Conflation of Cambyses and Nebuchednezzar

  

 

 

Further possible indication that Cambyses,

otherwise known as “Nebuchadnezzar”,

was Nebuchadnezzar II ‘the  Great’ himself.

 

 

 

 

 

P. F. Venticinque writes of the “conflation of Cambyses … and Nebuchadnezzar” in the article, “What's in a Name? Greek, Egyptian and Biblical Traditions” (“Abstract”, pp. 139-140): https://www.jstor.org/stable/24519587

 

This paper investigates the literary and historiographical implications for the conflation of Cambyses, the Persian king who conquered Egypt in 525 BC, and Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king who ordered the destruction of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem in 586 BC in the late antique Coptic text known as the Cambyses Romance.

In this fictionalized [sic?] account of the Persian invasion of Egypt, the anonymous author of the Coptic Cambyses Romance blends Greek, Egyptian and Biblical traditions of destruction and impiety committed at the hands of these two [sic?] rulers and employs these tales for his own rhetorical ends. In conflating the characters of these two notorious rulers, the author of the Coptic story draws an implicit comparison between their destructive and impious actions in Egypt and Jerusalem, and thereby forges a link not only between Greek and Egyptian traditions that deal with Cambyses and Biblical representations of Nebuchadnezzar, but also with Jerusalem and Egypt itself, which becomes the new Jerusalem.

….

The fictional [sic?] elements of the Cambyses Romance are readily apparent thanks to a number of peculiarities in the text that have complicated its overall interpretation; the pharaoh against whom Cambyses leads the attack is not Psammetichus III, as one might expect, but Apries; the force which Cambyses leads against the Egyptians is at times referred to as the Assyrians rather than the Persians; and at three points in the text, the author refers to Cambyses as Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian ruler who in 586 BC ordered the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the subsequent exile as described in the Old Testament. It is this last peculiarity that H.L. Jansen has called "the greatest difficulty in the whole work” ….

 

[End of quote]

 

“… the force which Cambyses leads against the Egyptians is at times referred to as the Assyrians rather than the Persians …”.

But what if, as according to my view that Cambyses = Nebuchednezzar were also Ashurbanipal:

 

Ashurbanipal and Nabonidus

 

https://www.academia.edu/35855917/Ashurbanipal_and_Nabonidus

 

For the Assyrian armies of Ashurbanipal assuredly did invade and conquer Egypt.