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Virtue & Power

Timeline

Ancient Egypt Timeline

A chronology of ancient Egypt across three thousand years — from the unification of the Two Lands through the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms to Cleopatra and the Roman conquest.

Egyptian civilization endured, with a recognizable identity, for some three thousand years — longer than any other ancient civilization. Its history is conventionally divided into the great Kingdoms of centralized rule, separated by Intermediate Periods of division. Many early dates are approximate.

  1. c. 3100 BCE

    Unification of Upper and Lower Egypt (the Narmer Palette tradition); beginning of the Early Dynastic Period.

  2. c. 2686–2181 BCE

    The Old Kingdom — the Age of the Pyramids. Djoser's Step Pyramid at Saqqara; the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza.

  3. c. 2181–2055 BCE

    First Intermediate Period — collapse of central authority and competing local rulers.

  4. c. 2055–1650 BCE

    The Middle Kingdom — reunification under Mentuhotep II and the Twelfth Dynasty; the classical age of Egyptian literature.

  5. c. 1650–1550 BCE

    Second Intermediate Period — the Hyksos dominate the Delta.

  6. c. 1550–1069 BCE

    The New Kingdom — Egypt at its imperial height.

  7. c. 1479–1458 BCE

    Hatshepsut rules as pharaoh; her temple at Deir el-Bahari.

  8. c. 1457 BCE

    Thutmose III's victory at Megiddo; the empire extended to the Euphrates.

  9. c. 1353–1336 BCE

    Akhenaten's religious revolution and the worship of the Aten; the capital moved to Amarna.

  10. c. 1279–1213 BCE

    Reign of Ramesses II; the battle of Kadesh and the first surviving peace treaty; Abu Simbel.

  11. c. 1069–664 BCE

    Third Intermediate Period — fragmentation, then Kushite and Assyrian intervention.

  12. 525 BCE

    Persian conquest of Egypt under Cambyses; Egypt a satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire.

  13. 332 BCE

    Alexander the Great takes Egypt; foundation of Alexandria.

  14. 305–30 BCE

    The Ptolemaic dynasty — Greek pharaohs; the Library of Alexandria.

  15. 30 BCE

    Death of Cleopatra VII; Egypt annexed by Rome, ending three millennia of independent monarchy.

Egypt's defining quality was endurance: an order that could collapse and be reborn again and again. Its absorption by Rome closed the longest-lived political tradition of the ancient world.