The Long Decline

With priestly usurpers in Thebes, a rival monarchy arose in the Delta. Nubia regained its independence and became the kingdom of Cush. Meanwhile, a colony of hired Libyan soldiers had become sufficiently large that in the middle of the 10th century B.C. one of its leaders seized the throne and reunited the country. The Libyan dynasties collapsed after two centuries from civil warfare. Cush then invaded Egypt and ruled it from the Mid-eighth century until the Assyrians, from Mesopotamia, conquered Egypt in 670. Native princes acted as vassal rulers for Assyria; in some 20 years one of them threw off Assyrian control and founded Dynasty XXVI.

For more than a century Egypt had a resurgence of glory, with flourishing commerce and art. Then, in 525 B.C., the Persians under Cambyses marched in and made Egypt a province of their empire. During the next two centuries, despite occasional revolts, Persian sovereignty prevailed.

Alexander the Great began his conquest of the Persian Empire in 333 B.C. After he conquered Syria, Phoenicia (the Lebanese coastline), and Palestine, he occupied Egypt, where he was welcomed as a liberator and declared pharaoh and son of Amen. Alexander put fellow Macedonians at the head of government and founded a port city, Alexandria, before continuing his campaign. When he died in the field in 323, his general Ptolemy took Alexander's body back to Egypt, where it was finally entombed in Alexandria and, according to tradition, exhibited in later years in a glass coffin.

Alexander's empire was soon dissolved. Ptolemy, after serving as governor of Egypt, declared himself pharaoh about 306 B.C. Other generals also established their own monarchies; the one adjoining Egypt on the east was the Seleucid kingdom, centered on Syria. The domains of Alexander's successors were called Hellenistic, because the Macedonians were a branch of the Greek (Hellenic) peoples.

Under the first three Ptolemies, Egypt was brought to a high state of administrative and economic efficiency. A great merchant fleet was constructed. The camel, ideal for desert travel, was introduced into Egypt from Asia. Almost all authority was held by Greeks and other foreigners; the Egyptians were used as bureaucrats and laborers. However, the Ptolemies treated the priesthood with respect and honored the native divinities. They also observed many customs of the pharaohs, including brother-sister marriages.

For the sake of commerce, the Ptolemies wished to control the eastern Mediterranean. They expanded their rule westward along the African coast and also moved east and north into Seleucid territory. This led to a series of Syrian wars. Egypt at first was victorious, gaining control of Palestine and Phoenicia. At the end of the third century B.C., however, the Seleucids retook the territory. Egypt, weakened by a revolt in the south and the growing independence of its bureaucracy, made peace, which was celebrated by the marriage of Cleopatra, daughter of the Seleucid king, to Ptolemy V in 196 B.C.

Rome, the rising power in the Mediterranean world, wanted no rival power becoming too strong. When the Seleucids invaded Egypt in 169 B.C., Rome forced them to withdraw, and Egypt became in effect a Roman protectorate. In 49 B.C. civil war broke out between the Roman leaders, Julius Caesar and Pompey. Pompey, defeated, fled to Egypt, where Ptolemy XII had him killed. The young pharaoh was engaged in a struggle with Cleopatra VII, his sister and wife, for the throne. When Caesar arrived in pursuit of Pompey, he declared Cleopatra the rightful ruler.

After Caesar's death, Mark Antony became a coruler of Rome and administrative head of the eastern provinces. Soon he married Cleopatra and in 34 B.C. declared her and her sons rulers of most of his territory. Octavian, Antony's coruler, declared war and in 31 B.C. won a great victory over Antony and Cleopatra in the naval battle of Actium, off Greece. Antony and Cleopatra fled to Egypt; when Octavian followed them there the next year, they both committed suicide. Egypt became a Roman province.

The most important cultural development of the Ptolemaic era was the establishment of the Alexandrian Museum and Library. This great institution attracted scholars from the whole Mediterranean world and made Alexandria the foremost intellectual center of its time. It helped to make Greek the common language of literature and learning throughout the Middle East.

Roman Egypt was a country rich in produce and manufactures, which Rome utilized for its own benefit. Five million bushels of Egyptian wheat were sent to Rome each year, as well as vegtable oils, textiles, papyrus, glass, jewelry, and perfume. Meanwhile, the people were taxed to the limit. When they revolted, the uprisings were quickly crushed.

Alexandria, a major port for Roman trade with Asia, remained a great intellectual center as well, where classical Greek learning served as the foundation of scholarship. When Christianity came to Egypt in the first century A.D., Egyptians were quickly converted, and Alexandria became a center of Christian theology.

The Roman emperor Diocletian divided the empire for administrative purposes in 286, and it remained permanently divided after the death of Emperor Theodosius in 395. Egypt lay in the eastern part, later known as the Byzantine Empire.

Over a period of some 3,500 years, Egyptians held first one god or goddess, then another, in highest esteem. A deity might gradually assume a new name or a new identity, or might be almost forgotten. But none was ever eliminated from the roster. Consequently, by the end of the ancient era Egypt had a multitude of nationally recognized deities, and incredibly vast sums of money had been spent on shrines, temples, and support of the priesthood.

Originally, most Egyptian deities supposedly had the shapes of animals; after being given human form, they were still often pictured with animal heads. Animal worship was preserved in cults such as those of Apis (the sacred bull) and the sacred scarab.

The Theban god Amen and the sun god Re both rose to supreme position and finally merged into one god.

Osiris, the god of the underworld and judge of the dead, was one of ancient Egypt's most important deities.

The great mother goddess common to all early religions was represented by Hathor and Isis. The worship of Isis was revived in the Hellenistic period and spread throughout the Mediterranean world, lasting into the Christian Era.

Egyptian religion often had a holy family. The latest of these to be venerated consisted of Isis, Osiris, and their son Horus.