Egypt: a brief history

Egypt, circa -1400.

Here is my quick overview of the history of Egypt. It is very much a work in progress.

Note that the farther back you go in time, the more uncertain dates become.

Roman numerals show when the ancient dynasties of Egypt started. I follow the dates in “The Princeton Dictionary of Ancient Egypt” (2008) by Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson.”

• -4000s: Nagada I culture, rivets
• -3900s:
• -3800s:
• -3700s:
• -3600s:
• -3500s: Nagada II culture, plywood, sail
• -3400s:
• -3300s:
• -3200s: hieroglyphics
• -3100s: Early Dynastic: Dynasty I, Narmer, Horus
• -3000s: paper (papyrus), oven, flail, candle wick, Memphis the capital
• -2900s:
• –2800s: II, dam, chair, book, page numbers, 365-day calendar
• -2700s:
• -2600s: Old Kingdom: III, IV, Imhotep, Step Pyramid, Re-Horus, divine kingship
• -2500s: Great Pyramid of Giza, Sphinx, clear glass, Diary of Merer
• -2400s: V, obelisks, Palermo Stone
• -2300s: VI, Amun, Pyramid Texts
• -2200s: Harkhuf
• -2100s: First Intermediate Period: VII, VIII, IX, X, XI
• -2000s: Middle Kingdom, XI, Thebes is the capital, bronze, alphabet, mechanical lock, saw, Coffin Texts
• -1900s: XII, Sinuhe, Hekanakhte, Nubia colonized
• -1800s: Sesostris, Kahun
• -1700s: XIII, XIV, Sobekneferu
• -1600s: Second Intermediate Period: XV, XVI, XVII, Hyksos rule, chariots, bronze weapons, composite bow, Joseph?
• -1500s: New Kingdom, XVIII, Amun-Re, helmet, armour,  clock (water, sun), scissors
• -1400s: Thebes the world’s largest city, Hatshepsut, Tiye, Karnak, Cleopatra’s Needles, Valley of the Kings, Deir el-Medina, rudder
• -1300s: Queen Tiye, Akhenaton, Nefertiti, Amarna, King Tut, Aten, Yahweh
• -1200s: XIX, Ramses II, Jews, Moses?
• -1100s: XX, Sea Peoples, Pi-Ramses the world’s largest city, papyrus exports
• -1000s: Third Intermediate Period, XXI (Tanite), Smendes
• -900s: XXII (Bubastite/Libyan)
• -800s: XXIII (Tanite/Libyan)
• -700s: XXIV, Late Period: XXV (Nubian)
• -600s: XXVI (Saite), Assyrian invasion, Psamtek I, Red Sea canal
• -500s: (Persian rule), Cambyses, Aramaic, XXVII
• -400s: XXVIII, Herodotus
• -300s: XXIX, XXX, XXXI, Ptolemaic (Greek) rule, Alexandria, Greek
• -200s: Serapis, Euclid, Manetho, Library of Alexandria, Lighthouse of Alexandria, Eratosthenes.
• -100s: Rosetta Stone, Alexandria the world’s largest city, Sosigenes
• -000s: Roman rule, Roman Egypt, Cleopatra, Diodorus, Strabo, Philo
• +000s: Coptic Christianity
• +100s: Ptolemy, latitude and longitude, Gospel of Peter
• +200s: Origen, Plotinus
• +300s: St Antony, St Catherine, Arianism, Athanasius, the New Testament as we know it, Egeria, Serapeum closed, the last hieroglyphics written
• +400s: Hypatia dragged from her carriage by Christians, Council of Chalcedon declares Coptic Christianity heretical
• +500s: Justinian, last temple of Isis closed
• +600s: Arab rule, Islam, Arabic
• +700s:
• +800s: Bernard the Wise
• +900s: Fatimid Caliphate, Chinese paper arrives
• +1000s:
• +1100s: Ayyubids, Ben Jonah of Tudela
• +1200s: Mamluks, Abd el-Latif
• +1300s: Ibn Batuta
• +1400s:
• +1500s: Ottoman rule
• +1600s:
• +1700s: Napoleon invades. Rosetta Stone is found.
• +1800s: cotton exports, Suez Canal, British rule.
• +1900s: King Tut’s tomb found, Aswan Dam (end of annual flooding), Nasser, US vassal state, Sadat, Mubarak
• +2000s: Arab Spring, Sisi

Western tropes I tried to avoid:

• Spotlight History: Egypt pretty much disappears from Western accounts of history after the death of Cleopatra.
• Non-Western cultures as timeless: Ancient Egypt is seen as all the same even though it went on for 3,000 years.
• Archaeological lens: the history of Ancient Egypt, when it is told, is often told in terms of Westerners and their discoveries. Some of that seeps into the above timeline.

– Abagond, +2018.

Update (2023): Updated to use the dating of “The Princeton Dictionary of Ancient Egypt” (2008) by Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson.

See also:

• Egypt
  • Ancient Egypt
  • Roman Egypt
    • Africans in the Greek and Roman world
• tropes
  • Spotlight History
  • Temple of Linken – the US viewed through an archaeological lens
• human history, the last 6,000 years
• biggest cities in history
• US vassal state

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