Ptolemaic Kingdom

State · 331–28 BCE · at its largest around 326 BCE

Greek kings ruled Egypt as pharaohs, honouring Egyptian gods while making Alexandria the intellectual capital of the Mediterranean. Its Library and Museum hosted Euclid and Eratosthenes, the Pharos lighthouse guided ships home, and Cleopatra was its last queen.

On its lands while it lasted

Uruk (c. 5,000 BCE – c. 700 CE): Sumerian city on the Euphrates that by about 3100 BCE was probably the largest city in the world, centre of the first urban civilization.
Babylon (2,201 BCE – 1 CE): Capital of Babylonia (1800 BCE–601 BCE), Neo-Babylonian Empire (600 BCE–539 BCE), Achaemenid Empire (550 BCE–330 BCE).
Pergamon (801 BCE – 62 CE): Capital of Kingdom of Pontus (281 BCE–62), Kingdom of Pergamon (279 BCE–133 BCE).
Incense Route (c. 700 BCE – c. 200 CE): Camel caravans carried frankincense and myrrh from southern Arabia north along the Red Sea hinterland through Nabataean Petra to Gaza on the Mediterranean.
Pasargadae (c. 550–330 BCE): Capital of Achaemenid Empire (550 BCE–330 BCE).
Royal Road (c. 500–330 BCE): The Achaemenid Persian highway described by Herodotus ran some 2,700 km from Sardis to Susa, with relay stations that let royal couriers cover it in about a week.
Campaigns of Alexander the Great (334–323 BCE): Alexander of Macedon crossed into Asia in 334 BCE, defeated Darius III at Issus and Gaugamela, conquered Egypt and the Persian Empire, and campaigned as far as the Indus valley before dying in Babylon in 323 BCE.
Alexandria (331 BCE): Founded by Alexander the Great on Egypt's Mediterranean coast, it became the capital of Ptolemaic Egypt and a leading centre of Hellenistic learning.
Battle of Gaugamela (331 BCE): Alexander the Great decisively defeated Darius III near modern Erbil, leading to the fall of the Achaemenid Empire.
Battle of the Hydaspes (326 BCE): Alexander the Great defeated King Porus on the Jhelum River in Punjab, the high point of his Indian campaign before his army refused to march further east.
Euclid's Elements (c. 300 BCE): Euclid of Alexandria compiled the Elements, a 13-book treatise on geometry and number theory that remained the standard mathematics textbook for over two thousand years.
Library of Alexandria (c. 285 BCE): Founded under the early Ptolemies, it became the most famous library of the ancient world and a centre of scholarship for the whole Mediterranean.
Winged Victory of Samothrace (c. 190 BCE): Hellenistic marble statue of the goddess Nike alighting on a ship’s prow, found in 1863 at the Sanctuary of the Great Gods on Samothrace; now in the Louvre.
Silk Road (c. 130 BCE – c. 1450 CE): A network of overland caravan routes linking China with Central Asia, Persia and the Mediterranean, along which silk, spices, horses, religions, technologies and diseases travelled for more than 1,500 years.
Cleopatra (69 BCE – 30 BCE): The last active ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, she allied with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony; her death after defeat by Octavian ended the dynasty and Egypt became a Roman province.