Ancient Egypt was one of the world’s first known and longest living civilizations. Some of its most iconic landmarks, the Pyramids of Giza, are 4,500 years old. Egyptian culture has thrived as part of the Persian Empire, Hellenistic Empire, the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire, and present-day Egypt. While Egypt has since changed its dominant religion twice (first to Christianity and then to Islam) and its language once (to Arabic), Ancient Egyptian heritage still plays a major role in the self image of the country, as does the Nile, about which the oldest poems and songs still known to man were written.
The banks of the Nile River have been inhabited since time immemorial. Written records started to appear around 3000 BC, with the Early Dynastic Period, and one of the world’s first known monarchies. Ancient Egyptian history is usually divided between the Old Kingdom (2686–2181 BC), the Middle Kingdom (2134–1690 BC) and the New Kingdom (1549–1069 BC), each of them surviving five hundred years, still preceding any known civilizations in mainland Europe. To give an idea of the timespans involved: the pyramids were older to Julius Caesar than he is to us, and he was still dealing with an independent Egyptian state claiming — despite its Greek descendant rulers — to be the same state that built the pyramids.
Egypt spent some time gradually developing as a civilization, but was one of the main civilizations in the world by the time the pyramids were built during the Old Kingdom. While Egypt went through periods of ups and downs, it was not until later in its history that Egypt began to build an empire and come in conflict with the Hittites.
According to the Old Testament, the Jewish people lived in the Canaan region for some time and significantly grew in population while they were there. Eventually, according to the Book of Exodus, the Jews were enslaved in Egypt, but this enslavement ended during The Exodus of Moses from Egypt to the Holy Land (Israel), an event dated to around 1300 BC. There is no archaeological evidence for this date or for the Exodus at all, though in modern popular culture it is closely associated with pharaoh Merneptah, the successor of Ramses II, of the 19th Dynasty of the New Kingdom, in whose stela at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo the name “Israel” is first historically mentioned in writing, as an enemy which had been destroyed.
From the 18th to the 20th Dynasties (1549 to 1069 BC, i. e. the New Kingdom), the Egyptian civilization was at its peak. It reached far along the Nile and extended north to the land of the Hittites. However, over the next few hundred years Egypt declined (coincidentally, around the same time that Israel became one of the dominant groups in this area), and from about 500 BC onwards, the Egyptians were under the control of various other empires. Around 30 BC, Egypt became part of the Roman Empire, and did not become a formally independent state until 1922.
Posterity, heritage and rediscovery
Egyptians often invoke the Pharaonic heritage. Through the centuries, a romanticized image of Ancient Egypt survived; especially in Judeo-Christian tradition. Roman (and later Byzantine) Egypt would become one of the centers of early Christianity, particularly Gnostic and other heterodox sects. Egypt still contains a Christian minority which uses the Coptic language (the modern descendant of Hieroglyphic Egyptian) liturgically to some extent. Most Egyptians these days are Arabic-speaking Muslims, and the metropolis of Cairo will proudly show the visitors its more than a thousand years as a cultural and literary center of the Arabic-speaking world.
The Napoleonic Wars and the French invasion of Egypt in 1799 started Egyptology, the academic study of ancient Egypt. The science’s birth year is associated with the Rosetta Stone’s translation by Jean-François Champollion, completed in 1822. Its juxtaposion of a royal decree written in hieroglyph, Demotic script and ancient Greek allowed the hieroglyphs to be deciphered, and spurred new interest in Ancient Egypt. The original is a highlight of the British Museum in London; most Egyptology museums around the world, including Cairo, display a copy.
