In the carve up of Alexander the Great's empire, Ptolemy wins Egypt and founds the Ptolemaic dynasty – with himself as the pharaoh Ptolemy I

Alexander's corpse, hijacked by Ptolemy, becomes a sacred relic in Alexandria

Ptolemy begins to transform Alexandria into a centre of Greek culture, founding his famous 'museum' and library

Euclid, teaching at the museum in Alexandria, writes what becomes Europe's standard textbook on geometry

The Jewish community of Alexandria coins the word diaspora for Jews living far from Israel

The Alexandrian school of medicine develops an alarming form of clinical anatomy – human vivisection

A great lighthouse, subsequently one of the Seven Wonders of the World, is built on the island of Pharos, off Alexandria

The Jews of Alexandria commission the Greek translation of the Old Testament which becomes known as the Septuagint

A clash in Sicily, between Rome and Carthage, leads to the First Punic War

The 500,000 scrolls in the library at Alexandria are listed in a catalogue, which itself runs to 120 scrolls

A Carthaginian quinquereme, captured by the Romans, is used as the model for the first Roman fleet - constructed in two months

The organ, using a mechanical device to pump air through a set of musical pipes, is invented in Alexandria by Ctesibius

The first alchemists, working in Alexandria, are also the world's first experimental chemists

A Roman naval victory at Trapani, off the northwest tip of Sicily, completes the blockade of the Carthaginians and ends the First Punic War

Hannibal crosses the Alps with his elephants, beginning the Second Punic War

Hannibal suffers his first decisive defeat by a Roman army, at an unidentified site in north Africa called Zama

The text of the Rosetta stone is chiselled into a black basalt slab in the three scripts hieroglyphic Egyptian, demotic Egyptian, and Greek

Rome picks a quarrel with Carthage to begin the Third Punic War

Carthage is destroyed by the Romans at the end of the Third Punic War

The 26-year-old Pompey conducts such a successful campaign in Africa that his soldiers hail him as Pompey the Great

In the Ptolemaic tradition, Cleopatra marries her brother Ptolemy XIII and at the age of eighteen is joint ruler of Egypt

Julius Caesar, now fifty-two, meets the 21-year-old Cleopatra in Alexandria and they become lovers

A town is founded by Julius Caesar on the ruined site of Carthage, and eventually flourishes as Colonia Julia Carthago

Cleopatra commits suicide, applying a poisonous asp to her breast,

With the annexation of Egypt, the entire Mediterranean falls under Roman control