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Cambyses II in hieroglyphs: Mesutire, the Persian who conquered Egypt

10 November 2026

Cambyses II's Egyptian throne name is mswt-rꜥ, Mesutire, "offspring of Ra", written with the sun disc, three fox skins, a quail chick and a pestle. His Persian name, Kambujiya, was spelled by sound as kmbḏ, Kembudj.

He defeated Psamtik III at Pelusium in 525 BC and ruled Egypt until 522 BC as the first king of the 27th Dynasty. An Egyptian official, Udjahorresnet, chose his throne name and told the story on his own statue, which is now in the Vatican Museums.

Mesutire makes him a child of the sun god

The throne name has four signs. The sun disc () is rꜥ, Ra, written first out of respect for the god and read last. The three fox skins tied together () write ms, "to be born". The quail chick () is w, and the pestle () gives the t at the end. Together they spell mswt, "offspring, birth". Read in spoken order: mswt-rꜥ.

The same fox skins stand in Ramesses, rꜥ-ms-sw, "Ra is the one who bore him", and in Thutmose. A foreign conqueror took the name of a born son of Ra, so in the temples he could play the part every king played.

Sun Three fox skins Quail chick Pestle

Write Mesutire in a cartouche

Five sound signs spell Kembudj

Kambujiya meant nothing in Egyptian, so scribes wrote it with sound signs. The basket with a handle () is k, the owl () is m, the foot () is b, the quail chick () is w, and the fire drill () gives ḏ, said like the j in "jam". The result, kmbḏ, is close to the Persian sound. The Greeks heard it as Kambyses.

Basket with handle Owl Foot Fire-drill

Write Kembudj in a cartouche

Smatawy names him uniter of the Two Lands

Udjahorresnet also gave Cambyses a Horus name, smꜣ-tꜣwy, Smatawy, "he who unites the Two Lands". The lung and windpipe () write smꜣ, "to unite". The land with grains () writes tꜣ, "land", and doubled it reads tꜣwy, "the Two Lands", Upper and Lower Egypt.

The lung and windpipe tied to two plants is the old emblem carved on the sides of royal thrones. With this name Cambyses was presented as the king who held the country together, the oldest duty of any pharaoh.

Lung and windpipe Land with grains

Pelusium opened Egypt to the Persians

Cambyses' father Cyrus had built the largest empire the world had seen, and Egypt was the great kingdom left outside it. In 525 BC the Persian army met the Egyptians at Pelusium, on the eastern edge of the Delta. Psamtik III had been king only a few months. After the defeat he held out in Memphis, and when the city fell the whole country was in Persian hands by that summer.

A later Greek story says the Persians put cats, dogs and sheep in their front line, so the Egyptians would not shoot for fear of hurting animals sacred to their gods. It is first told centuries after the battle and is probably a legend.

Udjahorresnet tells how the Persians came

Udjahorresnet had commanded the royal fleet under Amasis and Psamtik III. Under the Persians he became chief physician. His statue, a man holding a small shrine, stood in the temple of the goddess Neith at Sais and is now in the Gregorian Egyptian Museum of the Vatican.

The inscription covering it says that he composed Cambyses' titles, that he had foreign soldiers who had camped in the temple of Neith sent away, and that Cambyses came to Sais and honoured the goddess. He was crowned king there. Later Udjahorresnet followed Darius I to Susa and was sent back to restore the House of Life, the temple school of scribes.

Read the Vatican's Egyptian museum

The Apis bull was buried with honours

Herodotus says Cambyses came back to Memphis after losing much of his army, found the city celebrating a new Apis bull and stabbed it in the thigh. The bull died, and the priests buried it in secret. The god's name, ḥp, is written with the twisted wick () for ḥ, the stool () for p and a bull () to show what is meant.

Records from the Serapeum at Saqqara, where the Apis bulls were buried, tell another story. An Apis that died in 524 BC was given a full burial in a stone sarcophagus whose inscription names Cambyses as the king who dedicated it, and its stela shows him worshipping the bull. Most historians think Herodotus heard the tales of priests who resented Cambyses for cutting the temples' income.

Herodotus also says Cambyses sent an army from Thebes against the oasis of Siwa and lost it to a sandstorm in the desert. No trace of it has ever been confirmed. Cambyses died in 522 BC in Syria on his way back to Persia.

Twisted flax wick Stool Bull

Read the Serapeum

Questions

Did Cambyses really kill the Apis bull?

Probably not. Herodotus says he did, but the Apis that died in 524 BC was buried at the Serapeum in a sarcophagus dedicated in Cambyses' name.

What does Mesutire mean?

"Offspring of Ra". It was chosen for Cambyses by the Egyptian official Udjahorresnet, whose statue tells the story.

Where is the statue of Udjahorresnet?

In the Gregorian Egyptian Museum of the Vatican Museums in Rome. It once stood in the temple of Neith at Sais in the Nile Delta.

Glossary

dynasty: A line of kings counted together, usually one family. Egyptologists number Egypt's kings in about 30 dynasties, following the priest Manetho.
Horus name: The oldest of a king's names, written in a serekh under the Horus falcon. It names the king as the god Horus on earth.
Lower Egypt: The north of Egypt, the flat Nile Delta from around Memphis to the sea. It is called lower because it is downstream.
pharaoh: The king of Egypt. The word comes from per-aa, "great house", a name for the palace that came to mean the king himself in the New Kingdom.
priest: A servant of a god in a temple, who washed, dressed and fed the god's statue each day. A high priest led the staff of a great temple.
sarcophagus: A large stone coffin. In rich burials it held one or more coffins of wood.
scribe: A person trained to read and write, who kept accounts, wrote letters and copied texts. Few Egyptians could write, and scribes were well respected.
stela: An upright stone slab carved with words and pictures, set up in tombs and temples or to mark a border.
temple: The house of a god, where priests served the god's statue. Temples for dead kings kept up their offerings after death.
throne name: The name a king took when he came to the throne, written in the first cartouche after the title "King of Upper and Lower Egypt". Egyptologists also call it the prenomen.