nd military
adventurers carried the name and fame of Egypt into other centers of
civilization and into the hinterland of barbarism that surrounded the
civilizations of that period.

Thus the land of Egypt expanded into the Egyptian Empire and the
culture of Egypt (its language, its ideas, its artifacts, its
institutions) expanded far beyond the boundaries of Egyptian political
authority and established Egyptian civilization in parts of Africa, Asia
and Europe.

The era of Egyptian civilization was divided into two periods by an
invasion of the Hyksos, nomadic leaders who moved into Egypt, ruled it
for a period and later were expelled and replaced by a new Egyptian
dynasty.

The fourth period of Egypt's experiment with civilization was that of
decline. From a position of political supremacy and cultural ascendancy
Egyptian influence weakened politically, economically, ideologically and
culturally until the year of the Persian Conquest, 525 B.C., when Egypt
became a conquered, occupied, provincial and in some ways a colonial
territory.

Egyptian civilization can be summed up in three sentences. It covered
the greatest time span of any civilization known to history. Its
monuments are the most massive. Its records, chiefly in stone, picture
massed humans directed for at least thirty centuries toward providing a
satisfying and rewarding after-life for a tiny favored minority of its
population. To achieve this result, the natural resources of three
adjacent continents were combined and concentrated into the Nile Valley
through an effective imperial apparatus that enabled the Egyptians to
exploit the resources and peoples of adjacent Africa, Asia and Europe
for the enrichment and empowerment of the rulers of Egypt and its
dependencies. The disintegration and collapse of Egyptian civilization
occupied only a small fraction of the time devoted to its upbuilding and
supremacy.

Before, during and after Egyptians played their long and distinguished
parts in the recorded history of civilization, the continent of Asia was
producing a series of civilization in four areas: first at the
crossroads joining Africa and Europe to Asia; then in Western Asia (Asia
Minor); in Central Asia, especially in India and Indonesia and finally
in China and the Far East.

Experiments with civilization during the past six thousand years have
centered in the Eurasian land mass, including the North African littoral
of the Mediterranean Sea. Withi