The following are the most notable events in the history of Pelusium : •
Sennacherib, the
Neo-Assyrian emperor, 720-715 BC, in the reign of
Sethos the Aethiopian of the
25th Dynasty of Egypt, advanced from the
Kingdom of Judah upon Pelusium, but retired without fighting from before its walls in
Isaiah 31:8;
Herodotus ii. 141;
Strabo xiii. p. 604. His retreat was ascribed to the favor of
Hephaestos towards Sethos, his priest. In the night, while the Assyrians slept, a host of field mice gnawed their bow-strings and shield-straps, who fled, and many of them were slain in their flight by the Egyptians. Herodotus saw in the temple of Hephaestos at
Memphis, a record of this victory of the Egyptians: a statue of Sethos holding a mouse in his hand. The story probably rests on the fact that in the symbolism of Egypt, the mouse implied destruction. (Compare Horapolis
Hieroglyph. i. 50;
Claudius Aelianus,
De Natura Animalium vi. 41.) • The decisive
Battle of Pelusium (525 BC) which transferred the throne of the
Pharaohs to
Cambyses II, king of the
Persians, was fought near Pelusium. The fields around were strewn with the bones of the combatants when Herodotus visited. He noted that the skulls of the Egyptians were distinguishable from those of the Persians by their superior hardness, a fact confirmed he said by the mummies. He ascribed this to the Egyptians' shaving their heads from infancy, and to the Persians covering them up with folds of cloth or linen. (Herodotus ii. 10, seq.); however, according to legend, Pelusium fell without a fight, by the simple expedient of having the invading army drive cats (sacred to the local goddess
Bast) before them. As Cambyses advanced at once to Memphis, Pelusium probably surrendered itself immediately after the battle. (Polyaen.
Stratag. vii. 9.) • In 373 BC,
Pharnabazus, satrap of
Phrygia, and
Iphicrates, the commander of the
Athenian armament, appeared before Pelusium, but retired without attacking it,
Nectanebo I, king of Egypt, having added to its former defences by laying the neighboring lands under water, and blocking up the navigable channels of the Nile by embankments. (
Diodorus Siculus xv. 42;
Cornelius Nepos,
Iphicrates c. 5.) • Pelusium was attacked and taken by the Persians, c. 340 BC. The city contained at the time a garrison of 5,000 Greek mercenaries under the command of
Philophron. At first, owing to the rashness of the
Thebans in the Persian service, the defenders had the advantage. But the Egyptian king
Nectanebo II hastily venturing on a pitched battle, his troops were cut to pieces, and Pelusium surrendered to the Theban general
Lacrates on honorable conditions. (Diodorus Siculus xvi. 43.) • In 333 BC, Pelusium opened its gates to
Alexander the Great, who placed a garrison in it under the command of one of those officers entitled Companions of the King. (
Arrian,
Exp. Alex. iii. 1, seq.; Quintus Curtius iv. 33.) • In 173 BC,
Antiochus Epiphanes utterly defeated the troops of
Ptolemy Philometor under the walls of Pelusium, which he took and retained after he had retired from the rest of Egypt. (
Polybius Legat. § 82; Hieronym.
in Daniel. xi.) On the fall of the Syrian kingdom, however, if not earlier, Pelusium had been restored to the
Ptolemies. • In 55 BC, again belonging to Egypt,
Mark Antony, as cavalry commander to the
Roman proconsul
Gabinius, defeated the Egyptian army, and made himself master of the city.
Ptolemy Auletes, in whose behalf the Romans invaded Egypt at this time, wished to put the Pelusians to the sword; but his intention was thwarted by Mark Anthony. (
Plut. Anton. c. 3; Valerius Max. ix. 1.) • In 48 BC,
Pompey was murdered near Pelusium. • In 47 BC,
Mithridates of Pergamon stormed and took Pelusium on his way to reinforce
Caesar who was being besieged in
Alexandria. • In 30 BC, more than half a year after his victory at
Actium,
Augustus appeared before Pelusium, and was admitted by its governor
Seleucus within its walls. • In 115–117 AD, during the
Diaspora Revolt, the Jews are said to have taken control of the waterways near Pelusium. This is documented by the Greek historian
Appian, who was an eyewitness and escaped from Jewish naval forces at Pelusium. • In 501 AD, Pelusium suffered greatly from the Persian invasion of Egypt (
Eutychius, Annal.). • In 541 AD, the
Plague of Justinian first emerged in Pelusium before spreading across the
Byzantine Empire. • In 639, Pelusium offered a protracted, though, in the end, an ineffectual resistance to the arms of
Amr ibn al-As. As on former occasions, the surrender of the key of the Delta was nearly equivalent to the subjugation of Egypt itself. • In 749, Pelusium was raided by the
Bashmuric Copts. • In ca. 870, Pelusium is mentioned as a major port in the trade network of the
Radhanite merchants. • In 1118,
Baldwin I of Jerusalem razed the city to the ground, but died shortly afterwards of food poisoning after eating a plateful of the local fish. The sultans who ruled Pelusium following
the Crusades, however, generally neglected the harbors, and from that period Pelusium, which had long been on the decline, almost disappeared from history. == Archaeological research ==