Cambyses and the conquest of Egypt, the succession crisis after his death, and the accession of Darius I, studied through Herodotus Book 3 and the Behistun inscription, with the contradiction between the two accounts of how Darius took power.

What this dot point is asking

After Cyrus, the period study follows the empire through the reign of Cambyses and the disputed accession of Darius I. You need the narrative (the conquest of Egypt, the succession crisis, Darius taking power), but the real exam value is in the clash of sources: Herodotus Book 3 tells the story one way, and Darius's own Behistun inscription tells it another. This is the course's best example of two prescribed sources disagreeing, which is exactly what the source questions are built on.

The answer

Cambyses and the conquest of Egypt

Herodotus's hostile portrait

Cambyses is therefore a favourite for source-evaluation questions, because you can show that Herodotus's account is shaped by his sources and his moralising purpose.

The succession crisis

Darius and the two accounts of his accession

This is the heart of the topic. Two prescribed sources tell how Darius came to power, and they disagree:

• Herodotus (Book 3) describes seven Persian conspirators, including Darius, who killed the usurping Magus. He even reports a famous debate among them on the best form of government (monarchy, oligarchy or democracy) before they chose monarchy and Darius became king.
• The Behistun inscription, Darius's own royal monument, claims that Darius alone killed a Magus named Gaumata, who had falsely pretended to be Bardiya, with the favour of the god Ahuramazda, and then crushed nineteen rebellions in a single year.

The deeper question is whether Darius told the truth at all. Some historians suspect he may have usurped the throne from the real Bardiya and invented the impostor Gaumata to legitimise himself. You cannot settle this, but you can use the two sources to practise weighing a later Greek narrative against a piece of contemporary royal propaganda.

Examples in context

A top answer never just says "the sources disagree": it explains why they disagree by pointing to each source's nature and purpose.

Try this

Q1. What did Cambyses conquer, and in what year? [Knowledge recall]

• Cue. Egypt, in 525 BC, after the battle of Pelusium.

Q2. Explain why Herodotus and the Behistun inscription give different accounts of Darius's accession. [Short source evaluation]

• Cue. Because Behistun is Darius's own propaganda, designed to present him as the sole, divinely chosen hero, whereas Herodotus reports a later Greek tradition that shared the credit among seven conspirators, so their purposes and origins differ.