HISTORY OF EGYPT

In the Prehistoric times people lived people lived in separate groups along the Nile. With the unification of upper and lower Egypt and the introduction of writing, the history of Egypt as a nation began. The kings of Thirty dynasties who ruled Egypt were believed to reign with divine right and divine force. Historians divide the history of Egypt into following periods:
PREHISTORY ARCHAIC PERIOD OLD KINGDOM MIDDLE KINGDOM NEW KINGDOM LATE PERIOD PTOLEMAIC AND ROMAN PERIOD

PRE-HISTORICAL PERIOD Humans slowly transformed into farmers, North Africa started to die. But generation after generation began to notice that it was raining less frequently and that were fewer plants. Human communities were forced by the growing desert to live in the banks of the Nile grew one of the first great urban cultures of human history. Around 3800 B.C Nile River began to flourish. Egyptians discovered the world and began to interact and trade with other cultures as far away as Mesopotamia. they became Master Craftspeople; they buried their dead in coffins in lavishly equipped graves; they began to develop sophisticated technologies. ARCHAIC PERIOD The warrior-king Menes, whose name in Egyptian was Narmer who united the two parts of Egypt and became the First king of the two lands. Narmer founded the 1st dynasty of Egyptian king. The symbol of this unification are two crowns of Egypt the white crown (Upper Egypt) and the red crown (Lower Egypt) which will be combined to form the single crown of the king. Large scales of irrigation were begun as well as large-scale distribution of food and regulation of trade. Egyptians invented writing. Large scale bureaucracy and the need for record keeping certainly motivated this invention. This early form of writing which the form of pictures (pictographic writing) eventually developed into hieroglyphics or medu netcher (words of gods) in ancient Egyptian.

OLD KINGDOM was the richest and most creative period in Egyptian history. All the pyramids were built at this time; the growth in population and wealth allowed the kings to apportion vast amounts of labor and materials to these monuments to themselves. The Old Kingdom lasted for four dynasties (3-6), but declined rapidly near the end of the sixth dynasty. The annual floods of the Nile, which would water the ground and bring rich soil, fell off precipitously. People began to starve, and the once proud United Kingdom fell into disarray and chaos until it fell completely into the darkness of the First Intermediate Period. MIDDLE KINGDOM Agricultural production had been revolutionized by the building of massive irrigation projects; trade had ballooned to super-human proportions; the population had swelled exponentially. Suddenly Egypt found itself wealthy; the country literally exploded with creativity for the next several generations. The dynasty they began, the Eleventh Dynasty, marks the beginning of the Middle Kingdom. Under these kings, trade with foreign countries began again, irrigation projects were repaired, and the writing of texts started up from scratch. The power of the king, however, never really returned. Local cities and villages had become accustomed to their independence and local governors operated indendently. This was a major threat to the monarchy; in fact, one king, Amenemhet I, seems to have been murdered by a conspiracy among local governors. Only well into the Middle Kingdom period did a king, Sesostris III, finally break the local governors and return the monarchy to its previous power.

NEW KINGDOM This period is characterized by Egypt's military involvement and expansion in Syria and Palestine In Arts, monumental temples were erected in Thebes and Upper Egypt Amun High Priests and military leaders gained enormous power, which in the end challenged the pharaonic rule, and led to the collapse of the State and the division of the country. LATE PERIOD In 728 BC, after three hundred years of political chaos, Egypt was invaded by its sister civilization to the south, Nubia. The Nubians had built a civilization on the model of the Egyptians and had maintained Egyptian values and culture with a high degree of conservatism. The Nubians wanted to return Egypt to traditional Egyptian ways and Egyptian religious practices. Many Egyptian traditions that had died out were restored by the Nubian conquerors. But the Nubian renaissance lasted for only the blink of an eye, for they wilted under the ferocity of the Assyrians and their king Ashurbanipal. PTOLEMAIC PERIOD AND ROMAN PERIOD Ptolemy I began a new dynasty in Egypt, the last in history, the Thirty-second Dynasty. Although Ptolemy was Greek, he adopted Egyptian customs and the Egyptian theory of kingship. Like the Egyptians, the Ptolemaic kings married their sisters, who were all named Cleopatra ("kleos"="famous", "patris"="parents"). All the Ptolemaic kings, likewise, were named Ptolemy. The final queen of the Ptolemaic line, Cleopatra VII, fell into a dispute with her half-brother over the succession and invited Julius Caesar and the Romans to intervene. Caesar then brought Egypt under the control of Rome under the nominal queen ship of Cleopatra. However, when she sided with Mark Antony against Augustus Caesar and lost, Egypt became a Roman province.