Ancient Egypt before Christ?

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How many years before Christ was ancient Egypt?

Ancient Egypt's great civilization spanned thousands of years, from c. 3000 B.C. until the annexation by Rome in 30 B.C.E.

https://www.ushistory.org/civ/3.asp#:~: ... er%20Egypt.

Civilization in the Middle East began at least three thousand years before Christ.

The oldest civilization in the Middleast, and in the whole world for that matter (ie culture with cities, writing, recorded history, social classes, etc) was the Sumerians in Mesopotamia (now called "Iraq").

A little bit later civilization began in Egypt also around 3000 BC. Civilization spread from those two places to the world (thats the short simple version of the story).

Egyptian civilization lasted a LONG time. The Pharoahs ruled until around 700 BC. Then Egypt became a vassal state of other peoples' empires (Assyrian, Persian, Alexander the Great, the Romans).

Egypt was a province of the Roman Empire and was governed by a cosmopolitan elite that was culturally Greek and Romanized. But who paid homage to ancient Egyptian gods still. So Egypt's long heyday was over by Christ's time but its culture still lingered.

Many Jewish merchants thrived in Alexandria Egypt in Christ's time.

Why do you ask this question?

Why?

Expanses of time can be hard to grasp.

The Great pyramid at Giza was built around 2600 BC. Anthony and Cleopatra (a few decades before Christ) were closer to our time than to the time of the Great Pyramid.

It is good that you are interested in history, Jamesy.

It is pretty epic to think about the time spans of different civilizations and how various regions have changed over time.

The pre-Dynastic period of Egypt lasted from about 5,000 BC/BCE to about 3,500 BC/BCE.  Before then, human settlements existed all along the Nile River (according to archeological evidence).

The unofficial "Human Era" began around the end of the last major glaciation period, about 12,023 years ago.

The pyramids were built near the beginning of Egyptian civilization arond 2600 BC. Stonehenge in Britain was built about the same time.

But both stonehenge and the Great Pyramids at Giza are young compared to the recently discovered stone temple complex found at Gobekli Tepe in what is now southern Turkey (built in circa 9500 BC, and not abandoned until around 8000). Its sort of a more polished and sophisticated version of Stonehenge (even though its older than stonehenge).

Gobekli Tepe was built seven thousand years BEFORE either Giza or Stonehenge. So when the great pyramid was new...Gobekli Tepi was already more ancient than the Great Pyramid is now!

Talk about mind boggling.

And we havnt touched upon geologic time scales.