Held back by tradition & stuck in a moment

The last Queen, Cleopatra tried her best to prevent the fall of her homeland. However, crop failures caused by the cessation of the floods of the Nile became the nail in the coffin of the weakening empire. After the monarch's suicide, Egypt became one of the Roman provinces.

No other empire survived as long as ancient Egypt. The pharaohs ruled the superpower for almost three millennia. By comparison, Rome did not survive even a millennium, and Western culture survived less than two. The transformation of fate led them once to the heights of power, sometimes to the edge of the abyss. Even so, the country continued to endure, witnessing the birth and fall of many other leaders. Longevity, however, was an insufficient argument and the end of the empire on the Nile also had to come.

For many centuries, the pharaohs expressed their worldview by erecting mighty monuments, statues and epochal tombs, which as gates to immortality illustrate the cultural code of this colorful civilization. Its monumentalism consumed a lot of resources - human, in the form of manpower, and material, of which the state still lacked. Ultimately it is being stuck in the past, imprisonment in the tradition shaped over the centuries that eventually caused the decay of power.

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Historians agree that by implementing megalomaniacal construction projects, the pharaohs not only created a false vision of reality, subordinated to their goals, but also brought the empire to completion. These are not the slave legions as once thought, but the Egyptians themselves toiled to build the pyramids. There were a shortage of workers in other areas of the economy, and this could have been the cause of the fall of the great power. This is evidenced by the fact that the successors of the constructors of the pyramids were unable to erect similar monuments.

At the same time, the rulers were deeply rooted in ancient traditions. But no wonder, it was kings and the priestly caste who were regarded as guarantors of divine support for the country and its inhabitants. Therefore, it is difficult to expect that they would strive to introduce reforms that would limit their power. The lack of changes and innovative solutions led to a debilitating stagnation and the empire began to crumble.

When the Romans finally conquered Egypt, the old empire resembled the mummy of the pharaoh, it seemed perfectly preserved, but inside it was empty and lifeless.

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