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 un-popular 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 Sais 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 89 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 Caesar, 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.