Beate Dignas & Engelbert Winter - Kaveh Farrokh

118 3 Military confrontations
campaign. They captured Pelousion, Babylon, Memphis and Nikiu without
much resistance. After an initial unsuccessful attack, Alexandria was
eventually taken by treason. By 619 the Persians had gained control of all
of Egypt. 219
For Byzantium, losing Alexandria was a particularly bitter defeat, since
the capital’s grain supply was now in jeopardy. For the Sasanians, having
conquered Egypt meant control of the entire Near East. Tabarī, whose
account compresses the sequence of events, conveys the impression that
Xusrō II carefully instructed his armies to push in three directions, namely
into Syria, Egypt and Asia Minor. The old borders of the Achaemenid
Empire seemed restored. It is difficult to assess whether the Sasanians of
the early seventh century still knew about the size and dimensions of the
empire of their ancestors and if the late Sasanian rulers modelled their
foreign policy upon an Achaemenid goal of world domination. However,
there is no doubt that in 619 the Sasanian Empire was at the zenith of its
powers. Byzantium, in contrast, was threatened from all sides and limited
to a defensive policy. Nevertheless, the superiority of the Eastern power
did not last for very long. In the year 622 the emperor Heraclius started
a counter offensive 220 which formed the beginning of the downfall of the
Sasanian Empire.
219 For the exact chronology of the conquest of Egypt see Altheim-Stiehl 1992: 87–96 and 1998: 252–4.
220 Baynes 1904: 694–702; Oikonomidès 1976: 1–9; Howard-Johnston 1994: 57–87 and 1999: 1–44.