After the demise of the New Kingdom, the territory of the weakened Egyptian state became an object ripe for conquest. In the mid-8th century Egypt was subjugated by the Kushites from Nubia (today’s Sudan), who established the 25th dynasty and adopted Egypt’s religious and cultural traditions. The bronze sculpture of a pharaoh with Negroid facial features depicts a member of that dynasty, presumed to be Taharqa.
Egypt’s last ascent as an independent and united state came in the Saite period, under the 26th dynasty (664–525 BC), which marked the start of the history of Late Egypt. Among the artefacts from that time are the head of a basalt statue of a ruler, the stela of a private donor from Naucratis, a Greek colony in the Nile delta close to Sais, then the Egyptian capital, and a sculptural group of the deities Ptah and Sekhmet. The art of this period demonstrates continuity from ancient examples.
In November 332 BC, having driven out the Persians, Alexander the Great entered Egypt and had himself crowned as its king. His name appears in a cartouche on the fragment of a clepsydra (water clock) that bears a depiction of the ruler before the falcon-headed god Ra-Horakhty (332–323 BC).
After Alexander’s death in 323 BC and the division of his empire between his generals, Egypt fell to Ptolemy I (305–285 BC), the founder of the Macedonian Ptolemaic dynasty. The plaster cast of the head of Ptolemy II, one of the most significant rulers of the dynasty, was taken from a prototypical model. The statue of Cleopatra VII, the final queen of the Ptolemaic dynasty, combines features of Greek and Egyptian art and is one of the finest works of its era.
Cleopatra VII lost in her efforts to resist Rome and became the last ruler of an independent Egypt. With her death in 30 BC, the history of pharaonic Egypt came to an end.
