Alexandria

Egypt's natural borders protected its civilization for centuries, but in time warfare improved enough so that portions of the kingdom were conquered by Assyria from the north and Kush from the south. The Egyptians fought the Assyrians with the help of Greek mercenaries. Mercenaries are soldiers who are paid for their service in a foreign army. The wars with Assyria and Kush weakened Egypt, which allowed the Persians to capture almost the entire ancient kingdom by 525BC.

Persia controlled Egypt for almost two centuries until Alexander the Great led an army from Greece. The Egyptian people welcomed Alexander because he rescued Egypt from Persian rule. Many Egyptian people worshipped Alexander as a pharaoh. Alexander soon left Egypt to continue his conquests, but he established a new capital he named for himself in Alexandria.

Alexander's successors constructed the greatest library of the ancient world at Alexandria. The Royal Library at Alexandria collected books from all over the known world and attempted to gather all of the world's knowledge in one place. Legends say that books were seized from ships sailing into Alexandria's port. Scribes at the library would copy the books by hand and send back only the copies to their original owners.

The library was partially destroyed by several armies through the next nine centuries. The final destruction of the Royal Library at Alexandria seems to have occurred in the seventh century of the Common Era. We don't know the details because the library, where ancient records were kept, had been destroyed. A new library, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, was constructed in Alexandria in 2002. It houses a copy of the Internet Archive, a vast computer collection that attempts to keep a record of nearly anything ever posted on the Internet. You can access the Internet Archive and see copies of what websites looked like in the past at www.archive.org.

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