Ancient history

Pelusium, the battle that the Persians won against the Egyptians by throwing cats at them

Throughout history, men have not had enough to tear each other to pieces in endless wars but have incorporated all kinds of animals into the massacres, from the most orthodox such as horses, mules, elephants and dogs to others somewhat more rare , case of pigs engulfed in fire, birds set on fire to set roofs on fire (apart from carrier pigeons), cattle (in stampedes provoked ad hoc ), bees or snakes (launched in jars against enemy ships or fortifications). But probably one of the most unusual used in these warlike tasks has been the cat.

A priori It is somewhat disconcerting to imagine felines in combat that are not major beasts - for example, it is said that Ramses II had a trained lion that fought at his side in the Battle of Kadesh and there are no shortage of similar cases with tigers or leopards - and it does not seem that a cat's claws have enough power to take on a warrior. However, there is at least one instance where this species was responsible for the capture of a city:the Battle of Pelusium.

Pelusium or Pelosio was a city of Lower Egypt, located in the Nile Delta, although that name derived from the Greek and was later given by classical authors; the real one was Per-Amun. In the middle of the sixth century B.C. little remained of the ancient Egyptian splendor; threatened by Persian expansionism, at that point no pharaoh possessed sufficient strength to prevent not only his borders from being exceeded but even the loss of some points of his own territory. This was what happened to Pelusium, if we believe Herodotus' account, not confirmed by the archaeological record.

In the year 526 B.C. Psammetichus III, son of Ahmose II, of the 26th dynasty, ascended the throne. The period of government of the latter had been prosperous and long, more than forty years, which shows his good work because, although noble, he did not have royal blood and had come to power in a military coup. The influence of Egypt with Ahmose reached places like Cyprus to the north, Cyrene to the west and the first cataract to the south, but the Persian Empire was already appearing in the east.

Herodotus narrates a curious cause as the trigger for everything:Ahmose had sent an Egyptian doctor -they had great fame throughout the world- to the court of Cambyses II, but the doctor (probably an ophthalmologist, according to some scholars), resented this forced mission , decided to take revenge by sowing discord between the two kings and suggested to his new master that he ask Pharaoh for his daughter's hand, aware that the proposal would not please him. That's how it went; Ahmose preferred to send the daughter of her ousted predecessor as his, but she revealed the truth to Cambyses, who was insulted.

This recourse to the distorting element of diplomatic relations is classic and Herodotus insists on it with the story of an adviser to the pharaoh, a Greek mercenary named Fanes of Halicarnassus who would also have sought refuge in Persia after some disagreements with Ahmose, informing Cambyses of all the details necessary to start the conquest of Egypt. Of course, there were deeper reasons - economic and political - to start the campaign and it was under the reign of Psammetichus III that disaster struck.

The young and inexperienced pharaoh could not be compared to a relief figure of Cambyses II, the heir to Cyrus the Great and as willing as he is to enlarge his domain. Egypt was already the only state that remained independent in the area, so its conquest was a matter of time. In the year 525 B.C. the Persian army took the step and crossed the Sinai Peninsula logistically helped by the indigenous tribes. The pharaoh's only chance was to seek help from the Greek cities with which he had good trade relations, but it turned out that they joined Cambyses with their respective fleets, so the fate of the African country was cast.

Psammetichus led his men to try to stop the advance of the enemy and Pelusium was the scene of the clash. Although the number of troops on both sides is unknown, the Greek historian Ctesias tells in his work Persica that both Egyptians and Persians had foreign allies and mercenaries:Ionians and Carians the former, other Greeks and Bedouins the latter. The fight was bloody but there was no color; at that time the Achaemenid Empire was the main power in the known world and militarily Egypt was no rival.

Thus, the Persian troops devastated the formations of the Egyptians, who showed tremendous embarrassment when they saw that the adversary wore on their shields the image of Bastet, the goddess of the Egyptian pantheon who embodied harmony and happiness and whose iconographic representation had the shape of a gata (or woman with the head of a feline and carrying a sistrum). According to another version, they were not painted images but cats tied as living armor, which caused the soldiers' reluctance to strike against that disconcerting defense, which was one of the causes of the defeat.

The fact is that Herodotus puts the gloomy image of a sea of ​​skulls (according to what he says, the Egyptians were distinguished by having the toughest skin, as a result of their habit of shaving since childhood), while Ctesias details that the Persians caused fifty thousand casualties for only seven thousand own. Unable to resist the enemy push, Psammetichus and the survivors had to turn around in a dramatic retreat -practically a man for himself- and take safety behind the walls of Pelusium.

One would then expect the start of a siege but it turns out that it was not necessary either, again thanks to the cats and this time authentic. It is told by Polyenus, a Macedonian general and lawyer from the 2nd century AD. who wrote a military treatise in eight books entitled Strategemas (of which only references remain because it has been lost), and which explains that the Persians threw on the battlements those animals that the Egyptians considered sacred, to obtain a kind of covering fire in their assaults. They were essentially cats, which, in effect, paralyzed the Egyptian actions and led them to abandon the fortress, continuing their rout to Memphis.

On the other hand, Herodotus does not mention this unusual tactic, but he does mention another equally demoralizing one:Cambyses had Ahmose's tomb desecrated and his mummy burned. Then, after taking Pelusium, he sent a herald to Memphis to negotiate his surrender, but the Egyptians killed him, so a veritable revenge ensued, with ten Egyptians killed for every Persian, either in combat or in later executions, totaling about two thousand people from the Memphite elite:priests, nobles, high officials and even one of the pharaoh's sons. Of course, the Greek historian only collects the version of the losers.

So Memphis fell. Psammetichus was taken prisoner and subjected to the humiliation of seeing his daughter forced to work collecting water from the Nile and his son chained and harnessed like a mount before losing his life. On the other hand, according to Persian tradition, he was well treated until later, when his participation in a rebellion against the invader was discovered, he committed suicide -or was forced to-, putting an end to his dynasty and opening the way to the XXVII. the Achaemenid, which would last until 404 BC

It would still be necessary to review a fascinating epilogue also collected by Herodotus:that of the Persian army sent to seize the oasis of Siwa, where the famous Oracle of Amun was located, the same that Alexander the Great would later visit to invest himself with a mysterious divinity. Since that place is inland, in the middle of the desert, Cambyses's soldiers were surprised by a sandstorm that made them get lost forever. It is probably a legend, typical but so fascinating that many have tried to find its remains and in 2009 an Italian archaeological expedition found human bones along with weapons and bronze ornaments identified as Achaemenid.