We pass without comment from the beginning to the final years of the reign of Amasis, and from the Egyptian Delta to a remote mountainous region east of Thebes in Upper Egypt.   There on the walls of the famous Hammamat quarry we find a perplexing series of graffiti inscribed by the chief architect of Egypt under the Amasis regime, himself a namesake of the king - Khnemibre.   A sequence of eleven graffiti, all in the same vicinity, and most bearing dates of the ruling king, combine to suggest that this official exercised his duties under both Amasis and Darius I over a span of at minimum 35 years.[21]   To be specific, one inscription records his activities in the quarry in the 44th year of Amasis, and the others in the years 26-30 of a king Darius.   In the traditional history there is no question that the Darius named in the inscriptions is Darius I.  The Amasis inscription must originate from the year 526 B.C. and the Darius inscriptions from the years 496-492 B.C.  Needless to say, if these inscriptions have been properly understood by scholars, and Khnemibre functioned under successive kings Amasis and Darius, then we are mistaken in our proposed revision of Egyptian history.   All has been for naught.   In the revised history Darius I died forty years before the reign of Amasis began.  Darius II was a contemporary, but not a successor, of Amasis.   How do we answer the critics?

        We begin by quoting the year 44 inscription:

Year 44 of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, lord of the two lands, Khnemibre, son of Ra Ahmose-sa-Neith, who lives eternally, beloved of Neith, mistress of Sais.  The Horus "Who maintains justice", the Two Ladies "Son of Neith, regulator of the two lands", the Horus of gold "Chosen by the gods", the king of Upper and Lower Egypt Khnemibre, son of Ra Ahmose-sa-Neith, who lives eternally, loved by Neith, mistress of Sais.
The chief of works of the South and North of Egypt, Ahmose-sa-Neith and his eldest son, whom he loves, the chief of works of the South and North of Egypt,  Khnembre, born of the lady Satnefertum, who lives before Min, Horus and Isis of Coptos for eternity. [22]

        Throughout this inscription the names Khnemibre and Ahmose, whether those of the king or those of the two chiefs of works, are consistently enclosed in a cartouche.  The names are othographically identical.   It appears from this inscription that the architect Ahmose-sa-Neith, father of Khnembre, is alive and well.    It also appears that he has relinquished his active role to his son, a fact which suggests that he is old.  If so Khnemibre, identified as his eldest son, must also be up in years, perhaps in his forties or even his fifties.

        There is no need here to translate the inscriptions from the Darius years.   The problem with their interpretation is related to their dates, not to their content.   And that problem should be immediately apparent.   It is assumed by Egyptologists that Khnemibre, son of Ahmose-sa-Neith,  visited the Hammamat gorge in 526 B.C., recorded his visit in this brief inscription, then disappeared for thirty years, only to reemerge from obscurity in 496 B.C., becoming a frequent visitor to the stone quarry for the next five years.   Then silence again.    The thirty year interval is problematic enough to call into question this interpretation.   The fact that this later activity took place when Khnemibre was seventy or eighty years old, based on the reasonable assumption that he was over forty in the year 44 of Amasis, is enough to discredit the interpretation entirely.  To be fair to scholars who support this interpretation, there is no alternative.   Restricted by a chronology that regards Darius I as the successor of Amasis this chronology is unavoidable.   No alternative explanation is available.   But no such restriction holds for the revised history.

        There exists a perfectly natural way of reading the Khnembre inscriptions.   In the revised history the 44th year of Amasis is the year 405 B.C.   According to scholars Darius I died in the year 404 B.C., after twenty years as sole monarch of Persia in succession to Artaxerxes I.   This would lead us to conclude that Darius outlived Amasis by a single year.   But we believe that the reverse situation held, and that Amasis outlived the Persian king by a single year.   To date we have accepted without question the dates 424-404 B.C. for Darius II.  There was no need earlier to engage an argument.   But those dates need to be modified slightly to 424-405 B.C., an alteration which will be defended momentarily.   We assume that Darius died early in 405 B.C.(or possible even late in 406 B.C.), and that after his death Egypt rebelled for a third and final time against the first Persian domination.   The struggle for independance began with Amasis, now an old man in the last year of his life, his 44th year as a puppet king/Persian official.   It continued under Amyrtaeus, son of Pausiris, son of Apries.  We will document the struggle in more detail in the next chapter.

        With these facts assumed, we propose that the Khnemibre inscriptions which refer to a king Darius belong to the five years immediately preceding (rather than the 30th-35th years following)  the 44th year of Amasis, and that the Darius in question is Darius II.     If the visits were consecutive, a reasonable assumption, then these inscriptions must belong to the years 409-405 B.C. or at most a year or two earlier.   In this scenario Khnemibre's visit to the quarry in the 44th year of Amasis (405 B.C.) was the last of a series of visits which began five (or six) years earlier.  The visits continued in a unbroken sequence through the last five years of Darius' life and a single year beyond.  While Darius was alive Khnemibre used the name of the Persian king in his graffiti datelines.    In the single visit which followed Darius' death he used the name of Amasis, emphasizing the comprehensive rule of the Saite king, now free from Persian domination.

        This scenario answers every problematic aspect of the Khnembre inscriptions mentioned earlier.   But it raises an immediate objection.   The Darius inscriptions of the architect Khnemibre are dated to the 26th through the 30th years of the Persian king, while we have stated, with apparent agreement, that Darius II ruled for only twenty years.   If our proposed dates for the inscriptions are correct (409-405 B.C.) then the inscriptions should have referred to the 16th through the 20th years of Darius, not the 26th through 30th.    We have solved one problem only to create another, apparently more serious, problem.    What is the solution?

Regnal Years of Darius II

        When we began this revision we quoted the Egyptologist Alan Gardiner in his observation that "the forty years ending with the death of Darius II in 404 B.C. are a complete blank so far as Egypt is concerned".   In fact, those comments are too narrowly worded.  The truth is that almost nothing is known of the activities of the Persian kings Artaxerxes I and Darius II whether within Egypt or elsewhere within the Persian Empire.  Inscriptions from the final decades of Artaxerxes I and the entirety of the reign of Darius II are all but non-existant.  If the reader were to examine any popular history of the Persian period he would be hard pressed to find the name of Darius II in the index, much less in the body of historical discusssion.  That is a problem which needs to be addressed by scholars.  What happened to the documentation which names these kings?   Did nothing survive or have the documents of Darius II been misattributed to the earlier Darius?  And if so, why?

        The fact that Darius II ruled the Persian Empire for twenty years is known from a single source - a king list attached to the so-called Canon of Ptolemy, a document postdating Darius' reign by several centuries.  Two observations follow from this absence of firsthand evidence.  The first relates to the absolute dates assigned to Darius II; the second to the schema he used to number his regnal years.

        When assigning absolute dates to Darius II two problems confront scholars:  1) when did his reign begin?; and  2) how long did it last?  Discusssion of the matter lies well beyond the scope of this book.  It is sufficient to note here that the twenty years assigned Darius II by the Canon need only imply that he reigned from 424-425 B.C., 424 being his 1st and 405 his 20th year.   It is admitted by interpreters that the "predating of postdating" system adopted by the Canon is artificial and need not represent the system actually used by the Persians.  When we also take into account the several difficulties related to the precise date when Artaxerxes died and Darius assumed power, whether 425 B.C. or 424 B.C.,  there can be no strong objection to our earlier proposal that the date of death of Darius II should be moved back from 404 B.C. to 405 B.C..  It hardly matters whether he reigned from 425-405 B.C. or from 424-405 B.C..  For purposes of the following discussion we adopt the minimalist position and accept 424-405 B.C. as his probable absolute dates.

        The numbering of Darius' years is more of a problem, but no more so than the regnal years of Cambyses created for the traditional history, a matter discussed earlier in this revision.  At that time we noted that Egyptologists, in an attempt to explain certain anomalies related to the regnal years of the earlier Persian king, proposed as a solution that Cambyses employed various systems for numbering his regnal years.  Besides the obvious numbering beginning with his 1st year on the Persian throne, it was conjectured that Cambyses sometimes dated his years beginning with the death of Amasis (neglecting the regnal year of Psamtik III), and sometimes beginning with his military conquest of Egypt.   We have already criticized these proposals as unwarranted and unsubstantiated.   But these proposed alternative dating systems do serve to suggest that a similar solution might exist for our problem with the regnal years of Darius II.   In fact a perfectly reasonably answer is immediately at hand, and it finds support, coincidentally, from the reign of Cambyses.

Cambyses' Alternative Dating System

        What is not mentioned often in current literature is the known fact that Cambyses did in fact have an alternative schema for numbering his regnal years, though not the ones suggested by Egyptologists.  In an early edition of the influential Zeitschrift fur Aegypische Sprache the Assyriologist E. Schrader discusses at length a cuneiform document  originating from Babylon and dated to the 11th year of Cambyses.[23]  Since Cambyses' tenure on the Persian throne lasted only slightly over 7 years, the problem with this document is obvious,  and sufficiently serious to have caused another Akkadian specialist, T. Pinches, to question the reliability of the Canon of Ptolemy, since the Canon credits Cambyses with only 7 regnal years.  According to Pinches:

This date overthrowing the perfect agreement of Mr. Boscawen's list with the Canon of Ptolemy ... the author was at first reluctant to accept on account of the number being, as may be seen from the cuneiform text above, so badly written.  Soon after the discovery of this tablet, however, another was discovered, bearing the date "11th Tebet, 8th year of Cambyses" making him to reign eight years and three moinths, instead of seven years and seven [five? - s. Herodot (Schr.)] months.  This induced the author to test the whole list as given by Mr. Boscawen ... -- It is evident, therefore, that the Canon of Ptolemy, in the face of these unimpeachable witnesses, can not stand" [24]

        We are therefore on firm ground when we suggest that a similar system of numbering regnal years was employed by Darius II, who is also known to have been installed as "king" of Babylon (by Artaxerxes I), the only other Persian crown prince so honored.  We don't know precisely when this "kingship" began, but there is no reason not to assign its beginning to the year 434 B.C.    By that date Artaxerxes had ruled for 30 years and sensed that his years were numbered.   Darius would certainly have dated his regnal years in Babylon and, as was the case with Cambyses, would have continued this numeration into his sole reign which began ten years later.   It is even possible that this was the only dating system employed by this king.  There is simply not enough information to decide one way or the other.

        If Darius dated his regnal years from the beginning of his "kingship" of Babylon in 434 B.C.  then his 26th through 30th years would correspond to the years 409-405 B.C. and the problem with the Khnemibre inscriptions is completely solved.   This assumed coregency of Darius II and Artaxerxes I also provides a possible solution to the apparent documentary silence during Darius' reign.   On the assumption that only Darius I had regnal years numbering above 20, it has been a habit of scholars for centuries to assign all Darius documents with year dates above 20, and any documents associated with them, to the reign of Darius I.   Included here are inscriptions from the western oases of Egypt where Darius I is credited with considerable building activity at the el-Hibeh temple in the Khargeh oasis - work which arguably belongs to the reign of Darius II.   We wonder how much of the literature which should illuminate the reign of Darius II has been misattributed to Darius I, largely because of this anomaly in dating.the years of the second Darius.

        There remains to be examined only a single curiosity related to the Khnemibre inscriptions.  The fact that the chiefs-of works Khnemibre and his father are namesakes of king Amasis, and that their names are orthographically identical to those of the king, including the use of the cartouche, suggests the possibility that the architect Khnemibre was the son of king Amasis, i.e. that the architect Ahmose-sa-Neith is the same person as the king Ahmose-sa-Neith.

Khnemibre - son of Amasis?

        In the traditional history this proposal would be unthinkable.   Amasis was a pharaoh, the uncontested ruler of all Egypt.   He would not be referred to in a graffiti as the "chief of works" of Egypt.   But in the revised history, where Amasis  was but one among many native Egyptian functionaries in the Persian province, albeit a first among equals,  the fact that one of his titles was "chief of works" is neither impossible nor improbable.  It is interesting to observe that elsewhere Amasis does in fact refer to himself by purely secular titles.  The fact was duly noted by the earlier generation of Egyptologists, though all but ignored by the current generation.   According to Breasted, writing at the turn of the 20th century:

There is contemporary evidence of the gradual rise of Amasis; for long after his assumption of the royal cartouche he continued to use his titles as noble and a powerful palace official.  Thus he inscribed his mother's sarcophogus as follows:
Revered by her husband, royal confidante of Wahibre (W'h-ib-R', Apries), Teperet.  Her lifetime was 70 years, 4 months, 15 days.  The name of her mother was Mer-Ptah-Si-Hapi.  It was her son who made it for her, the wearer of the royal seal, sole companion, chief of the palace, prophet of Isis, master of the judgment-hall, Ahmose (Amasis), -Si-Neit. (emphasis mine) BAR IV 999

        Based on titles alone there can be no objection to our proposal that the architect Ahmose-sa-Neith is king Amasis and that Khnemibre is his son.   But there is a possible genealogical objection.  In another graffiti Khnemibre provides a more elaborate genealogy, identifying himself as the last "chief of works" in a sequence of holders of that office, tracing his heritage backward a dozen generations.   Specifically this graffiti identifies him as "chief of works of the South and the North Khnemibre, son of the chief of works of the South and the North Ahmose-sa-Neith, son of the chief of works of the South and the North Ankh-Psamtik, son of the chief of works Wahibre-Teni, son of the ..." (Posener 13,14).  The names Khnemibre, Ahmose, Psamtik, and Wahibre are all enclosed in a cartouche.

        At first glance there is no problem with this genealogy.  The father of Amasis is unknown to Egyptologists and may well be a chief of works named Ankh-Psamtik.  Our objection arises as a result of our own hypothesis, previously stated (cf. chapter 7), that the genealogy of Amasis is actually provided by the Serapeum stela Louvre #410 (SIM 4032), where Ahmose-sa-Neith is identified as the son of Psamtik-sa-Neith, son of Henat, son of Udjahorresne.  It was our stated belief that the Saite dynasty king Amasis was the great grandson of Udjahorresne, the well known Egyptian official who assisted Cambyses, then Darius, in establishing a presence within Egypt following the Egyptian exile.   For convenience we reproduce that genealogy below.

        In spite of obvious differences, there remains the possibility of reconciling the Hammamat and Serapeum genealogies.  It may be that the office of chief of works was taken over by the family of Amasis from his wife Satnefertum's side of the family and that Khnemibre's second generation connection with Ankh-Psamtik is on his maternal side, i.e. that Ankh-Psamtik is Khnemibre's maternal grandfather.  This interpretation assumes that the Hammamat genealogy is loosely construed, a fact argued  also by Posener, one of the early editors of these graffiti.  Based on defects elsewhere in the lengthy pedigree of Khnemibre,  Posener expresses the opinion that the chief-of-works took liberties with the truth (or with genealogical conventions) in order to establish an unwarranted connection between the Ahmose family and some of the notable "architects" from Egypt's remote past. [25]

        We leave the matter here.  If nothing else the possibility that Khnemibre, chief of works, is the son of king Amasis, has served to introduce evidence that Amasis was more a public official than a king, a fact we have consistently argued in this revision.   The assumed family connection is not otherwise a critical feature of our argument.  But if confirmed by subsequent discoveries, then our case is strengthened, since Knemibre, the eldest son of Amasis, must surely have been born before Amasis was elevated to power by the Persians, making him close to 50 by the time of Amasis' 44th year, and around 90 years old in the 30th year of Darius I, this according to the traditional history.  And this situation, we have already argued, is highly improbable.

        More important for our revision (though still not critical) is our assumption that the genealogy of king Amasis is provided by the Serapeum stela whose data is summarized in the family tree outlined above.  We close our discussion with a closer look at this genealogy.

Louvre #410 & the Ancestry of Amasis

        Two Serapeum stela combine to illuminate the lineage of a family known to Egyptologists as the Henat family.  Louvre #410 (SIM 4032), dedicated by a priest named Khnemibre (not the same as the chief-of-works) names Ahmose-sa-Neith as his brother, Psamtik-sa-Neith as his father, and traces his ancestry back through his grandfather Henat to a great-grandfather Udjahorresne (see chart above).  A second stela, Louvre #179 (SIM 4112), dedicated by another priest Wahibre-Mery-Neit, names a Psamtik-sa-Neith as his brother, Udjahorresne as his father, and Henat as his grand-father.   These two stelae have been published with commentary by Vercoutter in his Textes Biographiques du Serapeum de Memphis (texts N & O). [26]

        It is argued by Egyptologists, in particular by Anthes, one of the first editors of these genealogical stela, that Khnemibre and Wahibre-Mery-Neit are of the same generation and have Henat as a common grandfather.[27]  From Henat, son of Udjahorresne, the two branches of the family diverge.  The names of Udjahorresne, Henat, Psamtik-sa-Neit, and Khnemibre, are commonplace in this family.

        We should state at the outset that neither of these two stela inscriptions is dated.   We could, in fact, close our discussion on that note.   There is absolutely no evidence, either within or without the inscription, to suggest that either stela originates other than at some time within the reign of Amasis, and probably early in that reign.   As such it can be argued that the genealogy may well refer to the king Ahmose-sa-Neith.   Since Khnemibre in Louvre #410 names this Ahmose-sa-Neith as his brother, enclosing that name in a cartouche precisely as the king's name is written on the Hammamat graffiti of the "chief of works" Khnembire, there is no substantial reason to object to the proposed identification, other than the fact that this Ahmose-sa-Neith is not specifically identified as a king.    His kingship is at least possible.  But how probable?

         We cite the following reasons for believing that Ahmose-sa-Neith, the brother of Khnemibre, must be the Saite dynasty king, and that Louvre #410 was erected early in Amasis' reign.  We also argue that the stela was erected several decades following, not eight decades preceding, the reign of Darius I.

        1)  In his Serapeum stela (Louvre #410) the priest Khnembre refers to himself as "confidant of the king, the divine father, adminstrator (of the domains of the Red Sea), priest of Hery-Pe, Khnemibre, son of the lector priest and chief lector priest Psamtik-sa-Neit, who was son of the priest of the same order, Henat, born of the lady Setauretbint, deceased."   Apparently Khnembire's father and grandfather are still alive.   He continues to describe his family connections as follows:

His eldest son, his dearest, the confidant of the king and divine father, the administrator of the domaines (of the Red Sea) the ounro priest Hery-Pe, Udjahorresne, who was born of the lady Ouadjetemhat, deceased, his brother, the confidant of the king, the divine father, the administrator of the domains, the ounro priest, the Hery-Pe, Henat, his brother Psamtik-sa-Neit, his brother Ahmose-sa-Neit, his sister Setairetbint, deceased.

        2)  The fact that the titles of Ahmose-sa-Neith are omitted, and that he appears in this inscription as yet another member of an aristocratic family, is perfectly consistent with our contention that king Amasis was really nothing more than an important dignitary.  This argument is strengthened by the fact that the Khnembire stela was apparently erected early in the king's reign, when Amasis was only beginning to emphasize his claim to "kingship".   It is possible that around this same time Amasis erected the "memorial chapel" in honor of his grandfather Udjahorresne.

        3)  The fact that these stela were composed and erected early in Amasis reign is supported by details related to their provenance in the greater vault of the Serapeum.   Mariette records the fact that the Wahibre-Mery-Neit stela was found in the sands of the corridor outside the crypt which enclosed the Apis which died in the 23rd year of Amasis.   In the same location were discovered at least two other stela (SIM 4115 and SIM 4100), also edited by Vercoutter in his Textes Biographiques  (texts B & C).   These additional stelae are dated by Vercoutter, following Mariette,  to the early part of Amasis' reign.  The suggestion is made that were dedicated to the Apis bull which died in Amasis' 4th year.   If so, then this should be the date assigned to Louvre #179 and by association to Louvre #410.   But that conclusion appears to be qualified by the fact that stelae associated with different Apis bulls are sometimes deposited in the same general area of the Serapeum.  The fact has confused scholars, and thus the necessity of the following remarks concerning the cult of the "living Apis".

        4)  All three of the stela found in the Serapeum corridor (SIM 4100, 4112, 4115) are dedicated to the "living Apis", a curiosity not fully appreciated by Egyptologists, who fail to properly distinguish the cults of the living and deceased Apis bulls.  It is known from excavations at the site that the living Apis was domiciled in an elaborate enclosure near Memphis and worshipped in its own right.[29]  Unlike stela dedicated to a deceased bull, monuments erected in honor of the living Apis could originate at various times during the lifetime of the bull.  Their construction was not limited to a narrow time frame between the death and burial of the animal.   Nor can we assume, as was the case with the cult of the deceased Apis, that the stelae erected in honor of a particular living bull were all removed from the surface to the confines of the Serapeum at the time of the funeral of that bull.  They may have remained above ground to inform devotees of the cult for decades after the subject bull's death.   In view of this possibility we cannot state with certainty that several stela appearing in the same location, such as the Serapeum corridor, all relate to the same Apis.   But there is a presumption that they relate to Apis bulls from the same general time frame.   And the named stelae in the Serapeum corridor all appear to originate from early in the reign of Amasis.  It is not only their physical proximity at the time of discovery which suggests their correspondence in time.

        5)  If the reader wonders why we emphasize the fact that the Khnembre and Wahibre-Mery-Neit stelae were erected early in Amasis reign he need only read the introductory comments of Vercoutter in his discussion of the two inscriptions.  Commenting on the Khnembre stela Vercoutter notes that "the individuals cited in the text are found on other Serapeum stelae dated from the reign of Darius I" and that, moreover, "the inscription resembles closely (est tres proche) that of the stele SIM 4109", (his text L) which is dated to the 34th year of Darius.   He notes also, in remarks related to the Wahibre stela, that Mariette proposed an identification of this stela with the 34th year of Darius.  As a result Vercoutter is compelled to date both the Khnemibre and Wahibre stelae well into the Persian period, rather than early in the reign of Amasis, this in spite of the fact that almost eighty years separate the early years of Amasis and the 34th year of Darius I in the traditional history.    To his credit Vercoutter does not appear confident with this dating, in spite of his acceptance of it.   When commenting on the Wahibre text he remarks:

It has been dated by Mariette himself from the year 34 of the reign of Daius, although no (other) indications confirm this attribution.  One knows that at this same place have been found some stelae from the reign of Amasis.  Nothing (specific) is opposed in principle to (the fact that ) this text goes back to the last pharaohs of the 26th dynasty.  The names of the individuals who figure in the text are found in part on a small Serapeum stela (SIM 4193), but this monument is itself difficult to date.  Although it may be very near, based on style, to stelae dated to the reign of Amasis, and its place of discovery connects it with another stela of the same pharaoh (SIM 4192), these two criteria are too imprecise to provide certainty:  on the one hand several stelae dated from two different reigns have been found by Mariette at the same place; on the other hand the style at the end of the 26th dynasty is very near to that of the first Persian era. [30]

         In the revised history the problem disappears.   The early years of Amasis do not precede the 34th year of Darius by 80 years, they follow that date by less than 40 years.   And the presence of the names of Henat family members in the reign of Darius I is not at all a problem.   We have observed  that the parents and grandparents of the priest Khnembre are still alive when his Serapeum stela was written   Many of these family members are extremely old.  Even Khnemibre, the brother of the king, is not a young man.   He has an adult son, whose mother (Khnemibre's wife) is deceased.    Ahmose-sa-Neith may have been a younger member of the family, but even he was likely born late in the reign of Darius I.    It is not surprising, therefore,  that names from the Khnemibre stela occur in documents dated in or shortly after the 34th year of Darius I.  The fact that stela dated to the 34th year of Darius, particularly if dedicated to a living Apis, should be deposited in close proximity to stelae associated with the Apis deceased in Amasis 4th or 23rd years, is also to be expected.  The bull deceased in Amasis' 4th year was the immediate successor of the bull born in the 31st year of Darius I, a fact we have already argued.

        We proceed on the assumption that Louvre #410 preserves the genealogy the last "king" of the Saite dynasty.   Let the scholars prove otherwise.   The fact that king Amasis had a son Khnemibre, named after himself,  is also likely.    And in the revised history we can trace the origins of the name Khnemibre back to the time of the great grandfather, Udjahorresne,  the celebrated hero who assisted the nation in its recovery from the devastation wrought by Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon.

        We have almost arrived at the close of our revision.  With the death of Amasis and the revolt of his successor Amyrtaeus, Egyptian history will once again march in step with the times.