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Egypt
Far to the West of Mesopotamia, in North-eastern
Africa, was Egypt, another great centre of early culture, equally
vital, centred on the Nile which
by its annual floods gave life to what would otherwise be desert, floods caused
by the seasonal rains of tropical Africa. Since the Nile flows from South to
North, it is only logical that Upper Egypt lies to the South, Lower
Egypt to the North! The Nile
flows into the Mediterranean in a huge Delta, the most fertile part and
the cultural centre. Since the
Nile Valley alone is irrigated, it forms a narrow fertile strip running through
barren desert. The world-famous pyramids
stand at Gizeh, near present-day Cairo, just where the Nile spreads into the
delta. The Nile was vital, not
only for water but also for transportation. Every year, the Nile overflowed its banks and covered the
fields with a layer of fertile mud.
Egyptian History
Before 3000 B.C. the warrior king Menes
united upper and lower Egypt and established the First Dynasty. In 2700
B.C. King Djoser founded the Third Dynasty, thereby beginning the period of the
Old Kingdom, which lasts until 2200. He also built the Step Pyramid
of Djoser, the first known pyramid in Egypt. During the Old Kingdom, the power
of the pharaoh was absolute. By
2772 B.C. the Egyptians already had a solar calendar of 365 days and
when the 4th dynasty Pharaoh Khufu, also known as Cheops died in 2560,
he was buried in the Great Pyramid at Gizeh, the construction of which
remains an amazing exploit. Soon after this, the famous Sphinx
was built nearby.
Menes conquered the Delta using copper
arrow-heads, but by 2500 the Sumerians had dis¡©covered that if you add 10% of
tin to soft copper, the result is the very hard bronze with which it
became possible to make real swords.
The spread of the use of bronze indicates the passage from Stone Age
(Neolithic) to Bronze Age, a transition that seems to happen in Western
Europe and China at about the same time, independently.
Since tin is rarer than copper, it was necessary
to mine it and import it, international trade and banking had begun. At about this time too, cities began to
build protective walls, and the number of weapons grew, humanity had discovered
war. The citadel of Troy
was probably founded around 2500 to protect the ships passing through the
Dardanelles carrying tin.
Egypt developed very early a remarkable
monumental culture familiar to everyone. Yet it remained largely isolated by
the desert from other developed cultures, while the Egyptian cult of the dead
has no parallel elsewhere. The system of writing in pictograms known as hieroglyphics
was established at the beginning of the Old Kingdom and remained unchanged
until the end of Egyptian culture during the Roman Empire.
The Old Kingdom collapsed in part because the
construction of pyramids and the entire cult of the dead demanded too much from
the country's population. It was followed by the Middle Kingdom in 2050.
This social system collapsed in about 1750 because of power-conflicts between
pharaohs and nobility and the Hyksos from Canaan and Syria took control
of Egypt until they were expelled in 1560 and the New Kingdom was
established, lasting until 1087.
In 1375 B.C. Amenhotep IV (Akhenaton),
concerned about abuses in the Osiris cult of Egypt, proposed a new monotheistic
religion, perhaps the first in world history, dedicated to the worship of the
sun. He moved the capital of Egypt from Thebes to El‑Amarna. The new religion
did not last long; the cult of Akhenaton was abolished under the reign of his
successor, the Pharaoh Tutankhamen (1352-1344), who moved the capital
back to Thebes and returned to the old religion. Akhenaton's beautiful wife, Nefertiti,
achieved her own position in world history thanks to her famous portrait bust
with the elongated neck. These few years are above all noted for the elegant
and sensuous quality of the art works they produced. The tomb of Tutankhamen,
discovered and excavated during the 1920s, provided a large number of objects
testifying to the sophistication of the
art produced at this period.
Rameses II 'the Great' (1304‑1237)
built a new capital at the Nile Delta, and reaffirmed Egyptian power. In 1182
his successor, Rameses III drove the 'Sea People' out of Egypt; they went to
the coasts of Canaan and became the Philistines against whom David waged
major campaigns. Rameses III was the last great Egyptian Pharaoh. In 750 B.C.,
the negroid inhabitants of Kush to the south invaded Egypt and took power
without destroying the main culture; in 671, the Assyrians conquered Egypt in
turn but within ten years their empire collapsed and Egypt regained its
independence.
In 525 B.C. Cambyses, the son of the great Persian king Cyrus, took control
of a much diminished Egypt; from about 343 B.C. the Persians ruled Egypt for a
second time but in 332 ‑ 331, Alexander the Great occupied Egypt and
founded the city of Alexandria, where he was finally buried. His secretary,
known as Ptolemy, founded a Hellenistic dynasty bearing his name in 305
and that family continued to rule Egypt until 31 B.C. when the last queen, Cleopatra,
killed herself after the Battle of Actium. For almost 3000 years the culture of
Egypt continued with little evolution; yet there is nothing significant to
report in philosophy or literature. Almost all the land's energy and wealth
went into the cult of the dead.