UNESCO Ancient Civilizations of Africa (Editor G. Mokhtar)

Introduction
eighteenth to twentieth dynasty (New Empire): —1580-1080
twenty-first to twenty-third dynasty (Third Intermediate Period):
— 1080-730
twenty-fourth to thirtieth dynasty (New Era): —730-330.
The conquest by Alexander of Macedonia in —332 marks the end of the
history of Pharaonic Egypt and the beginning of the hellenistic period
(cf. Chapter 6).
The Nilotic environment
It is perhaps useful to quote here a sentence written by Herodotus
(II, 35) at the end of his description of Egypt: 'Not only is the Egyptian
climate peculiar to that country, and the Nile different in its behaviour
from other rivers elsewhere, but the Egyptians themselves in their manners
and customs seem to have reversed the ordinary practices of mankind'
(transi. A. de Sélincourt). Of course, when he wrote that sentence Herodotus
was thinking only of the countries bordering on the Mediterranean. It
is none the less true that, of all the countries of Africa, Egypt is the one
with the most distinctive environment. It owes this to the regime of the
Nile. Without the river, Egypt would not exist. This has been said over
and over again since Herodotus: it is a basic truth.
In fact, the severe requirements imposed by the river to which they
owed their subsistence on the human societies living on its banks were
only gradually recognized. They became inescapable only when Egyptian
civilization was already over 700 years old. The human groups that built
that civilization thus had time to accustom themselves little by little to the
demands slowly imposed on them by the ecology of the Nile.
From the end of the Neolithic age, around —3300 to —2400, northwestern
Africa, the Sahara included, enjoyed a relatively moist climatic
system. At that period Egypt was not dependent solely on the Nile for its
subsistence. The steppe still extended both east and west of the valley, providing
cover for abundant game and favouring considerable cattle-raising.
Agriculture was then still only one of the components of daily life, and
cattle-raising - even hunting - played at least as important a role, as is
attested by the Palermo Stone, which leads us to infer that the tax owed
to the central authority by the regime's notables was based, not on income
from the land they might own, but on the number of head of cattle
entrusted to their herdsmen. A census of this basic wealth was made every
two years. The scenes decorating the mastabas of the Old Kingdom from
the end of the fourth dynasty to the sixth dynasty ( —2500 to —2200) clearly
show that cattle-raising occupied an essential place in Egyptian life at that
time.
We may thus suspect that man's search for control of the river — the
fundamental achievement of Egyptian civilization, which enabled it to
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