I'm gonna go ahead and post the first half of what should have been this week's Peoples of the Empire entry because it's a very long one, as befits its subject.
Geographical definition and names
Ancient Egypt (Egyptian km.t, believed to have been pronounced "Kumat" but usually read as "Kemet") was more-or-less contiguous with the Nile Valley from about the First Cataract northward. Its name refers to the "black" land of the valley, distinguished in Egyptian discourse from the surrounding dšṛt or "red land" of the Sahara.
In Old Persian the country was called Mudrāya, which derives from a Semitic name (compare Hebrew Mizrayim), meaning "two straits," a reference to the ancient division of Upper and Lower Egypt. In modern Arabic it is Miṣr, or Maṣr in Egypt's common dialect.
In Greek, the country was called Aigyptos (with a hard G and a Y sounding something like U). Strabo imagined it to be a contraction of Aigaiou huptiōs, "below the Aegean." In reality it's a twofold metonym dating from the Bronze Age; it derives from Hwt-ka-Ptah, "home of the ka (soul) of Ptah," which was a shrine in Memphis that eventually became a byword for the entire city as Hikuptah. The name appears in Greece as early as the Mycenaean Linear B tablets, where it is rendered a-ku-pi-ti-yo.
History
Egypt is perhaps the oldest surviving country in the world, unified out of a collection of city-states about five thousand years ago; these original states long survived as administrative divisions called sepats (better known as nomes, from Greek nomoi). A royal cult had long since formed around the monarch, identified as an incarnation of the god Horus, and from about the 13th century BC onward referred to indirectly as the pr-aa or pharaoh (meaning "great house" or palace).
At the time of Persia's rise, Egypt was in its 26th dynasty, with its capital at Sais on the Nile Delta, the then-ruler a usurper named Amasis (Ahmose) II. According to Herodotus, Cambyses II asked Amasis to send an Egyptian opthalmologist to Persia. The man chosen was unwilling to leave his family, but Amasis basically exiled him. The doctor convinced Cambyses to ask for the hand of Amasis' daughter. Amasis, unwilling to let his daughter (as he expected) be made a concubine, sent Nitetis, the daughter of his slain predecessor Apries. Nitetis, however, revealed the ruse, and Cambyses waged war in revenge.
Amasis died before the Persian army reached Egypt in 525 BC, and his son Psammetichus (Psamtik) III was defeated with much violence near Pelusium (Per-Amun) on the eastern Nile Delta. Psammetichus retreated to Memphis, which fell after a long siege. Cambyses captured Psammetichus and executed two thousand citizens of Memphis.
Thereafter, the Achaemenids constituted the 27th dynasty of Egypt. Egypt, together with Cyprus and Phoenicia, made up the sixth satrapy of the empire, its first satrap Aryandes. Psammetichus was taken to Susa, where he was executed after allegedly becoming involved in a plot against Cambyses. The native administrative structure was kept, and Memphis retained as satrapal capital.
Cambyses spent three years in Egypt, and ancient historians presented his reign as brutal and impious; he is said to have mutilated Amasis' mummy and burned it, against both Egyptian and Persian custom; to have killed the Apis, a bull sacred to Ptah in Memphis, then killed the next Apis and a number of the city's nobles, had the priests of Ptah whipped; and openly mocked the Egyptian gods; the totality of which proved in Herodotus' mind that Cambyses was insane.
It is possible that much of this image originates with the Egyptian clergy, who resented Cambyses' revocation of taxes and grants that funded the temples. An Egyptian statue dating from the period is inscribed with the biography of Wedjahor-Resne, Psammetichus' physician and admiral who maintained his office after the Persian conquest and guided Cambyses and Darius in the proper behavior of an Egyptian pharaoh.
From Egypt, Cambyses launched unsuccessful expeditions against Ethiopia and Carthage before heading home to try to deal with the Gaumâta and winding up dead. Darius mentions a rebellion in 522 in his Behistun inscription, but doesn't elaborate on it; presumably Aryandes managed to put it down without royal help. As king, Darius restored the state grants for the temples, ordered the transcription of Egyptian legal codes and translation into Aramaic, and constructed a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea. According to Herodotus, Aryandes inadvertently ended his own highly successful career and his life by minting silver coins called aryandics in imitation of Darius' darics. No aryandics have ever been identified, and Lendering speculates that the real cause was Darius' distrust of Aryandes during the Ionian Revolt, feeling that his satrap may have gone native. He was replaced by Pharandates.
In 487, another uprising began, which would last until Xerxes subdued it in 484. He appointed Achaemenes, his brother (per Herodotus) or son (per Ctesias) as the new satrap. Egypt sent two hundred ships to Xerxes' invasion of Greece, nearly a sixth of the number present, while Achaemenes took charge of the entire imperial fleet. Mardonius impeached the Egyptian crews for cowardice, along with the other seafaring peoples, in the Battle of Salamis (Herodotus VIII.100).
Yet another rebellion started in 460. Its leader Inaros, whom Ctesias describes as a Libyan, allied with the Delian League, which was still actively at war with the Persian empire, and defeated and killed Achaemenes at Papremis. The Persian army was besieged in the citadel of Memphis, but held out until 456, when the satraps Megabyzus of Syria and (per Diodorus) Artabanus of Phrygia drove off the rebel army. The Egyptians and Greeks retreated to Prosopitis in the Nile Delta, but Megabyzus diverted the river around the island and captured it. Inaros was executed at Susa. The defeat was responsible for the relocation of the Delian treasury to Athens.
The last and most successful rebellion during the Achaemenid period began in 411 under Amyrtaeus (*Amenirdisu) of Sais, who may have been a distant descendant of the 26th dynasty. He declared himself king following the death of Darius II in 405, and made good his claim while Artaxerxes II was busy fighting Cyrus the Younger. The Persians held on to Upper Egypt until around 400-398. Meanwhile, Amyrtaeus, sole pharaoh of the 28th dynasty, was defeated in battle and then executed at Memphis by another Egyptian noble, Nepherites (Nefaarud) I of the 29th dynasty.
Nepherites moved the capital of Egypt to his (probably) home city Mendes. He sent grain and shipbuilding materials to Agesilaus of Sparta for his war with the Persians in Anatolia. Upon Nepherites' death in 393, a usurper named Psammuthes claimed the throne and warred with Nepherites' son Muthis, but both lost out by the end of the year to an unrelated contender, Hakor or Akoris. Hakor took part in the Corinthian War, allied with Cyprus and Athens; this alliance induced Persia to switch its support to Sparta, resulting in the Peace of Antalcidas in 387. Persia then invaded Egypt again from 385-383, but Hakor defeated them with Athenian support. In 380, Hakor died. His son Nepherites II reigned less than a year before Nectanebo (Nekhtnebef) I overthrew him and created the 30th dynasty.
Apart from defending against the Persians, Nectanebo was known primarily as a builder and restorer of temples across Egypt, including creating the shrine on Philae (Pilak) in Upper Egypt which would become a major site of worship of Isis. In 365, his son Teos (Djedhor) assumed co-regency. Nectanebo died in 362 and Teos succeeded him, but while on a military expedition to Phoenicia two years later, he was overthrown by his nephew Nectanebo II, and lived the rest of his life in exile in Persia.
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