Ancient Egypt :: was a long-standing civilization in north-eastern Africa. It was concentrated along the middle to lower reaches of the Nile River, reaching its greatest extent in the second millennium BC, during the New Kingdom. It reached from the Nile Delta in the north, as far south as Jebel Barkal at the Fourth Cataract of the Nile. Extensions to the geographic range of ancient Egyptian civilization included, at different times, areas of the southern Levant, the Eastern Desert and the Red Sea coastline, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Western body (focused on the several oases). Ancient Egypt developed over at least three and a half century. It began with the incipient unification of Nile Valley polities around 3150 BC, and is conventionally thought to have ended in 31 BC when the early Roman Empire conquered and absorbed Ptolemaic Egypt as a state. This last event did not represent the first period of foreign domination; however the Roman period was to witness a marked, if gradual transformation in the political and religious life of the Nile Valley, effectively marking the termination of independent civilizational development >>
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