The empire
was held together by a legal authority using armed force where necessary
to assert or preserve its identity and unity.
Expansion, the third phase of Egyptian development, involved the export
of culture traits and artifacts beyond national frontiers, extending the
cultural influence of Egypt into non-Egyptian lands inhabited by Egypt's
neighbors. Merchants, tourists, travelers, explorers and 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.
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