The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra

REVIEW BY SARAH GRIFFITHS This latest narrative by Toby Wilkinson is written in his usual engaging style, drawing on the usual Greek and Roman sources, but also some 50 archives of papyri unearthed in Egypt. The three centuries between Alexander the Great’s ‘conquest’ of Egypt in 332 BC and Cleopatra’s accession in 51 BC is ‘too late for Egyptologists, too early for Roman historians’. And yet it is a fascinating period that saw Egypt become a major player in the eastern Mediterranean, facing off against the empires of Syria and Rome, while crippled by insurrection and dynastic strife. After a brief summary of Alexander the Great’s time in Egypt (and the ‘grubby free-