Ezekiel 29:13-14

At the end of 40 years, the Lord promised to gather the Egyptians back to their original land, the land of Pathros, Upper (southern) Egypt, from the countries where they had fled (cf. Isaiah 11:11). There the Egyptians would become a lowly kingdom in contrast to the great kingdom that they had been in former centuries (cf. Daniel 11:36-45). Forty years after Egypt fell to the Babylonians, the Persians, who had by that time defeated the Babylonians, allowed the Egyptians to return to their homeland. This was the foreign policy of the Persians under which the Israelites were also able to return to their land. No extrabiblical evidence has yet come to light to substantiate this forty-year captivity of Egypt, but that is not unusual since it was rare for ancient Near Eastern rulers to admit defeats much less document them for future generations. Chisholm suggested that the prophecy may not have been fulfilled as prophesied here because the Egyptians repented. [Note: Chisholm, Handbook on . . ., pp. 272-73.] We have no evidence of such repentance, but it could have happened.