People & Histories
c. 3100 BCE – 30 BCE

The land of the pharaohs

For three thousand years a single Egyptian state along the Nile builds pyramids, temples and one of the world's first written cultures.

  • The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt — Ian Shaw (ed.), Oxford University Press (2000)
  • The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt — Toby Wilkinson, Bloomsbury (2010)
  • Egypt — Encyclopaedia Britannica

Well established originsempireidentityfaith

Around 3100 BCE the kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt were united under one king, traditionally called Narmer or Menes. For most of the next three thousand years, through the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms and the “intermediate periods” between them, a pharaoh regarded as divine ruled the Nile Valley. The annual flood made the land rich, and a bureaucracy of scribes writing in hieroglyphs taxed and organised it.

  • The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt — Ian Shaw (ed.), Oxford University Press (2000)
  • The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt — Toby Wilkinson, Bloomsbury (2010)

The Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza, built around 2560 BCE, stayed the tallest human-made structure on earth for nearly four thousand years. Excavations of the workers’ town at Giza show it was built by organised, fed and housed labour gangs. Later came the temples of Karnak and Luxor, the Valley of the Kings, the female pharaoh Hatshepsut, Akhenaten’s short-lived worship of the sun disc, and Ramesses II’s monuments at Abu Simbel.

  • The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt — Ian Shaw (ed.), Oxford University Press (2000)
  • The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt — Toby Wilkinson, Bloomsbury (2010)

Egypt was conquered by Persians, then by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE. His Greek successors, the Ptolemies, ruled from Alexandria until Cleopatra VII’s death in 30 BCE made Egypt a Roman province. The language of the pharaohs lived on as Coptic, still used in the liturgy of Egypt’s church.

Why it matters today

Egypt

The pharaohs are a source of deep pride and of national identity: on banknotes, in school, in the Grand Egyptian Museum and in the "Pharaonic" nickname of the national football team. Tourism to the ancient sites feeds millions of families. Many Egyptians bristle when outsiders imply that they are not the heirs of the people who built it.