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Gaza

City at the start of the desert road to Egypt, Herodotus's Cadytis, 525 BCE

In the game: Level 2: The Spear-bearer

Gaza, which Herodotus seems to call Cadytis, was a large city of southern Palestine on the coast road to Egypt. Beyond it the road ran through the coastal stations held by the Arabs and across three days of waterless desert to Pelusium. Cambyses' army went this way in 525.

In the game: Gaza is named in the Memphis level's muster, field briefing and chatter, as the start of the desert road the King's army crossed.

Cadytis

Ancient account

Herodotus says the only known way into Egypt ran from Phoenicia to the borders of Cadytis, a city of the Syrians of Palestine not much smaller than Sardis. Pharaoh Necho, he says, took Cadytis after beating the Syrians. Most historians take Cadytis to be Gaza.

Herodotus 2.159, 3.5

The desert road

Ancient account

From Cadytis the trading stations on the coast as far as Ienysus belonged to the king of the Arabs, and from Ienysus to Mount Casius and the Serbonian lake the land was Syrian again. Then came Egypt. Herodotus says the stretch from Ienysus was three days of waterless desert.

Herodotus 3.5

Water for the army

Ancient account

Cambyses made a pact with the king of the Arabs, who filled camel-skins with water and set them on his camels and waited in the desert. Herodotus also reports a story of a pipe of hides from a river, which he thinks less likely.

Herodotus 3.7-9

Later sieges

Ancient account

Gaza held out against Alexander for two months in 332 under a Persian commander, Batis, and was taken by storm. Arrian tells the siege. Excavations at Tell el-Ajjul and other sites near the modern city show its long history as a trading town.

Arrian, Anabasis 2.26-27