Egyptian secrets?

Question

The Egyptian civilization that was responsible for the pyramids died out, and was replaced by a succession of civilizations afterward...

Any idea who these origional settlers were, and where they came from?

Answer 1

The civilization was replaced by other, later civilizations; though the decendants of the people are still around today.

To give the extremely simple timeline (and my #s are not 100%, its been a few years since I was taking this in grad school)

3000 BC is considered to be date of unification of the two areas of Egypt (Upper kingdom in the South, Lower in the North.  Don't forget, Nile flows NORTH!) and the beginning of the OLD Kingdom.

2600 or so, roughly the 4 dynasty, built the first TRUE pyramid.  The shape had evolved from slabs, then to step-pyramids, and to the shapes we know today.

Then, they were overrun say 2000BC by foreign invaders.

Once they were expelled, the MIddle Kingdom arose.  Nothing massively cool about this period for most people.

And this period ended around 1500BC, with MORE invaders.

Around 1400, they expelled the invaders; and the NEW Kingdom started.  Here they built tombs in the Valley of the Kings to prevent breakins.  Its already been 1000 years since the pyramids from their perspective.

That broke down circa 1100-1150 with most everyone else at the End of the Bronze Age.

A series of Mesopotamian peoples controlled Egypt, then the Persians, then the Greeks under Alexander and then Ptolomy ruled until Julius Caesar and Octavian (Augustus) took over for the Romans (32BC).

The original "Egyptians" likely were there for centuries as nomads along the Nile.  Before that, Indo-Europeans (language root, not a culture necessarily) spread out in waves from basically Southern Persia, replacing the earlier waves of non-indo-Europeans (like the Gauls/Celts, Etruscans, and all sorts of others we know very little about).

Before that, our best guess is Homo Sapien tribes that came out of Africa.

Answer 2

The Caucasoid Cro-Magnon, who mysteriously disappeared from Western Europe during the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago, likely traveled southward, by foot, across the Iberian and/or Constantinople Isthmus' towards Northern Africa, where Caucasoid settlers mysteriously appeared about 8-9,000 years ago...

Like the Cro-Magnon, these new Egyptian settlers were skilled jewelry-makers, having been familiar with the shaping of copper & gold...

Answer 3

I wouldn't say that the Egyptian civilization died out, so much as there were gradual changes in Egyptian culture from the time of the first pyramids in the Old Kingdom through until the end of the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods.  It is generally near the end of the Roman Period that study of "ancient" Egyptian culture and most Egyptologists end their study.  And it is during the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods when the most significant changes in Egyptian culture are apparent and when they seem most sudden, particularly with the introduction and widespread adoption of Christianity in the later Roman Period.

If you are suggesting a major break in Egyptian civilization and an appearance of an entirely new culture after the Old Kingdom, which is typically regarded as the "Age of the Pyramids" you are mistaken.  While centralized government did break down at the end of the Old Kingdom during a period called the First Intermediate Period, centralized rule was re-established by Egyptians in the Middle Kingdom (specifically under Mentuhotep II) and there are clear and obvious links to earlier Old Kingdom culture, language, people, etc., not a total break and shift of culture.

In any case, it is not as though the entire population of Egypt was wiped out and replaced with an entirely new population at any point in Egyptian history, though Egypt was and is a fairly diverse population group with small scale (and occasionally larger scale) migration of populations groups from outside who typically were and are integrated with the Egyptian population within a few generations.

I assume when you ask about the "original settlers" you are asking about who built the pyramids.  These were Egyptians.  There are fully modern humans attested in Egypt from the Lower Paleolithic period onward - roughly 700,000 years ago.  There is not evidence that there was a major influx of new population groups from outside, though there was probably small-scale population movement from elsewhere in Africa and from Western Asia across Sinai in these very early periods as is attested in later historic periods.  The rise of the Egyptian state, "classic" Egyptian culture, etc., are essentially an indigenous development, not something entirely introduced from outside Egypt.  The gradual development of the classic, lasting elements of Egyptian culture can be traced from the early Predynastic period onward up to the unification of the Egyptian state and on into the construction of the Step Pyramid in the 3rd Dynasty, and pyramid construction in the later dynasties of the Old Kingdom and again in the Middle and very early New Kingdoms.  

So, if you're looking for an answer like "they were aliens/Atlanteans/Lemurians/etc." I'm afraid the reliable evidence just doesn't support anything like that.  If you're looking for where the first humans in Egypt came from, well, that's a point at which you have to start looking more at human origins and examining the Out-of-Africa hypothesis, among other hypotheses for the rise of homo sapiens as a species.