Roman Egypt
Cleopatra
Julius Caesar
Mark Anthony
Julius Caesar did help her, but he left Roman troops all over Egypt, and also took Cleopatra (klee-oh-PAT-rah) back to Rome with him as his girlfriend. When Julius Caesar was assassinated in Rome in 44 BC, Cleopatra returned to Egypt with another Roman leader, Mark Anthony (who was also her boyfriend).
In a civil war between Julius Caesar's nephew Augustus and Marc Anthony, Antony and Cleopatra were defeated. They killed themselves (or perhaps were killed) in 30 BC, and the Romans took over Egypt.
The Romans valued Egypt very highly, because it was so fertile and produced so much food. A lot of food, especially wheat for bread, was taken from Egypt for taxes and sent to Rome on big ships. To make it easier to collect these taxes, the Romans also established Roman-style government in Egypt, though the main language of government was still Greek (the way it had been under Greek rule) rather than Latin. By this time even most ordinary people in Egypt knew some Greek.
Around 300-400 AD, most Egyptians converted to Christianity. There were bitter battles over exactly which kind of Christianity, Arian or Catholic, would be observed in Egypt.
When Rome fell to the Ostrogoths in 476 AD, Egypt's grain was sent instead to the new Roman capital at Constantinople, near the Black Sea, in what is now Turkey.
The Romans held Egypt until about 700 AD, for about 700 years, until the Arabs conquered it.
To find out more about Roman Egypt, check out these books from Amazon.com or from your library:
Asterix and Cleopatra, by Rene Goscinny. A funny comic book, but historically not so far off.
Cleopatra, by Diane Stanley (reprinted 1997) . A biography of the last independent queen of Egypt, for kids.
Egypt After the Pharaohs: 332 BC-AD 642: from Alexander to the Arab Conquest, by Alan Bowman (1996). A standard among historians, and pretty readable.
Women in Hellenistic Egypt: From Alexander to Cleopatra, by Sarah Pomeroy (reprinted 1990). Pomeroy is an expert on the lives of women in antiquity.
The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome, by Erich Gruen (reprinted 1986).
Life in Egypt Under Roman Rule, by Naphtali Lewis (1999). A classic work, which uses evidence from scraps of writing on papyrus - shopping lists, letters, contracts, bills - to reconstruct people's daily life.
Egypt in Late Antiquity, by Roger S. Bagnall (reprinted 1995).
