During the reign of the powerful Persian Emperor Darius I, Egypt was administered according to the Persian tradition of respecting and accommodating local religions and cultures; however, during the later rule of Xerxes, Egypt was ruled with an iron fist, and Egyptian traditions, customs, and local institutions were suppressed. This led to a successful uprising which freed Egypt of Persian control for half a century.

The Argead Dynasty is the name of the ruling dynasty of Macedon. Both Philip II and Alexander the Great were members of the Argead Dynasty. The Argead Dynasty ruled Egypt during the first few years of Hellenistic (Greek) rule. The Argead Dynasty was replaced by the Ptolemaic Kingdom shortly after the death of Alexander the Great.

The Diadochi were the generals and close friends of Alexander the Great who fought for control of his territory after he died. One of the Diadochi, Ptolemy I Soter, took control of Alexander’s territory in Egypt and founded the Ptolemaic Kingdom.

Alexander the Great was a Macedonian conqueror who led the armies of Greece on a vast campaign across Eurasia in the fourth century BCE. Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire and established a Hellenistic (Greek) Kingdom in Egypt. Hellenistic Egypt would persist from the death of Alexander, in 323 BCE until the Roman occupation three centuries later.

The conquests of Alexander the Great took place during the second-half of the fourth century BCE. Alexander the Great was a Macedonian conqueror from the Greek-speaking world. He conquered a vast empire stretching from Greece in the west all the way to the Indian subcontinent in the east. His conquest of the Persian Empire established Greek-rule in Egypt, a condition that would persist for three centuries until the Roman occupation.

The Ptolemaic Kingdom, founded by Alexander the Great's general Ptolemy I Soter, was the Egyptian state from 303 BCE until the Roman conquest in 30 BCE. While instituting a highly stratified society in which Greeks constituted the elites at the expense of native Egyptians, the Ptolemaic kings fashioned themselves as Egyptian Pharaohs and sought to bolster their legitimacy in the eyes of the Egyptian population through deep syncretism of the Greek and Egyptian religions. The Seleucid kingdom was based in Syria, Mesopotamia and Persia, the Antigonids ruled parts of Macedonia and parts of Anatolia at various times, the Attalids were the ruling dynasty of the city of Pergamon, and the Argead dynasty refers to the ruling line of Macedonia during the pre-Hellenistic period, from which Alexander the Great and his father Phillip II derived.