One day, however, in distant Mesopotamia, there arose a new military
empire which was called Assyria. It cared for neither art nor science,
but it could fight. The Assyrians marched against the Egyptians and
defeated them in battle. For more than twenty years they ruled the land
of the Nile. To Egypt this meant the beginning of the end.

A few times, for short periods, the people managed to regain their
independence. But they were an old race, and they were worn out by
centuries of hard work.

The time had come for them to disappear from the stage of history and
surrender their leadership as the most civilized people of the world.
Greek merchants were swarming down upon the cities at the mouth of
the Nile.

A new capital was built at Sais, near the mouth of the Nile, and Egypt
became a purely commercial state, the half-way house for the trade
between western Asia and eastern Europe.

After the Greeks came the Persians, who conquered all of northern
Africa.

Two centuries later, Alexander the Great turned the ancient land of the
Pharaoh? into a Greek province. When he died, one of his generals,
Ptolemy by name, established himself as the independent king of a new
Egyptian state.

The Ptolemy family continued to rule for two hundred years.

In the year 30 B.C., Cleopatra, the last of the Ptolemys, killed