Talk:Bronze Age (for deletion, kept for Palestinian details)
Additional content for after 1200-1150 B.C.
Egypt
The half-hearted Assyrian occupation of Egypt (671-663 B.C.) was terminated by a revival of Egyptian nationalism somewhat like that which had accompanied the expulsion of the Hyksos, although it lacked the intensity of the earlier movement. The new leader of the Egyptians was Psammeticus (or Psametik) of Sais, in the western Delta, who had been appointed governor by the Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal. After the Assyrian yoke had been cast off, Psammeticus unified Egypt once more and became the first ruler of the XXVI, or Saite Dynasty. The Saite period of Egyptian history (663-525 B.C.) represents a temporary revival of Egypt as a world power, a role which she was to share with the Neo-Babylonians, Medes and Lydians. Although the Saite culture is often criticized for its sterile archaism—an attempt to recreate the glories of the Empire—it is nevertheless interesting, especially in its literary aspects. The greatest prosperity of the Saites was during the reign of Ahmoses II (569-525 B.C.), when Egypt traded not only with the Near East but also with the rising Greek states of Asia Minor, the Aegean islands and European Greece. Many professional Greek soldiers found employment in the Egyptian armies of this period.
In the end, however, Egypt, like Media, Lydia and Babylonia, was incorporated into the expanding Persian Empire. In 525 B.C. Cambyses, the son of Cyrus the Great, fought his way past Pelusium and into the Nile Valley. Egypt was organized as a Persian satrapy and had to submit to the indignity of having a Persian governor and Persian garrisons stationed throughout the land. Despite several revolts in which the Egyptians temporarily expelled the Persians, Egypt remained a Persian province until the coming of Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.
When Alexander died in 323 B.C., the rich prize of Egypt was taken by one of his generals, Ptolemy, son of Lagus. Successfully holding Egypt against his rivals, Ptolemy eventually took the title of King about 306 B.C., and his descendants ruled Egypt as the successors of the Pharaohs until the death of Cleopatra in 30 B.C. Under the Ptolemies, Egypt was once more an imperial state controlling Cyrene, Cyprus and southern Syria. In the Ptolemiac period all Egypt was turned into a vast plantation, which was operated for the benefit of its Macedonian rulers. The land, the chief source of wealth, was considered the property of the king. Some land he retained and rented out for cultivation by the royal serfs (the Egyptian peasantry); other land, given to the nobles or to military (mostly Greek and Macedonian) colonists, was subject to taxation. The external trade of the country was a state monopoly, while all internal trade was taxed. There were also numerous lucrative state monopolies: salt, papyrus, linens, oils, mines and banks. For the administration of this great business enterprise, an extensive bureaucracy was built up. While foreign affairs, the armed forces, and the administration of justice were handled by ministers with great authority, the financial affairs were under the supervision of an official called the dioecetes, whose bureau directed the activieits of the royal officials in the provinces (nomes) and their territorial subdivisions. Agricultural production was carefully planned in advance of each growing season, and it was possible to estimate the revenues long before they were received.
Alexandria, the great city in the Delta founded by Alexander, was made the capital of Egypt as well as the center of literary and scientific activity in the Hellenistic world. In the Library and the Museum at Alexandria famous scholars and scientists—Euclid, Eratosthenes, Aristarchus and many more—lived and worked under Ptolemaic patronage.
In Ptolemaic times, Greek was the official language of Egypt, and although the natives retained their own language, they acquired a veneer of Greek culture and began to assume Greek names in addition to their Egyptian ones.
Under the Romans after 30 B.C., Egypt was the private possession of the Roman emperor and was governed by a special equestrian prefect appointed by him. The bureaucracy of the Ptolemaic period was retained and amplified by the Romans, who exploited Egypt more thoroughly than the Ptolemies had done. As a matter of fact, the tribute exacted by the Romans was four times that received by the Ptolemies. In addition to duties on imports and exports, taxes and assessments paid in coin, there were fifty varieties of taxes paid in kind, and two hundred miscellaneous taxes. Thus, Egypt sent to Rome a revenue equivalent to twenty million dollars a year, in addition to five million bushels of wheat, as an annual tribute.
Alexandria, organized as a municipality on the Greek order, was a large city with a population of perhaps 300,000 in the Roman period. Cosmopolitan, with a large foreign population, the city was the scene of numerous riots and disorders; the Jewish colony was large and cordially hated by the pagans; anti-Jewish riots were common.
In the 3rd century of the Christian Era, Egypt began to show definite effects of the Roman exploitation; productivity declined, and the peasants often fled from their holdings. In the time of Zenobia of Palmyra, Egypt was temporarily attached to that state. In the reign of Diocletian a serious Egyptian revolt was quelled with great difficulty. Independence was declared by Achilleus (L. Domitius Domitianus) in A.D. 296, and Diocletian was forced to punish the Egyptians severely when he retook the country in 297. After this, Egypt was divided into three provinces, a number which later was increased to five.
In the 3rd century also, the new Christian faith gained many converts in Egypt. As a result, widespread Roman persecutions of the Christians, especially those instigated by Decius and Diocletian, caused much suffering in Egypt. After Christianity was graned equality with the other religions in the Roman Empire under Constantine the Great, Egypt, and especially Alexandria, became an important Christian centre. It was in Egypt in the 4th century that there originated the famous controversy between the orthodox Christians and the Arians which was to divide the Christian world for many centuries. On the orthodox side was the young Alexandrian deacon, Athanasius, later Bishop of Alexandria, and on the other side was the Alexandrian presbyter, Arius. As time passed, the native Egyptian church, the Coptic, became more and more a nationalist organization which was hostile to Greek influences.
During the Byzantine period, Egypt was governed by Constantinople, but the hold of the Eastern Roman Empire over the country was gradually weakened. Early in the 7th century, the Persians penetrated as far as Egypt and had to be expelled by the Emperor Heraclius. Then, with the rise of Islam, Egypt was lost.
In December 639, the Ommiad commander, Amr-ibn-al-As, led an army from Palestine into Egypt. By September 642, conquest was complete, the Byzantine government having agreed to a fixed payment of tribute in return for the Moslem promise to leave the Christians in possession of their churches and not to interfere in the administration of their communal affairs. From this time, Egypt was a province of the Eastern caliphate and was ruled by governors. However, in 868 Egypt was given in fief to a Turkish general Bayikbeg who entrusted Egypt to his stepson Ahmad ibn Tulun. The latter founded a quasi-independent dynasty known as the Tulunid. The period of Tulunid power ended in 935 when Muhammed ibn Tughj conquered Fostat and established the rule of the Ikshidite Dynasty.
In 969, Egypt was invaded from the west by Jauhar el-Kaid, a Fatimid general, and Cairo was made the capital of the Fatimid caliph Mo’izz. Under the first two Fatimid caliphs, Egypt enjoyed a sound administration, but with the third, al-Hakim (985-1021), there began a period of repressive government and an increasingly bad economic situation. Although during the reign of al-Hakim’s grandson, al-Mustansir (1036-1094), his general, Badr al-Jamali, restored order within Egypt, he was unable to prevent the Seljuks from usurping Fatimid power in Syria and Palestine. Jerusalem was recovered from the Turks, but it was lost again in 1099 to the Crusaders, who also obtained other Fatimid territory in Palestine. The Fatimid rulers were by this time too weak to cope with the combined problems of the Seljuk Turks, the Crusaders, and the internal strife in Egypt, and the last of the Fatimid caliphs, Adid, was forced to ask for help from Nureddin (1118-1174), Seljuk ruler of Syria. In 1169, Adid appointed a powerful Seljuk general, Shirguh, as vizier of Egypt.
Shirguh was succeeded, on his death two months later, by his nephew Saladin (1138-1193), who still professed to be only a deputy of Nureddin. Saladin, with the help of Nureddin, kept the Franks out of Egypt, deposed the caliph Adid, and gradually substituted the Sunnite form of Islam for the previously dominant Shiite form. After the death of the ex-caliph, he was given the prefecture of Egypt as deputy of Nureddin, and after the latter’s death in 1174, he took the title of Sultan, which officially started the Ayyubid Dynasty, in Egypt. By 1183, he had extended his rule to include North Syria. The rest of his life is notable primarily for his wars with the Crusaders. He died in 1193, only a few months after a temporary peace between the Franks and the Moslems had been established.
The heirs of Saladin ruled Egypt and varying parts of his empire, until they were supplanted in 1250 by the Mamelukes, the name given to the enfranchised slaves who, under the Ayyubids, had made up the court and officered the army. The period of the Mamelukes lasted until 1517, and was marked by a succession of wars, internal struggles for power, and general tumult. The first period of Mameluke rule was under the Bahri Mamelukes (to 1382), the second under the Burji Mamelukes.
A long struggle between the Egyptian and Ottoman sultanates ended in the defeat of the Egyptians in 1517. After that time, Egypt has been nominally a part of the Ottoman Empire. However, even after the conquest the Mamelukes retained their power, and Egypt’s importance to the Ottoman Empire, apart form the tribute which it paid, was mainly that it served as a base of operations for the maintenance of Ottoman power over Syria and Arabia.
