This magnificence of the Egyptian Pharaonic civilization has persuaded imaginative people over the years to invent all kinds of unlikely stories about the mysterious powers of these monuments or of the ancient Egyptian priests, about deadly curses which seem to have worked too selectively to be real, since most of the archaeologists that have recovered this wonderful past for us have been spared living long and peaceful lives, about people from far away places that coming from Atlantis or other such places, came to Egypt to bring civilization, because they cannot give credit to the Egyptians themselves for these achievements. Others write about extraterrestrial civilizations reaching Egypt but that strangely left no record of any kind of their presence. It's really almost like a new pagan religion that has developed around ancient Egypt, which besides being untrue is completely unnecessary because the accomplishments of the ancient Egyptians are enough to make us admire them without such inventions that sell books and make some writers rich but that relegate the Egyptians to the role of passive puppets or that of enigmatic and mystical people, views that are not supported by the historical evidence and that perhaps also reflect a subtle racism that tries to deny Africans a significant role in History.

Another of the very real characteristics of ancient Egypt and that makes it stand out from among other great ancient civilizations, is the surprising continuity of this culture, that could keep its identity through political, religious and other social upheavals, for more than three thousand years. Even today, when Islam has determined a drastic departure from the ancient ways and beliefs, in the works of art of modern Egyptian artists and in the expression of contemporary popular customs, ancient Egypt is present to some degree telling us of the vigour of a cultural tradition that seems to defy time in the same way the great Giza pyramids do.

It is perhaps a unique case in history of a people that has been exposed to the consequences of its own historical development and to the invasions of other peoples and that has been able to retain its basic identity as a nation, contemplating the comings and goings of these intruders to finally end up by assimilating them all and turn them into Egyptians. The achievements of this people are part of mankind's heritage and deserve to be better known by us all, regardless of where we live.

We will provide now a very brief account of the history of Egypt, so long and rich in events that inspire modern historians, archaeologists and anthropologists. What we know now as Egypt was visited by human groups of hunter-gatherers already from the very beginning of our species and although the actual remains of these early Egyptians are scarce, their stone tools have survived in situ and trace this presence at least one million years back in time. All through this country's prehistory we can find proof of human activity, similar to that found in Europe and elsewhere. Around 6,000 to 7,000 BC, sedentary communities with a neolithic lifestyle appear in Egypt and gradually, by means of the introduction of plant and animal domestication, increasingly more sophisticated forms of trade, the rational use of the regular floods caused by the Nile and then the use of metals and the work with hard stone, led to the Predynastic or formative period of this civilization. Between approximately 5,000 and 3,000 BC social organization increased in Egypt until just before 3,000 BC when according to the ancient traditions of the country, an ancient king unified Egypt. The enormous resources of this rich land and a relatively numerous population could generate the accomplishments that we can see in the Archaic Period, as this primitive stage in the development of the ancient Egyptian state is called and that goes from about 3,000 to 2,700 BC. But it is during the Old Kingdom (2,700 to 2,200 BC) that the Egyptian monarchy reaches its highest level of power and influence, the great pyramids at Giza, royal funerary monuments, eloquently illustrate this point, a kind of power the Egyptian kings would never possess again later on. Bad administration policies and an ecological disaster that led to the final desiccation of the region reaching to approximately today's dry climatic conditions caused the fall of this powerful monarchy. An obscure First Intermediate Period (2,200 to 2,000 BC) replaced the Old Kingdom, a period in which power was diluted along the long and narrow Nile Valley. In 2,000 BC a dynasty of Theban princes from the south reunified Egypt inaugurating the Middle Kingdom (2,000 to 1,750 BC) or classical period of this civilization in which literature, the sciences, the written language reached its point of maximum purity and autochthonous development. The king although still a god, could not aspire at first to the same centralized power as before and had to share it with the strong local governors. After a few centuries of slow royal consolidation, the irruption of foreigners in the northeast pushed by other population movements elsewhere, caused the so-called Hyksos episode (Second Intermediate Period, 1,750 to 1,580 BC) during which the proud Theban princes were reduced to pay tribute and acknowledge the authority of foreign kings established in the eastern Delta. After two centuries of this humiliating experience, the Theban princes led the struggle to expel the intruders from their soil and as the first rulers of the New Kingdom (1,580 to 1,100 BC) they successfully penetrated into Western Asia, probably in order to set up a buffer zone to protect them against similar future encroachments. A professional army replaced the ancient peasant levies, of doubtful usefulness against better organized foreign armies. The New Kingdom is one of the most brilliant times of this civilization, during which the empire built by the early Eighteenth Dynasty rulers provided all kinds of luxurious amenities for the upper classes. Nubia at the south and Asia in the north paid tribute regularly to the Egyptian kings during this period. Towards the end of the New Kingdom, the confrontation with other peoples such as the Hittites or the so-called "Sea Peoples", once more weaken the Egyptian monarchy and pave the way for the decadence that will start in the Third Intermediate Period (1,100 to 650 BC), a period in which Lybian and Nubian dynasties of kings powerlessly contemplate how fearful enemies as the Assyrians and the Babylonians threaten or conquer Egypt. A brief period of renewed splendour under the protective shield of Greek mercenaries follows and is commonly called the Saite or Late Period (650-525 BC) which is followed by the Persian conquest of the country, in which for the first time Egypt loses its autonomy and becomes a province of a vast foreign empire. In 330 BC Alexander of Macedon frees Egypt from the Persian yoke and after his untimely death, one of his generals, Ptolemy, claims the title of Pharaoh and inaugurates a foreign dynasty that will rule Egypt until 30 BC when after the death of the last of the Ptolemies, the queen Cleopatra VII, the country became a Roman province first and then in the Fifth Century of our era, a part of the Byzantine Empire with its capital in Byzantium (modern Constantinople or Istambul). In the VII Century AD an Arab army enters Egypt and the country is converted to Islam inaugurating the Muslim period that continues today. During the Crusades, in which European warriors invaded Muslim Palestine, Egyptian Sultans led the struggle to reconquer the region for Islam. In the XVI Century Egypt became a part of the Turkish or Ottoman Empire that ruled the country until the XVIII Century when Egypt became after the Napoleonic expedition and the subsequent British retaliation, a European protectorate. It was only in 1952 when Egypt could finally recover its independence and a rational exploitation of its resources in order to satisfy the demands of an increasing population that lives mostly in appalling poverty conditions. International tourism is today a very significant source of income for the country, thus accomplishing the strangely circular consequence that in the form of the monuments built by the ancient Egyptians, their ancestors also contribute to the prosperity of the modern population.

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Five thousand years of civilization, a people that in spite of the time that has changed so many things, still continues to inspire the world as their ancestors did, trying to preserve their cultural heritage with all the means available to them. We hear a lot in the modern media about the accomplishments of the ancient Egyptians but not so frequently about the need to convince the nations of this planet that the modern Egyptians deserve all our material and moral support in their efforts to preserve their past, which if we take the time to reflect, is also our own. We can only hope that this modest effort will contribute to some degree to this noble goal.