Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was a civilization in Northeastern Africa concentrated along the middle to lower reaches of the Nile River, reaching its greatest extent in the second millennium BC, during the New Kingdom.
It stretched from the Nile Delta in the north as far south as Jebel Barkal at the Fourth Cataract of the Nile, in modern-day Sudan. Extensions to the geographic range of ancient Egyptian civilization included, at different times, areas of the southern Levant, the Eastern Desert and the Red Sea coastline, the Sinai Peninsula, and the oases of the Western desert.
The civilization of ancient Egypt developed over more than three and a half millennia. It began with the political unification of the major Nile Valley cultures under one ruler, the first pharaoh, around 3150 BC, and led to a series of golden ages known as Kingdoms, separated by periods of relative instability known as Intermediate Periods. After the end of the last golden age, the New Kingdom, the civilization of ancient Egypt entered a period of slow, steady decline, when Egypt was conquered by a succession of foreign adversaries. The power of the pharaohs officially ended in 31 BC, when the early Roman Empire conquered Egypt and made it a province of the Empire.
The civilization of ancient Egypt was based on balanced control of natural and human resources under the leadership of the pharaoh, religious leaders, and court administrators, characterised by controlled irrigation of the fertile Nile Valley; the mineral exploitation of the valley and surrounding desert regions; the early development of an independent writing system and literature; the organization of collective construction and agricultural projects; trade with surrounding regions in east and central Africa and the eastern Mediterranean; and finally, military ventures that defeated foreign enemies and asserted Egyptian domination throughout the region. Motivating and organising these activities was a bureaucracy of elite scribes, religious leaders, and administrators under the control of the quasi-divine pharaoh (becoming divine upon death), who ensured the cooperation and unity of the Egyptian people by means of an elaborate system of religious beliefs.
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