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Herodotus on Anysis
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Ancient Egypt: The history of the 21st to 31st dynasties

Herodotus on Anysis

    Lower Egypt before the Kushite conquest was an assembly of city states ruled by Meshwesh chieftains. Among them were the kings of Sais, Shepsesre Tefnakht and Wahkare (Bakenrenef) (720-715), who formed the short-lived 24th dynasty. It seems it was Tefnakht, who hid in the marshes of the Delta from Piye rather than from Sabacos/Shabaka. After the Ethiopian had returned to Upper Egypt, the Saite king came out of hiding and assumed the title of pharaoh.

    According to Manetho, the last pharaoh before the Kushite invasion was Bocchoris. He calls him a Saite, after the town he ruled.
    The origin of the name Anysis is unclear. It may be derived from the city of Anytis which seems to have been located in the Delta. Amyrtaeos ruled from 404 until 399 BCE.

 

    Such were the deeds which this king performed: and after him reigned a blind man of the city of Anysis, whose name was Anysis. In his reign the Ethiopians and Sabacos the king of the Ethiopians marched upon Egypt with a great host of men; so this blind man departed, flying to the fen-country, and the Ethiopian was king over Egypt for fifty years ...

.....

... when the Ethiopian had gone away out of Egypt, the blind man came back from the fen-country and began to rule again, having lived there during fifty years upon an island which he had made by heaping up ashes and earth: for whenever any of the Egyptians visited him bringing food, according as it had been appointed to them severally to do without the knowledge of the Ethiopian, he bade them bring also some ashes for their gift.
    This island none was able to find before Amyrtaios; that is, for more than seven hundred years the kings who arose before Amyrtaios were not able to find it. Now the name of this island is Elbo, and its size is ten furlongs each way.

Herodotus Histories 2.137
Project Gutenberg

 
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