Egypt and the Middle East

Middle East

Salto de línea The history of the ancient Middle East is one of the most extensive in time, as well as taking place in great, varied geographical areas. We find a long historical chronology of over 11,000 years, from 11,000 BC to 632 AD, and the huge geographical expanse of nearly 9,000,000 square kilometres. The history of the ancient East is the story of the life and deeds of human beings in the broad area running from the Aegean to the Indus Valley and from Central Asia and the Caucasus to the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

Agriculture, herding and the first villages originated in the so-called “Fertile Crescent” and, about 3500 BC, the first urban culture and the state arose in Mesopotamia. Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Arameans, Phoenicians, Persians, Achaemenids and Sargonids took part in history because the whole Middle East was a single world.

Egypt and Nubia

The ancient Egyptians called their country the “Black Land” and the “Red Land.” The Black Land defined the fertile valley on the banks of the Nile, while the Red Land referred to the two deserts on either side, the Libyan Desert and the Eastern Desert. In antiquity, the country was divided into Upper and Lower Egypt (to the north and south, respectively) and the Pharaoh was called the “Lord of the two lands,” for this division. The Egyptian priest Manetho divided the pharaohs into dynasties, numbering them from one to thirty (from 3000 to 342 BC).

In Nubia, a region to the south of Egypt in present day Sudan, a series of indigenous cultures arose which established contact with their Egyptian neighbours. Nubia was always a crossroads between Pharaonic Egypt and Black Africa and the River Nile the route penetrating into the south.

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