In 343-341 BC the last great Persian king, Artaxerxes III, reconquered Egypt
and overthrew the Thirtieth Dynasty. It was a harsh reconquest, and many
structuresincluding some of the greatest templeswere damaged in the fighting.
But the Persian restoration was short-lived, because in 332 BC Alexander
the Great entered Egypt, drove out the Persians, and added the Nile Valley
to his growing empire. Alexander arrived in Egypt in the fall of 332 and
left just a few month later (in the spring of 331 ) leaving behind a Greek
garrison and governor and having selected the site for a great new Greek
city that was to be built in Egypt and named after himselfAlexandria. He
died a decade later, in 323 BC, having never returned to Egypt. But with
his conquest of the Nile Valley, a new phase of Egyptian history began.
Egypt now became an integral part of the wider Mediterranean world, and
its culture interacted with, affected, and was affected by other cultures
(Greek culture in particular) in ways wholly new to the Nile Valley.
Alexander's generals began to struggle for control of his empire soon after his death. One of them, Ptolemy, seized Egypt and ruled it as governor and regent for seventeen years before finally declaring himself king in 305 BC. He founded a Greco-Macedonian dynasty of kings who governed Egypt until 30 BC, when the Nile Valley was absorbed by Rome. The dynasty's height was achieved in its first century under the able leadership of the first three Ptolemies. Ptolemy I began the development of Alexandria as a great Mediterranean port, and his son, Ptolemy I I, completed its emergence as the largest and most influential city in the Greek world. Thousands of Greeks migrated to Egypt. Most Egyptians simply endured their advent, others resisted them (unsuccessfully), while still others especially well-to-do, upper-class Egyptiansbegan a process of cultural assimilation that would eventually produce a hybrid Greco-Egyptian culture.
The Ptolemies took over and tightened the administrative system which they found already in place. They also introduced massive new hydraulic projects, draining lands in the Fayyum and turning it into the most productive agricultural area in Egypt. They earned an enormous income from their control of the land of Egypt and the port of Alexandria, and much of that wealth was poured into the patronage of scholarship and learning. The great mathematician Euclid migrated to Egypt and flourished with the support of Ptolemy I. Ptolemy II established the famous Museum of Alexandria, the greatest "think-tank" of its day and host to the best work of the finest Greek scientists of the day, including the mathematician Archimedes and the geographer Eraatosthenes. Alexandria also became the most fertile center for contemporary Greek literature. Here, for example, the Sicilian-born poet Theocritusone of two or three greatest Greek poets of all timecreated masterpieces of verse that exemplified one of Alexandria's greatest gifts to the Mediterranean world: an entirely new literary genre, the pastoral Iyric.
But after 220 BC, the Ptolemaic house entered into a very long, slow decline, one which ended with Octavian's defeat of Cleopatrathe last ruler of the Ptolemaic line, and one of the ablestand Rome's conquest of Egypt. Thereafter, as a Roman province, Egypt experienced nearly two hundred years of unbroken peace and prosperity, flourishing as the "breadbasket" of the Empire. Alexandria shared in this prosperity, and it remained one of the most important centers of Greek intellectual and artistic endeavor throughout the Roman era. But in the third century AD, turmoil wracked the Roman state, and the collapse of the Roman imperial order devastated Egypt perhaps more than any other of the major Roman provinces. It was in the context of this turmoil that Christianity made rapid and permanent advances among the people of the Nile Valley.
By the time of the rise to power of the Roman emperor Constantine in 325 AD, most Egyptians had become Christian, and by 400 AD, paganism had virtually disappeared as an active force. The Egyptian Church, presided over by the powerful and influential Patriarchs of Alexandria (men such as Athanasius and Cyril), became a major force in the politics of the revived Roman Empire of the fourth and fifth centuries. Alexandria was now one of the most important intellectual centers of the Christian Church. It was in Alexandria, for example, that the great third century scholar Origen (a man of mixed Greek and Egyptian parentage) undertook the task of reconciling Greco-Roman philosophy and Christian revelation, thereby establishing the foundations of Christian theology and philosophy. But in the rural parts of Egypt, spiritual leadership was provided by the monastic movement. Indeed, the roots of Christian monasticism lay in Egypt, and many of the great early figures of Christian monasticismfor example, St. Anthony of the Desert, the first great hermit, and St. Pachomius, the founder of communal monasticismwere Egyptians.
However, in 451 AD, after the ecclesiastical Council of Chalcedon, the Egyptian Church split with the powerful Greek Church and its imperial patrons over issues of dogma and church politics. In the years that followed, several Roman emperors attempted to suppress the Egyptian Church, but their efforts only stirred up a powerful Egyptian opposition to Roman rule itself. When, in 640 AD, the Muslims Arabs invaded the Nile Valley, most Egyptian Christians stood aside and offered no resistance, preferring rule by non-Christians who promised the restoration of their local church to the continued despotism by the Christian Roman emperors.
