第 六 章 · The Rise And Fall Of Egypt

The river Nile was a kind friend but occasionally it was a hard

taskmaster. It taught the people who lived along its banks the

noble art of “team-work.” They depended upon each other to build

their irrigation trenches and keep their dikes in repair. In this

way they learned how to get along with their neighbours and their

mutual-benefit-association quite easily developed into an organised

state.

Then one man grew more powerful than most of his neighbours and he

became the leader of the community and their commander-in-chief when

the envious neighbours of western Asia invaded the prosperous valley.

In due course of time he became their King and ruled all the land from

the Mediterranean to the mountains of the west.

But these political adventures of the old Pharaohs (the word meant “the

Man who lived in the Big House”) rarely interested the patient and

toiling peasant of the grain fields. Provided he was not obliged to pay

more taxes to his King than he thought just, he accepted the rule of

Pharaoh as he accepted the rule of Mighty Osiris.

It was different however when a foreign invader came and robbed him of

his possessions. After twenty centuries of independent life, a savage

Arab tribe of shepherds, called the Hyksos, attacked Egypt and for five

hundred years they were the masters of the valley of the Nile. They

were highly unpopular and great hate was also felt for the Hebrews who

came to the land of Goshen to find a shelter after their long wandering

through the desert and who helped the foreign usurper by acting as his

tax-gatherers and his civil servants.

But shortly after the year 1700 B.C. the people of Thebes began a

revolution and after a long struggle the Hyksos were driven out of the

country and Egypt was free once more.

A thousand years later, when Assyria conquered all of western Asia,

Egypt became part of the empire of Sardanapalus. In the seventh century

B.C. it became once more an independent state which obeyed the rule of

a king who lived in the city of Saïs in the Delta of the Nile. But in

the year 525 B.C., Cambyses, the king of the Persians, took possession

of Egypt and in the fourth century B.C., when Persia was conquered

by Alexander the Great, Egypt too became a Macedonian province. It

regained a semblance of independence when one of Alexander’s generals

set himself up as king of a new Egyptian state and founded the dynasty

of the Ptolemies, who resided in the newly built city of Alexandria.

Finally, in the year 39 B.C., the Romans came. The last Egyptian queen,

Cleopatra, tried her best to save the country. Her beauty and charm

were more dangerous to the Roman generals than half a dozen Egyptian

army corps. Twice she was successful in her attacks upon the hearts of

her Roman conquerors. But in the year 30 B.C., Augustus, the nephew and

heir of Cæsar, landed in Alexandria. He did not share his late uncle’s

admiration for the lovely princess. He destroyed her armies, but spared

her life that he might make her march in his triumph as part of the

spoils of war. When Cleopatra heard of this plan, she killed herself by

taking poison. And Egypt became a Roman province.