Timelines have it that the Pharaonic Period ended in 332 B.C. with the successful invasion of Egypt by Alexander the Great, a Macedonian with a brilliant, but rather short, career. He visited Siwa, where he consulted the Oracle of Amoun and was declared to be the son of the God, founded the city of Alexandria on the coast, and promptly left Egypt. He left behind one of his bodyguards, a general named Ptolemy, to run the country. The reality, of course, is a little fuzzier. The Egypt that Alexander invaded was already under occupation by the Persians, for one thing, and Alexander, rather than defeating any kind of Egyptian resistance, was welcomed as a liberator. At the same time, he made an obeisance to Egyptian deities and left local administrative structures intact (though overseen by his own, notoriously rapacious and flagrantly dishonest, tax collector). One wonders whether ordinary Egyptians noticed that anything had changed.
After Alexander's death in 323 B.C., there was a dispute over his body, which Ptolemy won. This was a vital battle, because the burial of a predecessor was a crucial rite of succession in Macedonian tradition. By burying Alexander's body in Egypt (quite where remains a mystery, mind you), Ptolemy was able to lay claim to legitimacy, name himself Ptolemy Soter (savior), and found a dynasty that would rule Egypt for the next 3 centuries until 30 B.C., when Gaius Octavius Thurinus, recently crowned Emperor Augustus of Rome, effectively took over control and Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire.
