That empire, however, was overthrown by Cyrus, and it was easy to see that the conqueror who had proved so irresistible in Asia would not allow Egypt to remain at peace.  Amasis prepared himself accordingly for the coming storm.  Cyprus was occupied, and therewith the command of the sea was assured.  The maritime policy of the Twenty-sixth dynasty was an indication of Greek influence; in older days the sea had been to the Egyptian a thing abhorred.

Kambyses carried out the invasion which his father, Cyrus, had planned.  Unfortunately for the Egyptians, Amasis died while the Persian army was on its march, and the task of opposing it fell to his young and inexperienced son.  The Greek mercenaries fought bravely, but to no purpose:  the battle of Pelusium gave Egypt to the invader, Memphis was taken, and the Pharaoh put to death.  In the long struggle between Asia and Egypt, Asia had been finally the victor.

The Egyptians did not submit tamely to the Persian yoke.  Kambyses indeed seemed inclined to change himself into an Egyptian Pharaoh; he took up his residence at Memphis and sent an expedition to conquer the Sudan.  But under Darius and his successors, whose Zoroastrian monotheism was of a sterner description, there was but little sympathy between the conquered and their conquerors.  Time after time the Egyptians broke into revolt, once against Xerxes, once again against Artaxerxes I., and a third time against Artaxerxes II.  The last insurrection was more successful than those which had preceded it, and Egypt remained independent for sixty-five years.  Then the crimes and incompetence of its last native king, Nektanebo II., opened the way to the Persian, and the valley of the Nile once more bowed its neck under the Persian yoke.  Its temples were ruined, the sacred Apis slain, and an ass set up in mockery in its place.

A few years later Egypt welcomed the Macedonian Alexander as a deliverer, and recognised him as a god.  The line of the Pharaohs, the incarnations of the Sun-god, had returned in him to the earth.  It was not the first time that the Egyptian and the Greek had stood side by side against the common Persian foe.  Greek troops had disputed the passage of Kambyses into Egypt.  The first revolt of Egypt had saved Greece from the impending invasion of Darius, and postponed it to the reign of his feebler son, and during its second revolt Athenian ships had sailed up the Nile and assisted the Egyptians in the contest with the Persians.  If Egypt could not be free, it was better that its master should be a Greek.

Alexander was followed by the Ptolemies.  They were the ablest of his successors, the earlier of them being equally great in war and in peace.  Alexandria, founded by Alexander on the site of the village of Rakotis, became the commercial and literary centre of the world; thousands of books were collected in its Library, and learned professors lectured in the halls of its Museum.  An elaborate fiscal system