Egypt

Until about ten thousand years ago, North Africa was fertile savannah. But, with the end of the Last Ice Age, that savannah began to dry up, becoming the Sahara Desert. The inhabitants of the savannah collected in the remaining wet areas. The most important of these was the Valley of the River Nile. This river flowed all the way from tropical Africa to the Mediterranean Sea. As a result of monsoon rains in the Ethiopian Highlands, it flooded annually, depositing fertile silt along its banks, creating a ribbon of fertile land in the midst of the desert. Agriculture arrived in the region around 4000 BC and permanent settlements began to appear shortly thereafter. Eventually these turned into small states, which slowly grew larger and more complex. Writing in the form of hieroglyphs arrived or was invented around 3300 BC. Eventually, there were only two centres of power, Lower Egypt in the north, comprising the Nile Delta and Upper Egypt, stretching south along the river. These two halves were united between 3100 BC and 2950 BC, but retained distinct identities.  With union, Egypt entered the Old Kingdom. This was a monolithic, theocratic and monumental society, in which the word of the Pharaoh, dwelling at Memphis, was absolute. The greatest testament to their power are their tombs, the famous pyramids - great piles of rock built at Pharaoh's direction by peasants during the annual floods. It was, in fact, the massive efforts and organisation that went into these construction projects which properly unified the Egyptian state; the pyramids built Egypt. Over time, however, the power of regional governors grew, and that of the Pharaoh declined. After a millennium of unity, Egypt collapsed into civil war, known as the First Intermediate Period, around 2200 BC.

For two hundred years, Egypt was again split in two weak kingdoms, dominated by regional aristocracies. Eventually, the southern kingdom, centred on the city of Thebes, reunified the country, founding the Middle Kingdom. Pyramids were now built of brick rather than stone and the Pharaohs poured the extra resources into taking on the obligations of all the local notables - they were the patron of every cult, of every town, of everyone. They could also invest labour in military expeditions. Armies marched south into Nubia and east into the Sinai; extracting slaves, ivory, gold and precious stones from the locals. Once central power weakened, however, the trend reversed and, around 1650 BC, the Hyksos entered Egypt from Asia and took control of the North. This was the Second Intermediate Period.

The Hyksos were driven out around a century later, and the New Kingdom established. This was the peak of Egyptian power. Pyramids were no longer built - they had been found to act as advertisements to tomb robbers. Instead, secret tombs were dug in the Valley of the Kings. However, monumentality was not dead. Massive temple complexes were constructed in Thebes and elsewhere, including vast stone gates, halls containing hundreds of columns, obelisks stretching skywards, and enormous statues of the Pharaoh. Armies absorbed most of Nubia to the south and extended into the Middle East, clashing with Hittites and Babylonians, and trading with the Mycenean Greeks. The height of prosperity came under Ramesses II, but after him things turned sour. The entire Middle East collapsed very quickly, for reasons that remain unclear. Egypt's empire was lost, and she was left defending her heartland from mysterious 'sea people'.

From around 1000 BC, we say that Egypt had entered the Third Intermediate Period, during which the Pharaoh was largely powerless. In the south, the priests of Amun took power for their god. Egypt was reunified in 950, but by foreign warlords from Libya, fell apart, and was reunified again, by foreigners from Nubia in 750. In 650 Egypt was conquered by the Assyrians, the first time Egypt had been ruled as a province of someone else's empire. It did not last; Egypt was too remote for them to handle and independence was re-established. This Late Period (also known as the Saite Period) saw a measure of prosperity. And then, in 525, Egypt was conquered by the Achaemenid Persians.

Egypt frequently revolted, often for long periods of time, and the Persians had only just restored control at great expense, when Alexander the Great arrived in 332 and absorbed Egypt into his empire.  His empire collapsed into civil war upon his death, and one of his generals, Ptolemy, took control of Egypt, ruling from Alexandria, a new city, which became an economic hub and a centre of Greek and Jewish culture. His successors aspired to present themselves simultaneously as both Greek in Alexandria, and Egyptian elsewhere. For the most part they succeeded in hybridising these two strands and pursued aggressive policies throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. Eventually, however, the atmosphere of intrigue which prevailed at court became exceptionally toxic; the kings aspired to keep power in the family by marrying their own sisters, but this produced inbred, infertile kings, controlled by their assertive sister-wives.

The last of these, Kleopatra VII, attempted to keep her kingdom independent of the rising power of Rome, but she picked the wrong side in the Final War of the Roman Republic, and in the aftermath, Egypt became a Roman Province in 30 BC. A private possession of the Roman Emperor, its grain was shipped to Rome to feed the poor. Egypt remained under Roman control for over six hundred years, becoming a centre of Christianity. It was briefly conquered by the Sassanid Persians in AD 618, during the last Roman war with Persia.

The Romans had barely recovered Egypt when the forces of Islam swept out of Arabia and conquered it, in AD 639. Arabic replaced Greek and Islam replaced Christianity. Egypt soon became a centre of Muslim power and in the First Fitna (civil war) of the Islamic Caliphate, Egyptian support proved the essential element that led to the fall of Ali and the rise of the Umayyad Caliphate. Thereafter, however Egypt was eclipsed by Syria. Egyptian support was no avail to the last of the Umayyads, who was defeated in Egypt by the forces of the Abbasid Caliphate. Under their rule, however, Egypt's governors became increasingly autonomous. Under the Tulunids (868 - 905) Egypt was essentially independent, under a Turkish elite. The Abbasids soon reconquered Egypt, however.

Yet, Abbasid success was temporary. In 969 Egypt was invaded from the west by the Fatimid Caliphate. They founded the city of Cairo to be their capital, and under them, Egypt ruled the largest empire it had ever seen, stretching from Morocco to Arabia, and claiming authority over all Shia Muslims. The Caliphate employed Berbers, Turks and Nubians in its armies, and these groups eventually began to clash. Order could not permanently be restored, and Egypt was invaded, first by Crusaders and then, in 1169 from Syria by the Ayyubids, who used their conquest of Egypt to free themselves of their masters and, under the famous Saladin, conquer a vast stretch of the eastern Mediterranean. They soon fell into civil war as various brothers vied to be Sultan, employing Turkish slave-soldiers.

For a time these slave-soldiers, or Mamluks, were loyal. But when the invasion of the French in Ninth Crusade exposed the extreme weakness of the Sultans, and conversely the central importance of the Mamluks to Egyptian security, the Mamluks seized power for themselves. A strange social structure resulted, in which the most elite rank in society, up to and including the Sultan, were technically slaves of a puppet Caliph. Nevertheless, it worked. At the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260, the Sultan Baybars proved the only person in the world able to stop the Mongol onslaught which had consumed all of Asia. His Bahri faction dominated until 1377 when it was replaced by the Burji faction. Increasingly, however, the Mamluks came into conflict with a rising power, the Ottoman Turks, who conquered Egypt in 1517.

The Mamluks retained their privileged position in Egyptian society, ruling as Ottoman viceroys, until the French Invasion under Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798. He brought with him the ideals of the French revolution, and though he was eventually defeated, the Mamluks' authority was shaken. After his withdrawal, a civil war erupted between the Ottoman Turks, the Mamluks and Albanian mercenaries led by Muhammad Ali. The latter emerged victorious in 1811, founding the Khedivate of Egypt, which was nominally a vassal of the Ottomans. It was in fact entirely independent, and for a time extremely powerful; Egyptian armies fought against the Ottomans in Syria, for the Ottomans in Greece and Arabia, and elsewhere their armies penetrated as far south as Somalia. With the construction of the Suez Canal in 1869, Egypt assumed international economic importance, and the British promptly turned it into a protectorate. It officially escaped British control in 1922 as the Kingdom of Egypt, and achieved actual independence following World War II. The Kingdom was soundly beaten by Israel in 1948 and a Revolution in 1952 established the Arab Republic of Egypt, a military dictatorship based on a Pan-Arab national ideology. This period saw gradual democratisation and modernisation as well as continued war with, and eventually grudging support for, Israel. In the south it saw the construction of the Aswan High Dam, exchanging the millennia-old cycle of floods on which Egyptian civilisation had been built for predictability and electricity.