Cambyses II

Cambyses II (d. 522 BCE) was King of the Achaemenid Persian Empire from 530 to 522 BCE, succeeding his father Cyrus the Great. His reign's central achievement was the conquest of Egypt in 525 BCE, defeating Pharaoh Psamtik III at the Battle of Pelusium and bringing the entire Egyptian kingdom under Persian control within the same year. The Greek historian Herodotus, writing decades later, portrayed him as an impious and half-mad tyrant who desecrated Egyptian religious sites and killed a sacred Apis bull, but surviving contemporary Egyptian sources contradict several of these claims and instead show him participating in proper burial rites for a sacred bull, leading modern historians to treat Herodotus's hostile portrait with considerable caution as likely reflecting later Egyptian or Persian court propaganda rather than a reliable record of his actual conduct.