Soon after the assassination of Caesar, Cleopatra and Caesarion return to Egypt

Cleopatra appoints Caesarion, now aged three, her co-ruler and heir

Cleopatra's brother and co-ruler, Ptolemy XIV, dies – probably at her command

Cleopatra persuades Mark Antony to execute her sister Arsinoe, thus removing her last potential rival in the Egyptian royal family

Mark Antony spends the winter with Cleopatra in Alexandria

Cleopatra gives birth to twins and calls them Alexander and Cleopatra

Cleopatra gives birth to another son of Mark Antony's and calls him Ptolemy Philadelphus

In a spectacular cerermony known as the Donations of Alexandria, Mark Antony distributes the eastern Roman territories between Cleopatra, her eldest son (Caesarion) and his own three children

Octavian arrives in Egypt with an army, and holds Cleopatra a prisoner in her palace in Alexandria

Hearing that Cleopatra is dead (false news, as it turns out), Mark Antony commits suicide in Alexandria

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

The Egyptians declare Caesarion to be their pharaoh, but it is not long before he is executed by Octavian - bringing to an end the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt

Octavian annexes Egypt as a Roman territory and takes back to Rome the vast treasures of the Egyptian pharaohs

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

When Octavian's Egyptian hoard reaches Rome, the standard rate of interest falls from 12% to 4%

Vespasian, proclaimed emperor by his troops in Alexandria, is the survivor among this year's four emperors

Hero, a Greek scientist in Alexandria, devises various forms of steam engine

The dioptra, developed by Hero of Alexandria for surveying land, is an early form of theodolite

A cult develops in Rome of the Egyptian goddess Isis, credited with restoring to life her hushand, Osiris, after he has been hacked to pieces

Realistic portraits, done in hot wax and preserved in coffins at Fayyum, vividly depict inhabitants of Roman Egypt

The network of Roman roads stretches eventually from England to Egypt

Ptolemy writes in Alexandria an encyclopedic account of Greek scientific theory in cosmology, astronomy and geography

Plotinus, moving from Alexandria to Rome, teaches the influential philosophy later known as Neo-Platonism

Roman socks, surviving in dry Egyptian tombs, are the earliest known examples of knitting

St Anthony, one of the early Christian hermits in the Egyptian desert, is tempted by terrifying hallucinations