Psamtek II was succeeded in 589 BC by his son, Haaibra (Apries), who had to deal with a number of international challenges. The Egyptians were defeated when attempting to lift the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem, and again defeated when trying to prevent the expansion of the Greek colony of Cyrene. This latter engagement led to a revolt among the defeated Egyptian troops, resulting in civil war and the replacement of Haaibra by a general, Ahmose, who was later declared king. The forty-four-year rule of Ahmose (Amasis) was one of the notable periods in ancient Egyptian history which benefited from a peaceful and stable international scene. Ahmose forged a number of international alliances, he placed renewed emphasis on trade at Naukratis, further developed the oases and undertook massive building projects. There was economic and administrative reorganisation within the country which included the strengthening of the customs administration and greater tax control over the assets of the individual. The numerous economic and commercial reforms contributed to a growing prosperity in Egypt.

This chapter offers a consideration of Crito’s character, based on other information about him from the Phaedo and the Euthydemus.

On coming to the throne of the Kingdom of the West, Psamtek began the process of reunifying Egypt. The Assyrians left in unidentified circumstances and Psamtek began to bolster his military forces by recruiting foreign mercenaries. Economically the fledgling Saite state was quite weak, and Psamtek sought to improve his economic base by establishing trading relations, particularly with the Aegeans and the Phoenicians. He expanded his power throughout the Delta, seemingly by mainly diplomatic means. In Middle Egypt Psamtek strengthened his alliances with the major power, the rulers of the Herakleopolitan kingdom who eventually recognised him as king. In the south of the country he achieved his greatest success, with the adoption of his eldest daughter, Princess Nitiqret, as heir to the powerful position of God’s Wife of Amun. In doing so he was able to return the Thebaid to Egyptian central royal authority. Within a period of about nine years Psamtek had imposed his will throughout Egypt but overall consolidation of his power and full reintegration of the state of Egypt was some time away.

The kingdom of Kush rose to power and dominated Nubia in the eighth century BC, and then went on to conquer and rule Egypt as the 25th Dynasty. Egyptian-Kushite commercial activity in the Levant brought them into conflict with the Assyrian Empire, the dominant force in the Near East at that time. Subsequent clashes between the Assyrians and the Egyptian-Kushite forces resulted in the Assyrians, led by Esarhaddon, invading and conquering Egypt. However, once the main Assyrian forces left Egypt, the Kushites rebelled and took over Egypt once more. The Assyrians returned under Ashurbanipal, the next Assyrian ruler, on two further occasions putting down revolts, and finally drove the Kushites from Egypt in 663 BC. The Assyrians appointed local regional rulers to administer the country and Egypt became a province of the Assyrian Empire. In the Delta, the Kingdom of the West was controlled by Psamtek, following the death of his father Nekau I who had ruled the state during the Assyrian and Kushite confrontations.

Chapter 5 addresses how twelfth-century Church reformers and participants in the English invasion of Ireland also developed a poetics of Irish place to argue for their own entitlement to Ireland. I turn first to Gerald of Wales, whose Topographia and Expugnatio Hibernica show Ireland physically rejecting the ‘unworthy’ Irish from the landscape and embracing English and Welsh settlers, exhorting them to plant themselves in Irish soil. I examine the process by which the identities of Ireland’s invaders are mapped onto the territory and show how a changed Ireland is generated through textual culture, particularly important when in historical reality Ireland resisted full conquest. The chapter then turns to Saint Patrick’s Purgatory in Ireland’s north. Accounts of the Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii were repeatedly copied and translated over several centuries: 150 Latin manuscripts survive, and another 150 codices confirm its translation into virtually every European vernacular. While Patrick’s Purgatory is a site of pilgrimage, its rhetoric nonetheless suggests heroic, crusading conquest of Ireland’s dangerous spaces in which English reformers also became textual heroes. In conclusion, I examine how both Gerald’s works and the Tractatus accomplished the export of an English poetics of Irish space which became highly influential throughout Europe.

The essay explores pilgrimage to the sanctuary of Dodona, in Epirus, through a phenomenological lens, aiming to reconstruct the experience of ancient pilgrims. The study highlights the significance of landscape, movement, and motivation, on the basis that Dodona’s natural features and architectural layout deeply influenced pilgrims’ perceptions. The phenomenological approach draws on landscape archaeology, analyzing human interaction with sacred spaces. The analysis examines not only motivations behind oracular activity, but also other purposes, such as attending the Naia festival, and emphasizes the interplay of visibility and movement as pilgrims approached the sanctuary. Although reconstructing individual experiences is challenging, common patterns in collective behavior, such as rituals, processions, and religious practices, offer insights into the ancient pilgrimage experience. In short, the study uses literary, epigraphic, and material evidence to discuss how Dodona’s sacred landscape shaped its visitors’ religious and emotional experiences, contributing to a broader understanding of Greek pilgrimage traditions.

The opening chapter sets the scene for Egypt of the Saite Pharaohs, 664–525 BC by considering the political turmoil, disunity and events in Egypt prior to the 26th Dynasty, the Saite Period. The invasions and settlements of western tribes (‘Libyans’) into Egypt were a factor in the origin and later rise to power of the Saite rulers. The process of how the ‘Libyan’ leaders rose from being merely local chiefs in a foreign country to eventually being independent rulers of mini-states in northern Egypt is considered. In time one of these states, the Kingdom of the West, centred on Sais, developed and became the largest of these independent polities. Further expansion into the Delta and central Egypt was halted by the invasion of the Kushites from Nubia, the country to the south of Egypt, who already had some presence in the southern part of Egypt. The Kingdom of the West, although defeated, was able to retain its original territory, and its rulers later declared themselves kings and became known as the 24th Dynasty.

This essay pursues an ontological understanding of consultations at Dodona. The premise of this investigation is that if we are to understand a divinatory consultation as the Greeks themselves did, then we need to put aside our own Western Post-Enlightenment (largely secular) ontological assumptions concerning the existence of supernatural beings and view the world through the ontological assumptions of the Greeks themselves. This is a much more radical suggestion than the traditional injunction of putting on the cultural filters of the ancient Greeks, in as much as that step is then invariably followed by an act of cultural translation (which all too often is a ‘mistranslation’). The practice of divination, therefore, should be analysed in emic terms and then described in those terms as well, rather than being re-described in our own terms. Nevertheless, the emic understanding of a consultation can be enhanced by the application of Actor-Network Theory and an Object-Oriented Ontology, since they reveal the implicit social dynamics involved in consulting and interpreting oracles.

This chapter argues that the interpretation of the dialogue should not be constrained by its relationship to the Apology, as has often been done, and that its chronological place among the dialogues is uncertain. The dialogue should be interpreted in its own terms.