Egypt in the Late Period

Our understanding of the internal history of Egypt from 664 to 332 bc rests on a limited patchwork of hieroglyphic inscriptions and cursive texts in hieratic or demotic, Aramaic or Greek. By contrast, Egypt’s place in the wider world has to be reconstructed from foreign sources—Assyrian, Babylonian, Hebrew, and Greek—supplemented by Egyptian artefacts from the Mediterranean and Near East. At the interface sits the account of Egypt written by Herodotus in the fifth century bc. The ways in which this diversity of evidence has shaped modern interpretation of Egyptian history in this period are here explored.