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.  Within this area of potential or actual civilization, until very recent times, the centers of civilization have been widely separated geographically and temporally.  Occasionally they have been unified and integrated by some unusual up-thrust like that of the Egyptian, the Chinese or the Roman civilizations.  In the intervals between these up-thrusts various centers of civilization have maintained a large degree of autonomy and isolation.  Only in the past five centuries have communication, transportation, trade and tourism created the basis for an experiment in organizing and coordination of a planet-wide experiment in civilization.

Nature offered humankind two logical areas for the establishment of civilizations.  One was the cross-roads of migration, trade and travel by land to and from Asia, Africa and Europe.  The other was the Mediterranean with its possibility of relatively safe and easy water-migration, trade and travel between the three continents making up its littoral.  Both possibilities were brought together in the Eastern Mediterranean with its multitude of islands, its broken coastline, and its many safe harbors.

The Phoenicians developed their far-flung trading activities around the Mediterranean as a waterway, and the tri-continental crossroads as a logical center for a civilization built around business enterprise.