From its unification to its conquest by Alexander the Great, Ancient Egypt lasted about 3000 years,
which is 15 times the age of the US,
showing incredible continuity and holding great fascination through it's culture and monuments
Around 3100 BC, King Menes unified Upper and Lower Egypt and became the first king of the first dynasty
as he established the capital city of Memphis on the west bank of the Nile.
Not only was the Nile a source of life-giving water in the middle of the Egyptian desert,
but also a navigable river, allowing access to resources downstream such as timber and gold.
As opposed to other river valley civilizations,
the Nile had predictable annual flooding and was so benign and regular
that Egyptians used simple forms of water management for irrigation.
These special features of the Nile led to surplus crops, which supported social and cultural development.
Ancient Egyptians had an elaborate set of funerary practices that they believed were extremely important
to ensure their immortality after death and the reunification of the body with the spirit.
These include mummifying the body and burying it with specific grave goods needed in the afterlife.
The consistency of Egyptian imagery and the active resistance to it's change
for thousands of years contrasts with other civilizations and
is related to the belief that depictions had an impact beyond the image itself.
Represented images were functionally causing those scenes to occur in the afterlife
and so incorrect depictions could have dire consequences.
Historians have divided Ancient Egyptian history into three periods or stable kingdoms
separated by Intermediate periods of disunity and decline.
Each of the 33 ruling dynasties included a series of kings known as pharaohs,
who were godlike beings associated with the all-powerful god Horus.
Old Kingdom Egypt featured the construction of several dozen pyramids including the great pyramids of Giza,
serving as tombs for pharaohs and now the last remaining of the 7 wonders of the ancient world.
The pyramids represented a remarkable degree of political and social control over the population
and they were built by peasants and workers who may or may not have been slaves.
Old kingdom was also remarkably literate as writing was a major instrument in the centralization of the Egyptian state.
Egyptians had two forms of writing, hieroglyphics for sacred writing
and then demotic script for recording contracts and agreements.
Around 2200 BC, central Egyptian authority dissolved,
leading to a civil war between provincial governors, along with a period of droughts and disease
Then, the reunification of Egypt under Mentuhotep II marked the beginning of Middle Kingdom Egypt,
along with the establishment of Thebes as the new capital.
This period featured the colonization of Nubia in the South,
as well as the rise of Osiris, judge of the dead and god of the afterlife,
as the most important deity in popular religion.
Around 1650 B.C., another unstable period began with Egypt’s invasion
by the Hyksos, coming from the historical region of Syria.
The Hyksos practiced many Egyptian customs and did not control all the land.
Instead, they coexisted with native Egyptian rulers based in Thebes,
before being eventually defeated and driven out by Ahmose I.
Around this period, god Amun acquired national importance and merged with the sun god Ra
forming Amun-Ra, the creator god and chief deity of Ancient Egypt.
Egypt reached the pinnacle of it's power during the New Kingdom
and went on to establish the world’s first great empire,
stretching from Nubia to the Euphrates River in Asia.
Compared with their counterparts, ancient Egyptian women
arguably had a greater range of opportunities and rights.
Several women even became pharaohs
including Hatshepsut who ruled Egypt for 22 years
and who greatly expanded it through trade.
The controversial Akhenaton, and his wife Nefertiti,
undertook a religious revolution abandoning Egypt's traditional polytheistic religion
and forcing the exclusive worship of the sun-god, Aten.
Traditional religious practice was gradually restored,
under his son Tutankhamun, whose fame is due to the discovery
of his tomb Intact with fabulous treasures,
as opposed to most other tombs that were raided and destroyed.
Under Ramses II, Egypt saw an impressive amount of building,
including great temples and cities, as well as the first recorded
peace treaty in history with the Hittites in modern Syria.
A few centuries later, Egypt was eventually invaded by the Persians till it's conquest
by Alexander the Great and it's rule by a line of Macedonian
kings called the Ptolemies for 300 years.
The Ptolemies were accepted as the successors to the pharaohs
and established Alexandria as a new capital city.
It became a wealthy cultural and trade center
famous for it's library and it's lighthouse, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
The last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt–the legendary Cleopatra VII –surrendered Egypt
to the Roman Empire as the nation became a Roman province in 31 B.C.
Six centuries of Roman rule followed,
during which Christianity became the official religion
until Egypt’s conquest by the Muslim Arabs in the seventh century.