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Egypt under Greek Rule


In 332 BC Alexander the Great conquered Egypt with a Greek army. At first the Egyptians thought he would make them independent again, but he did not. Alexander made Egypt part of his own empire.
When Alexander died in 323 BC, his general Ptolemy took over Egypt as his own territory. He and his successors (all called Ptolemy) ruled Egypt until the Roman Augustus conquered it from the last Ptolemy and Queen Cleopatra in 30 BC. The Ptolemies succeeded in reconquering much of Israel and Syria. They brought Greek culture and the Greek language to Egypt, though ordinary people continued to speak Egyptian and worship Egyptian gods.

 

Roman Egypt


By the time of the Roman Julius Caesar, around 50 BC, the Ptolemies, the Greek kings of Egypt, were much weaker than the Romans. When Julius Caesar visited Egypt, the Ptolemaic (Greek) queen of Egypt, Cleopatra, begged him to help her fight a civil war against her teenaged brother and husband, Ptolemy.
Julius Caesar did help her, but he left Roman troops all over Egypt, and also took Cleopatra back to Rome with him as his lover. When Julius Caesar was assassinated in Rome in 44 BC, Cleopatra returned to Egypt with another Roman leader, Mark Anthony (who was also her lover).
In a civil war between Julius Caesar's nephew Augustus and Marc Anthony, Antony and Cleopatra were defeated. They killed themselves (or perhaps were killed) in 30 BC, and the Romans took over Egypt. The Romans valued Egypt very highly, because it was so fertile and produced so much food. A lot of food, especially wheat for bread, was taken from Egypt for taxes and sent to Rome on big ships. To make it easier to collect these taxes, the Romans also established Roman-style government in Egypt, though the main language of government was still Greek (the way it had been under Greek rule) rather than Latin. By this time even most ordinary people in Egypt knew some Greek.
Around 300-400 AD, most Egyptians converted to Christianity. There were bitter battles over exactly which kind of Christianity, Arian or Catholic, would be observed in Egypt.
When Rome fell to the Ostrogoths in 476 AD, Egypt's grain was sent instead to the new Roman capital at Constantinople, near the Black Sea, in what is now Turkey. The Romans held Egypt until about 700 AD, for about 700 years, until the Arabs conquered it.



Date: 2015-01-29; view: 885


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