Fall Of Ancient Egypt

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Next came the Persian conquest. Cyrus the Great of Persia marked out Egypt as part of the world he planned to master; but he died before accomplishing that portion of his designs. His son Cambyses advanced against Egypt just as the aged Aahmes died, and the Persians thus encountered a new and untried sovereign, who made little resistance against them. The story of Persia's dominion over Egypt has been already told. It is true that Cambyses and his successors took the title of Pharaoh and that the Egyptian priesthood included them among the dynasties of Egyptian sovereigns. But the Persians held the rank of Pharaoh only as one among their many honors; they dwelt in their own country and ruled Egypt by governors as a conquered country. The long line of independent monarchs who had held the throne of ancient Egypt as their chief glory and their seat of empire vanished with Aahmes.

Alexander, the famous Grecian conqueror, won Egypt when he defeated Persia. Indeed, the Egyptians hailed him as a deliverer. He worshipped their gods, accepted the title of "Pharaoh" with solemn respect, and caused Egypt to profit greatly by his favor. He founded the celebrated city of Alexandria at the western mouth of the Nile, naming the city after himself and planning to have it supersede Tyre as the commercial metropolis of all the eastern world.

In the division of Alexander's empire among his generals, which followed after his death, Egypt fell to Ptolemy, the son of Lagos. His family, the Ptolemies, ruled Egypt as independent monarchs for nearly three centuries, making of it a sort of Greek-Egyptian kingdom. Its fortunes fluctuated, without marked extremes, in the constant struggle for power which occupied the various Greek kings whom Alexander had thus left in control of all the East.

This era of the Ptolemies is to be reckoned on the whole as one of the more fortunate periods of Egyptian life. At no time was the Nile valley actually invaded, ...