When Piye marched north from Napata in the 8th century BCE, he did not come as a foreign conqueror but as a restorer. His inscriptions do not speak the language of invasion, but of purification—cleansing Egypt from the "corrupt" rulers of the Delta. Standing before the sacred barque of Amun in Thebes, Piye was both a king and a priest, legitimizing his rule not with brute force but divine sanction.