however, lay in the employment of mercenaries from Macedonia, Greece, Nubia and many other neighboring peoples - Egyptian gold was always their most valuable military asset. However, this was not enough to guarantee the isolation of the richest land in the Mediterranean world. Egypt fell to the Assyrians, and then to the Persians yet even during the plunder of Xerxes' governors, Egyptian culture and religion survived. Alexander the Great liberated the Egyptians from Persian rule in 332 BC and established the city of Alexandria, which was to become the new capital of Hellenic Egypt under the rule of the Macedonian Ptolemaic dynasty (332-30 BC), the last Egyptian kingdom. The kingdom was one of several that emerged in the aftermath of Alexander's death and the struggles of his successors. It was the wealthiest, however, and for much of the next 300 years, the most powerful politically and militarily. The able Ptolemies ruled in an unbroken line until the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC. Cleopatra's infamous liaisons with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony proved the eventual downfall of independent Egypt. Her ambition rivaled theirs, and sadly it served her no better. Her suicide marked the end of Pharaohic rule and the beginning of Egypt's centuries as a Roman and Byzantine province. Although swept by the Islamic tide in 642 AD, Egypt was to remain under foreign occupation - Arabic, Ottoman, French and British - until after World War I, when she finally gained her independence from a British administration weary of overseas conflict. From 1922 through 1952, Egypt appeared to be one of the world's most successful constitutional monarchies. But it was ripe for revolution; the military coup of July 1952 led by Gamal Nasser, ironically, finally made Egypt an island of stability in a turbulent Middle East.