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Egyptian history is inextricably tied to the Nile: the river's fertile banks gave birth to the world's first nation state and a powerful civilisation that invented writing and erected the first stone monuments. Around 5000 years ago the independent riverfront states were unified under the rule of Menes, giving rise to the first dynasty of pharaohs. The pharaohs were considered divine and they ruled over a highly stratified society with increasingly grander stone monuments and pyramids being built in their honour. Monarchical power was at its greatest during the 4th dynasty when Khufu, Khafre and Mycerinus built the Great Pyramids of Giza.
Egypt underwent intermittent periods of unrest between the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms until around 1300 BC when the country was ruled by generals: Ramses I, II and III, and Seti I. They built massive monuments and temples, but the empire began to crumble and it was in disarray when the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great arrived in 332 BC and established a new capital at Alexandria, eclipsing both Memphis and Thebes (current day Luxor) in its importance.
The Ptolemites ruled Egypt for 300 years, but their reign was plagued by great rivalries amongst the nobles and many people were exiled and assassinated. Meanwhile an expanded Roman Empire began taking an interest in Egypt which it soon annexed after Cleopatra and Mark Antony were defeated by the superior forces of Octavius in 31 BC.
The Roman Empire fell apart in the 3rd and 4th Centuries AD, and Nubians, north Africans and Persians invaded. Despite this, Egypt was relatively stable until AD 640 when the Arabs arrived. The Arabs brought Islam to Egypt and it was the Fatimids who came to control the country, building the city of Al-Qahira (Cairo), which soon became a thriving metropolis.
Western European Christians seized much of the weakening Fatimid Empire in the Crusades of the 11th century and thereafter Mamluks (Turkish mercenaries) ruled for two and a half centuries before Egypt fell to the Turks in 1517. The Turkish Ottoman Sultans, based in Constantinople, largely left the governing of Egypt to the Mamluks and restricted themselves to collecting taxes. This continued until Napoleon invaded in 1798, only to be ousted by the British in 1801, who were in turn expelled by Mohammed Ali, a lieutenant in the Albanian contingent of the Ottoman army. Said Pasha, Ali's grandson, opened the Suez Canal in 1869.
Crippling national debt enabled British and French controllers to install themselves in 1879, and the British terminated the suzerainty that Turkey had over Egypt. During WWI Egypt aligned itself with the Allies, and shortly afterwards the British allowed the formation of a national political party - the Wafd. King Fouad I was elected head of the constitutional monarchy and for the next 30 years the British, the monarchists and the Wafdists jockeyed for power. The Arab League was founded after WWII by seven Arab countries, including Egypt, but in 1952 a group of dissident military officers, led by Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, orchestrated a bloodless coup. Anwar Sadat, Nasser's vice president, took over from Nasser when he died in 1970, and set about improving relations with the West. Husni Mubarak, Sadat's vice president, was sworn in after Sadat’s assassination in 1981 and has been the country's leader ever since. Today Egypt is a largely stable country with approximately one third of the population employed in agriculture and increasing urbanisation.
