North Africa and Egypt

AFRICA IN ANCIENT TIMES HIST 1301 | History North Africa and Egypt The oldest documented commerce network that united the Mediterranean region was established by the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians were a Semitic-speaking maritime people who first appeared in the Levant, or eastern Mediterranean coast. They were originally from the territories surrounding Tyre in what is now Lebanon; in the Bible, the Phoenicians are referred to as the Canaanites. The Phoenicians started establishing colonies and trading posts along the Mediterranean coast at the end of the tenth century BCE. Eventually, this network of interconnected settlements stretched from Byblos in the east to Nimes and Gadir (Cadiz) in the west and Libdah (Leptis Magna) in the south. They founded Carthage, which would grow to be their largest colony, around 814 BCE. Carthage was ideally situated to control commerce in the western Mediterranean, situated on the coast of North Africa in what is now Tunisia. By the beginning of the fourth century BCE, Carthage's monarchy had given way to a republican government. The Greek philosopher Aristotle singled out the Carthaginian republic for praise, seeing it as the ideal compromise between monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Carthage ruled over the western Mediterranean's armed forces for about a century at this point. The city ruled over several commercial villages dotting the coast of North Africa around 300 BCE. Thus, Carthaginian dominance and influence extended over a thousand-mile span of the Mediterranean by the beginning of the third century BCE. The people of the Maghreb, or western half of North Africa, which includes most of modernday Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, spoke native languages and had adapted to their surroundings when Carthage was founded. The majority of people who resided on the coastal plains were settled farmers, seminomadic pastoralists lived in the Atlas Mountain range, and nomadic peoples lived in the Sahara. These people of North Africa were collectively referred to by the Carthaginians, Greeks, and Romans as Berbers 1, a derogatory epithet meaning "barbarian." This oversimplification obscures the political, social, and cultural complexity of the Mauri, Massylii, Musulamii, Masaesylii, Garamantes, and Gaetuli, among other diverse African ethnic groups and communities. These tribes had established remarkable communities of their own. For instance, the Masaesyli founded the kingdom of Numidia, while the Garamantes created a significant urban culture in the Libyan Fezzan. These groups, who usually refer to themselves as Amazigh, or Imazighen, rather than Berber, developed a rich tapestry of customs, values, and traditions over centuries of interaction, cooperation, and tension, creating societies and cultural practices well suited to the Maghreb region of North Africa. A city such as Carthage was alien to the native systems of the region, with its republican form of government and leaders who exerted political authority, imposed taxes, upheld the law, and used the military forces for defence. Carthage had a pragmatic relationship with its neighbours early in its existence; it paid tribute to them in order to deter assaults and promote goodwill. However, things was to change around 480 BCE, when Carthage tried to dominate the peoples of the area and ceased paying tribute. Over time, the inhabitants of the interior cities started to absorb Carthaginian culture, in addition to the Punic-speaking elite of Carthaginian descent ruling the coastal towns. They spoke Greek occasionally, especially if they were in positions of authority or conducted business with Carthage, in addition to Punic, the language of the Phoenicians. In addition, the intellectual class in these cities started to imitate Carthage, and in time they created their own inland nations, such Mauretania, which was founded by the Massylii and Mauri peoples of the Atlas Mountains. The Carthaginian hegemony over North Africa was not without opposition. The establishment of the Roman Republic in the third century BCE posed the biggest challenge to its hegemony. Up until then, the Romans had focused on establishing their dominance over the Italian peninsula south of the Rubicon River. This process came to a stop when southern Italy, known as Magna Graecia, was vanquished in the Pyrrhic War in 275 BCE. The Punic Wars, named for the three protracted and intense battles that resulted from Rome's confrontation with Carthage. First, they started in 264 BCE, and third, they ended in 146 BCE. The most well-known of them is the Second Punic or Hannibalic War, in which the commander Hannibal Barca of the Carthaginians invaded Italy with dozens of war elephants and tens of thousands of men. Hannibal terrorised the Romans for more than ten years, crushing their army at Trebia (218 BCE), Lake Trasimene (217 BCE), and the hamlet of Cannae in 216 BCE during one of the bloodiest combat days in history. Nevertheless, the Carthaginians were unable to deliver the Romans a crushing defeat, and the impasse persisted until the Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio brought the war to Carthage, compelling Hannibal to return from Italy to North Africa in order to defend it. 202 BCE saw the decisive defeat of Carthage in the Battle of Zama, which granted Scipio the honorific title Africanus. Encouraged by the conservative senator Marcus Portius Cato, also referred to as Cato the Censor in history, Rome returned fifty years later to complete the task. The fall of Carthage marked the conclusion of the Third Punic War (149–146 BCE). Rome established Tunis as the seat of its new African province, located some twenty miles inland. The indigenous African populations of the region were significantly impacted by the Roman Empire's annexation of North Africa. Very little had been required of Carthage by the people living outside of its hinterland. On the edges of the city were Carthaginian estates that provided the necessary sustenance for the populace. Conversely, Rome required a great deal from the interior of the Maghreb, particularly grain and olive oil to feed the expanding urban population of the city. After decades of Roman expansion into the interior, the inland region was home to farms that produced millions of tonnes of wheat and hundreds of thousands of gallons of olive oil annually by the early Common Era, all of which were meant to feed Rome's population. North Africa gained the moniker "the breadbasket of Rome" as a result of this abundance. The establishment of private land ownership and the large-scale seasonal movement of nomads and their animals to the coastal plains for employment were both consequences of the increase of agricultural output in the Maghreb. Lee-meis, or lines of fortified frontier fortifications that delineated the boundaries of Roman rule, were erected by the Romans to assist regulate the flow of people during these times and to safeguard crops from migratory cattle. The ancient Phoenician coastal cities saw fresh development as a result of agricultural productivity, and they developed into commercial hubs for the shipment of animals and produce to Rome. In antiquity, eastern North Africa was likewise the scene of significant transformation. Alexander the Great, the Macedonian ruler of Greece, established the magnificent metropolis of Alexandria on the Nile River in 332 BCE before he left to pursue his conquest of western Asia. Alexander's generals fought among themselves for control of the empire after his death in 323 BCE, ultimately dividing the enormous area among them. Ptolemy, a single officer, overthrew Egypt and established a dynasty that governed it for the following three centuries. The Ptolemies had to present themselves as pharaohs in order to show that they were descended from the pharaohs via Alexander. The Ptolemies intended for the populace to view them as legitimate rulers of Egypt, not foreign invaders, which is why they adopted the Egyptian style in part because they were impressed by the history and magnificence of Egypt. In the three centuries that followed Alexander's death, all of the Hellenistic (or Greek-like) kings urged Greeks from all over the Mediterranean to live in one of the three Greek city-states that the Macedonian invaders had founded, Alexandria among them. Moreover, the Ptolemies encouraged Jews from Palestine to relocate to northern Egypt, turning Alexandria into one of the most diverse towns in ancient history. The Alexandrian Museum, also known as the Museon, served as the centre of Greek culture in Egypt. This "Home of the Muses" was more than just a location to view historical artefacts; it was also the biggest library in the world, with some 700,000 scrolls that contained all of human knowledge. It housed hundreds of intellectuals studying everything from literature and geometry to physics and geography, and it had labs for the study of human anatomy and astronomy. It replaced the Academy at Athens in many respects as the epicentre of learning in antiquity. For example, Eratosthenes formed his geographic grasp of the world and calculated its circumference to be between 24,500 and 29,000 miles (today we know it is 24,900 miles) in the Museon, where the canonical copies of Homer's Iliad were recognised. Ptolemaic Egypt was governed on a day-to-day basis by Greek and Egyptian officials, who provided interpreters from Egypt. In order to pass for pharaohs, the Ptolemies resorted to religion. Upon taking power in Egypt, Ptolemy's first action was to take Alexander the Great's body when it was being brought from his residence in Babylon to Macedonia. Alexander's ornate mausoleum was constructed by Ptolemy, who turned it into the centre of the capital city of Alexandria. Then, in accordance with the rank that the Egyptian priests of Amun had conferred upon him during his lifetime at Siwah in 332 BCE, he proclaimed Alexander to be a deity. Furthermore, Ptolemy commissioned the construction of a temple in the capital city honouring the new deity Serapis. Serapis was a remarkable god who showed how clever the Greek emperors of Egypt were. Serapis, a combination of the Greek god Zeus and Helios with the Egyptian gods Osiris and Apis, gave Ptolemaic Egypt's disparate people a shared religious experience. The Ptolemies performed the religious responsibilities of the pharaoh, such as building new temples to Egyptian gods, touring shrines around Egypt, and claiming to be Alexander's godlike heirs, in an effort to further solidify their status as Egypt's lawful rulers. Cleopatra VII was Ptolemy's last Ptolemy. Being a strong-willed and intelligent politician, Cleopatra was the only Greek ruler of Egypt to speak Egyptian fluently. She was also multilingual, knowing over twelve languages. With a strong political aspiration, she was committed to maintaining her autonomy despite Rome's increasing control over the Mediterranean. In order to do this, she had an extramarital affair with Julius Caesar, the Roman commander and tyrant, and gave birth to Caesarion. Cleopatra changed her love to Marc Antony, the heir to Caesar's army, when Caesar was slain in 44 BCE due to his displeasure with the Roman Senate, whose members believed he was seeking to become king. This tactic, however, proved to be disastrous as Marc Antony became more and more involved in a dispute with Caesar's adoptive son, Octavian, which ultimately culminated in a full-scale civil war between the two. The naval battle of Actium, which took place in 31 BCE and saw the combined forces of Octavian and Marcus Agrippa defeat Marc Antony and Cleopatra, was the turning point of the conflict. Marc Antony and Cleopatra committed themselves shortly after Octavian invaded Egypt in 30 BCE, pursuing the defeated pair. With the fall of the Ptolemaic dynasty, Cleopatra's death signalled the beginning of Roman control in Egypt. Egypt's civilization became much more complicated after Rome conquered the country. The language of governance remained Greek, even if Latin-speaking rulers and bureaucrats continued to manage state affairs from Alexandria. Rome made significant investments in the growth of Egypt's major cities, establishing hospitable, multicultural areas that were eventually populated by Greeks, Jews, Romans, and Egyptians who had undergone acculturation. Even yet, most Egyptian subjects resided in rural regions throughout the Roman occupation. Workers toiled in almost two thousand communities dotting the Nile delta and the Nile valley, producing tonnes of grain that fed the imperial capital's need for bread. Roman taxes also disproportionately affected these people, a situation that sometimes sparked uprisings against the empire. Up until the fourth and fifth century CE, when the beleaguered Western Roman Empire faced a fresh set of difficulties, including extensive barbarian invasions, Roman imperial rule over North Africa remained unaltered. The Vandals were one set of invaders. The Vandals were a Germanic people who originated in what is now Poland. They moved westward and established in the Silesia region in the second century CE. They were contained in the Roman province of Pannonia by the third century, which covered a large area that included parts of present-day Hungary, Austria, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Slovenia. However, they pushed westward in response to the Huns, a nomadic steppe people from central Asia, who were advancing towards them. Vandals had moved to Gaul and the Iberian Peninsula by the fifth century. They were summoned by Bonifacius, the Roman governor of North Africa, in 430, when they were led by Genseric, to assist him in becoming a sovereign apart from Rome. The Vandals battled Rome's imperial soldiers for several years on behalf of Bonifacius, who perished in 432 in Italy in the Battle of Remini. At last, Rome signed a peace treaty giving the Vandals authority over Mauretania and the western region of Numidia. Disappointed, Genseric then devised a scheme to breach the contract and invade Carthage, which he conquered in 439, in order to increase his dominance over Roman North Africa. Up until the early sixth century, when Byzantine armies led by the general Belisarius retook the province and forced the Vandal ruler Gelimer to submit in 534, the Vandals maintained dominance over the Maghreb region of Roman North Africa. A fresh force from the east endangered the Byzantine position in North Africa less than a century later. The Islamic troops began to progress in the 640s, and in 642 they overthrew Byzantine Egypt. They then began a series of assaults throughout the region, using Egypt as a front position, until the last Byzantine strongholds in North Africa, including Carthage, fell. All of North Africa was subjugated by the year 709.