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. Within this area of potential or actual
civilization, until very recent times, the centers of civilization have
been widely separated geographically and temporally.
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