Watch Egyptian Journeys online: Episode 6 The Death of Ancient Egypt

Cruickshank travels the length of the country to find out what brought this remarkable civilisation to an abrupt and tragic end. The arrival of Alexander the Great in 332 BC ushered in the 300 years rule of the Ptolemaic dynasty where Greek culture would challenge the old beliefs. The Greeks however were seduced by the mystery and magic of Ancient Egyptian and erected statues to the old god in their temples. Cleopatra, despite her Greek blood, became the archetypal Egyptian with even her legendary death at the bite of a sacred asp designed to usher her into the eternal pantheon of Egyptian deities. The Romans marched into Egypt in 30 BC intent on turning it into an imperial province and bled the country dry to sustain the Empires extensive territories. The vast resources of Egypt supplied one third of Romes grain as well as gold and granite. The country was bankrupted, the temples neglected and the priests disregarded but the beliefs lived on to seduce the Roman oppressors with some even being mummified. Christianity was adopted as the official religion of the Roman Empire and enforced upon the Egyptians. Greeks and Romans could blend their own pantheons with those of Egypt but Christianity was monotheistic and intolerant regarding old gods as devils. Ancient rituals were appropriated and transformed, including the Ptolomeic idea of monasticism, finally defeating the old gods by the mid-4th century AD when over half the Egyptian population had converted to Christianity and the rest were persecuted. The last of believers in the old faith retreated to the Island of Philae, where the last Demotic hieroglyphs were carved in 394 AD, and when this bastion finally fell a 3000 year old culture had been wiped out and its knowledge forgotten.

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