Egypt

   Although ancient Egypt was geographically separate from ancient Mesopotamia, the Egyptians long had cultural and trade connections with Mesopotamian peoples. Eventually, some of the more aggressive of these peoples conquered Egypt and incorporated it into their empires. No direct contacts between the two peoples occurred in the third millennium B.c. But some modern scholars think that early Egyptian architects and artists may have been influenced by Mesopotamian models based on similarities between Egyptian buildings and structures depicted on Mesopotamian cylinder seals.

   In the first half of the second millennium B.c., various ideas, including some important military ones, filtered into Egypt from Mesopotamia or from areas of Palestine controlled by Mesopotamian realms. These included the khopesh (a sicklelike sword), the composite bow, and horse-drawn chariots. in the seventeenth century B.c., Egypt was invaded by a people called the Hyksos, who entered the country from southern Palestine. some scholars think they were native to that region; others suspect that some of them may have been Hurrians, a people who had earlier settled in various parts of Mesopotamia and established the kingdom of Mitanni.

   Beginning in about 1550 b.c., the start of what historians call Egypt's New Kingdom, the Egyptians began building an empire and expanded into Syria-Palestine. This brought them into more direct contact and often confrontation with the major Mesopotamian and other Near Eastern states of the era. These included Hatti, land of the Hittites; Mitanni; and Assyria. The chief bone of contention between Egypt and these other powers long remained control of Syria-Palestine. To counter the influence of the Hittites, the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep iv (or Akhenaten; reigned 1352-1336 b.c.) made a pact with the Mitannian king Tushratta. Amenhotep promised to send military aid if Mitanni was attacked by the Hittites, but he did not follow through with the aid when the Hittites invaded Mitanni and laid siege to its capital of Wassukanni. Not long after Amenhotep's reign, the Assyrians finished off Mitanni, leaving the Egyptians to contend with the Hittites on their own. Tensions escalated until the Egyptians under Ramesses II (reigned 1279-1213 b.c.) clashed with the Hittites at Kadesh in Syria in 1274 b.c. Ramesses later signed a treaty with Hatti, and relations between the two countries remained cordial until the Hittite realm collapsed circa 1200 b.c.

   In the early centuries of the first millennium b.c., Egypt was weakened by civil strife and the division of the country into two parts ruled by separate and competing royal courts, one in the Nile delta region, the other in the area of Thebes. That left

   Egypt more susceptible to invasion by big Mesopotamian powers. Egyptian rulers worried most about the rise of Assyria in this period. Sure enough, the Assyrian king Esarhaddon invaded Egypt twice - in 674 B.C. and again three years later. Esar-haddon's son, Ashurbanipal, also overran Egypt and laid waste to many of its towns and public buildings. Soon the Assyrian Empire was destroyed, but the Egyptians did not remain independent for long. In 525 b.c. another Mesopotamian ruler, Persia's King Cambyses, invaded Egypt. In the roughly two centuries that followed, the Egyptians rebelled against the Persians several times, but the latter eventually managed to regain control. It took the Macedonian Greek king Alexander III, later called "the Great," to oust the Persians from Egypt for good.

   After Alexander's death, one of his generals, Ptolemy, seized control of Egypt and established the new Ptolemaic dynasty, which ruled until the country was annexed by Rome in 30 b.c. Even during the early years of the Ptolemaic period, Egypt still found itself in opposition to Mesopotamian rulers, in this case the Greek Seleu-cids, who had absorbed much of the old Persian Empire, including the plains of Mesopotamia.

   See also: Assyrian Empire; Battle of Kadesh; Cambyses; Greeks; Seleucid Empire