The Greeks often saw Egypt as a model of long-term cultural stability; in fact, Egyptian history is full of ruptures – periods of instability or external invasions – and a major theme in Egyptian literature is the methods by which such threats to continuity were resisted. This chapter looks at several modes of resistance illustrated by Greco-Egyptian literature of the first millennium. It looks at three topics: first, heroes of the Egyptian resistance to Persia (in Herodotus and the Inaros Cycle); secondly, resistance narratives in the Ptolemaic Period: the story of Nectanebo’s Dream (which probably presented the Ptolemies as re-establishing legitimate kingship in Egypt after the Persians) and the apocalyptic Oracles of the Potter and the Lamb (probably directed at the ‘Typhonian’ Ptolemies). The chapter closes by looking at Manetho’s narrative of Egyptian resistance to the foreign Hyksos rulers, which corresponds to events in the mid-second millennium BCE and the foundation of the New Kingdom. It asks whether Manetho’s narrative should be interpreted as reflecting contemporary concerns with foreign rule and resistance to it.

This chapter is concerned with Alexander in Egypt in both life and legend. Subjects discussed include his foundation of Alexandria, which became a new capital for Egypt on the Mediterranean coast, his expedition through the Libyan desert to Siwah, where the oracle’s recognition of the conqueror as son of Zeus-Ammon resonated in both Greek and Egyptian cultic terms, his acceptance as the pharaoh of Egypt, and finally, after his death in Babylon, his return for burial to Egypt, where his embalmed corpse and tomb in Alexandria became the centre of Ptolemaic ruler cult, a focal point for later visits of Roman emperors, and where the question of its actual location remains a source of continuing fascination and debate. In the accounts of classical historians, Alexander in Egypt is already variously presented; the historiography is as important as the history. From the start some specifically local legendary elements may be seen and over time the Romance or Legend of Alexander in its many different forms overshadows and surpasses any strictly historical account.