka and Shabataka following closely on its heels. The whole of the 25^th dynasty, including most of the reign of Taharka, was of necessity placed between the time of the Tefnakht rebellion and the conquest and occupation of Egypt by the Assyrian empire, the later event securely dated to the years 671-664 B.C.

        A century of scholarship has refined Petrie's dates only slightly, gradually moving the 25th dynasty further back in time.   K.A. Kitchen, the foremost living authority on the 3^rd Intermediate Period, dates the Piankhi incident in 727 B.C. and the most recent analysis by the Egyptologist D.A. Aston ⁽¹⁰⁾ has placed Piankhi's 21^st year a decade earlier, in the time span 740-735 B.C.  If Aston is correct, the median year 738 B.C. cannot be far wrong.

        While there is a slight difference of opinion on the date of the Piankhi invasion there very little argument about secondary questions of fundamental concern to this revision. When did Piankhi begin his Egyptian reign and where did he continue to rule after the rebellion was suppressed?   On these issues scholars are in virtual agreement.   With few exceptions it is believed that Piankhi had ruled central and southern Egypt for at most a few years before the rebellion, and that his control of the country was lost soon after. When they discuss his dates they are debating only his tenure as king in Nubia, not the length of his sovereignty over Egypt.

        But on what evidence is this opinion based?   We raise the question:  Was Piankhi a Nubian king who had, some years before the Tefnakht rebellion, conquered the southern and central portions of Egypt , if not the entire country, and who continued to rule his newly conquered land from his home in Napata.   Or was he, as the great stela could also be interpreted as saying, a sovereign of long standing in Egypt, not a recent intruder, who for unknown reasons was domiciled in Napata at the time of the rebellion.   The stela is dated, as mentioned earlier, to the first month of the Egyptian civil calendar during Piankhi's 21^st year. Based on normal standards of interpretation we should glean from this fact that he had been king of Egypt, or a king within Egypt, for this length of time. .

        The explanation for the scholarly concensus is related to considerations apart from the stela inscription itself. There is no evidence within Egypt that Piankhi ruled the country for a single year, much less for twenty years, prior to his 21^st year, and very little indication that he resided there afterward. Within Egypt no monument of significance bears his name. No building was constructed by him. No artifacts belonging to him have been recovered.  No mention of his name occurs in secondary sources. In view of his renown, as evidenced in the narrative of the great stela, this is a particularly troublesome silence. If he lived in Thebes, wherein he based an army, he has left no evidence of the fact. If he became king of Thebes two decades before the Tefnakht rebellion, and if he dwelt there for any significant time thereafter,  the lack of inscriptional evidence is difficult, if not impossible to explain. The conclusion follows that his involvement in Egyptian affairs was brief.   He came; he conquered; and for reasons unknown, he quickly departed the country. Or so we are told.

        When Piankhi withdrew from the delta, laden with treasure, he was the uncontested sovereign of all of Egypt. Where did he go and for how long did he continue to rule?  According to scholars he moved south to Thebes but did not long remain there. His home was Napata and there he lived out his years. But for how long? On this issue there is some divengence of opinion. The majority of scholars believe that he continued to rule for either ten or twenty additional years, a debate which focusses on the most fragile evidence, an obscured year date on a bandage.  Kitchen, who adopts the 30 year figure for the reign length of Piankhi, provides a summary of the argument:

The one generally accepted year-date of Piankhy is Year 21 on his great stela. However, a minimum of 31 years is assignable to him based on the external evidence which is outlined above (sect. 114). To these factors, a little more can be added. First, there are three documents dated by the reign of 'Pharaoh Py, Si-Ese Meryamun' - two papyri of his Years 21 and 22, most probably Theban, and the lesser Dakhla stela of Year 24. There is good reason to view Py as the real reading of Piankhy and to attribute all three documents to Piankhy's reign. Second, a fragmentary bandage from Western Thebes bears an obscure date of Sneferre Piankhy. The visible traces indicate 'Regnal Year 20', a patch and trace (the latter compatible with a '10'), and a shallow sign perhaps an otiose t. In other words, we here have a date higher than Year 20 of Piankhy, and very possibly Year 30 - which would fit very well with the 31 years' minimum reign which has been already inferred on independent grounds. TIP 123

        Others, including Klaus Baer in his influential analysis of the chronology of dynasties 22-26 ⁽¹¹⁾, have read year 40 on the bandage fragment and argue that Piankhi ruled for that length of time. Accordingly, Baer dates Piankhi to the years 753-713 B.C., and shortens the reigns of Shabaka (713-698 B.C.) and Shabataka (698-690 B.C.) to compensate for the years added to the reign of Piankhi.

        The dates for Taharka (690-664 B.C.) are inflexible in the traditional history, and are maintained in all traditional dating schemes.

        It is largely immaterial, at least for the time being, whether we argue for a thirty year or a forty year reign for Piankhi. It is not the length of his reign that concerns us here. It is the country over which he ruled that is most problematic. We take exception with those who consider Piankhi to be a Nubian king who conquered Egypt late in his reign and lived there only briefly. There is no evidence, other the silence of the monuments, to support that assumption.  And the Egyptian silence can be otherwise explained.

        The stela narrative leaves the distinct impression that Piankhi had ruled Egypt for a considerable time before the Tefnakht rebellion. The dateline and the content of the inscription are entirely consistent with, and even argue for, the supposition that his kingship began in Egypt twenty years before the rebellion. It is possible that he began as a nomarch, with limited power, like those he encountered on his tour of conquest, and that the scope of his authority expanded over time. Some evidence exists connecting him with the 23^rd dynasty king Rudamon. Peftjauawybast of Heracleopolis, to whose rescue Piankhi came in his 20^th year, was married to a daughter of this same Rudamon. Perhaps Piankhi, like Peftjauawybast, originally ruled some principality in central Egypt, later to take assume power in Thebes. We can even suggest a likely location. But that story must come later.

        Piankhi's connections with Napata may also be traced to Rudamon. A suggestion was made in a response to criticism of Nebuchadnezzar that Piankhi's father (or grandfather) descended from a Melukkhan king named Shabataka, whose mention in a Sargonid inscription at Tang-i Var has recently been conjectured. We have suggested that this ancestor of the 25^th dynasty pharaohs married a daughter of the 23^rd dynasty king Osorkon III. From this union came Rudamon/Urdamanie, who challenged the hegemony of Assyria over Egypt immediately following the death of Takeloth III ( Tarqu) in 665 B.C. We have suggested that Piankhi is a nephew of Rudamon, and a grandson of Shabataka. If so then his control over Napata is derived from these family connections. He is thus a descendant of the 23^rd dynasty kings and the Melukkhan kings. Whether or not this hypothetical genealogy is correct, the fact remains that the textbooks are seriously in error concerning the origins of the 25^th dynasty. The extent of the error will become evident as we proceed.

        There is also no reason to suppose that Piankhi's rule over Egypt did not continue until his death, whether for another ten or twenty years, or even longer. The evidence cited by Kitchen attesting his 22^nd through 30^th (or 40^th) years is all of Egyptian origin, suggesting, if it doesn't prove, that Piankhi continued to rule the country long after the rebellion. The fact that he established a residence, and built extensively, in Napata, where he was ultimately buried, is entirely beside the point. His connections with Egypt appear to be of long standing. We have established elsewhere that Peftjauawybast, and possibly also Osorkon IV, two of the kings he encountered on his conquest of year 20, were possibly part of his extended family, related by marriage to his grandfather/relative Rudamon.

        But if Piankhi lived in Egypt for upwards of thirty years, and in Thebes for much of this time, where is the evidence attesting the fact? Why the silence of the monuments? As we can readily observe from the Piankhi stela, the Egyptian/Nubian king was not reluctant to publicize his accomplishments. Was there nothing of consequence about which to boast during the balance of his extended reign? The names of his successors Shabaka and Taharka (and to a lesser extent Shabataka) are encountered frequently in the vicinity of Thebes. They built modestly, but extensively on both sides of the Nile. Their names are inscribed frequently in the temple of Amun at Karnak. Yet their combined reign lengths are not significantly larger than the number of years credited to Piankhi. Why is the name of Piankhi absent in the temple of the god he worshiped so passionately? There must be an explanation.

        And we wonder about another prominent feature of the stela narrative - the extreme political fragmentation encountered by Piankhi as he traversed the country. The central and northern portions of Egypt are ruled by at minimum six kings, an equal number of princes, and at least that many Libyan chieftains, albeit as vassals of Piankhi. What was the cause of this decentralized rule. Scholars are at a loss to explain how Egypt, ruled only a half century earlier by a solitary powerful pharaoh, Osorkon II, could in the space of a few decades become parceled out among twenty or more nomarchs with variant titles. Such a condition is documented at only one other time in Egyptian history. In 671 B.C., when the Assyrian king Esarhaddon conquered Egypt, he parceled out the administration of the country to twenty local governors, some of whom are called "kings", some princes or mayors. But that event took place at the end of the reign of Taharka, thus a half century later than the invasion of Piankhi. Or did it?  Is it possible that the reign of Piankhi is incorrectly positioned in the 8^th century, preceding the Assyrian conquest, rather than following it. Is not the fragmentation of Egypt described in the Piankhi stela the enduring legacy of Esarhaddon's system of governors?   If so, then Piankhi must be dated to the late 7^th century, as we have argued in the first book of the Displaced Dynasties series.