fighting. Egypt
was finally unified under the Pharaoh Narmer at Hierankonpolis in about
3050 B.C. The resulting civilization survived through many vicissitudes
for over 2,500 years. (c. 3050 B.C. to after 1070 B.C.)
The Nile River slashes through the northeast African desert like a green dagger pointed at the Mediterranean. Here, too, simple farming communities flourished on fertile soils flooded each year by the Nile. The river served as a natural highway for hundreds of miles, for a laden boat could drift and row downstream with the current or sail long distances from the Mediterranean with the prevailing north winds.
The pre-Dynastic Egyptians of 3500 B.C. lived in villages and small towns spaced along the river, which, like Mesopotamian settlements of the day, were clustered under the rule of local leaders. These were the individuals who controlled trade in finely made pottery, alabaster vessels, and in faience (locally made glass) beads. The proportion of luxury goods to functional commodities rose steadily, as the Egyptians learned about metallurgy from Asian sources and started importing copper from Sinai and lead, tin, and silver from Asia.
The same trade brought another innovation: writing. It seems likely that writing was first developed in Mesopotamia, then imported into the Nile valley, where isolated Mesopotamian cuneiform seals have come to light. Egyptian scribes developed their own hieroglyphic (Greek: sacred carving) script. Commonly thought to be a form of picture writing, in fact Egyptian hieroglyphs are a combination pictographic (picture) and phonetic (representing vocal sounds) script, not only written on papyrus reed rolls but also carved on public buildings and painted on clay or wood. Early hieroglyphs played an important role in trade and record keeping, but they may also have evolved as a way of conveying the meaning of funerary rituals on painted pots deposited in cemeteries with the dead.
During the fourth millennium B.C., more important villages became the focal points of different chiefdoms, which in later times became the nomes, or provinces, of the Egyptian state. The nomarchs (nome leaders) were those who gradually forged a single state along the banks of the Nile from ever-larger regional chiefdoms.
Unification
The process of unification took several
centuries, as large-scale, more lasting alliances made increasing economic
and political sense. Population densities rose gradually, and there was
some intensification of irrigation, although the technology for lifting
water was so rudimentary that large scale agricultural schemes were out
of the question. The final stages of unification may have involved considerable
fighting. Egypt
was finally unified under the Pharaoh Narmer at Hierankonpolis in about
3050 B.C. The resulting civilization survived through many vicissitudes
for over 2,500 years.
Fertile soils, river floods and simple irrigation, long-distance trade and emerging social ranking the same kinds of ecological and social dynamics that formed state-organized societies in Mesopotamia also founded ancient Egyptian civilization. But the Egyptian state was far larger than all the Sumerian city-states combined, a circumstance both of geography and of highly centralized administration.
The supreme ruler, the Pharaoh, was a divine leader. He was responsible for the success of the harvest, in an environment where simple technology prevented him from controlling the success of irrigation. A Pharaoh was thought of as a god incarnate, the earthly embodiment of the god Horus. He was the champion of the cosmic order, priest of all the deities of Egypt, who maintained the power of the gods. As administrator, he was responsible for the economic well-being and ordered life of the people. As soldier, he repelled Egypt's enemies and guaranteed the continuance of ordered life, if necessary by force. Over the centuries, the Pharaohs had to maneuver the cumbersome apparatus of the state to respond to crop failures, threats of invasion, and local insurrection by reorganizing irrigation works, raising armies, and redistributing land. Small wonder there were prolonged periods of political instability and unrest through ancient Egyptian history. Yet the basic adaptation to a changeable floodplain environment persisted until centuries of harsh exploitation of commoners by a rapacious elite ended in social collapse.
The Old Kingdom (3100 B.C. to 2181 B.C.)
Egyptologists conventionally divide ancient Egyptian civilization into four broad periods, separated by at least two intermediate periods of political change and instability. The most striking feature of this long-lived civilization is, however, its conservatism. Many of the artistic, religious, and technological features of Old Kingdom Egypt persisted intact into Roman times.
The Old Kingdom saw four dynasties of Pharaohs
governing Egypt from a royal capital at Memphis. Some of these rulers had
reputations as cruel despots and it was they who embarked on a brief flurry
of pyramid building. The pyramids with their elaborate mortuary temples
and enclosures were the houses and tombs for the Pharaohs in eternity, symbols
of the permanence of Egyptian civilization. The notion of the pyramid as
a royal burial place originated centuries earlier in small, walled enclosures
surrounding an earthen mound. In about 2680 B.C., Djoser built a six-step
pyramid surrounded by a veritable town of buildings and shrines. The step
pyramid is a somewhat hesitant structure, but the royal pyramids built over
the next century show increasing confidence. They culminate in the brilliant
assurance of the pyramids of Giza near Cairo, with their perfect pyramid
shapes (Figure 9.6). The Great Pyramid of Khufu, built in 2600 B.C., covers
13.1 acres (5.3 ha) and is 481 feet (147 m) high. Just under two centuries
later, the Pharaohs stopped building huge pyramids and diverted their organizational
talents to other public works. 
There is something megalomaniacal about the pyramids, built as they were with an enormous expenditure of labor and energy. The structure was redolent with religious symbolism. The Pharaoh in his sarcophagus had returned to the earth of the Primeval Mound, the land. The tall pyramid that pointed toward heaven was the means by which his soul broke free from the constrictions of the primeval earth and ascended to the divine kingdom of light. In material terms, the bureaucratic organization and labor required to construct even a single pyramid was enormous. For generations, Giza was a giant construction site, where thousands of commoners labored moving stone in exchange for rations during the slack farming months, while many others worked year-round trimming and quarrying boulders. The state used growing food surpluses to employ thousands of people on lavish public works, putting pressure on the farmer to produce even more grain. In ancient Egyptian civilization, the state became the great provider.
A massive, hereditary bureaucracy effectively ruled the kingdom. Its records tell us that much energy went into tax collection, monitoring harvest yields, and administration of irrigation. An army of 20,000 men, many of them mercenaries, was maintained at the height of Egypt's prosperity.
A vast gulf separated the tiny literate population from the commoners. The life of an Egyptian farmer, given good harvests, was easier than that of a Mesopotamian villager, although the state required occasional periods of forced labor to maintain irrigation canals or other public works. Many minor artisans and unskilled laborers lived more regimented lives, working on temples and Pharaohs' tombs and often living in special villages. Like other early states, the Egyptians depended on slave labor for some public works and much domestic service.
The New Kingdom (1520 B.C. to 1085 B.C.)
The Old Kingdom ended in about
2180 B.C. and was followed by a brief period of political instability when
some Asian invaders entered the delta. In 2130 B.C. the city of Thebes in
Upper Egypt became the capital, where a series of energetic and less despotic
Pharaohs ruled until 1736 B.C., expanding trade and consolidating the worship
of the sun-god Amun at Thebes. A second period of instability resulted from
quarrels over the royal succession. These disputes were so serious that
some Asian nomads, the Hyksos, actually ruled over the delta until they
were thrown out in about 1520 B.C.
Then dawned the New Kingdom, the most glorious period of ancient Egyptian civilization. Ahmose the Liberator threw out the Hyksos and became the first of a series of illustrious Theban Pharaohs who ruled Egypt from the delta to Nubia in the south. His successors became symbolic of the power of ancient Egypt: Tutmosis, Amenophis, Seti, and Rameses II. The latter extended the Egyptian empire far beyond the narrow confines of the Nile valley deep into Nubia and into the Levant. By this time, political events in the Near East involved a delicate balance of diplomatic and military power between the Hittites in Anatolia to the north and the Mesopotamians to the south. All three powers sought to control the lucrative trade routes of the eastern Mediterranean.
For centuries, the Pharaohs gradually extended their control over irrigation and food distribution. The New Kingdom saw the development of much more effective water- lifting devices such as the animal-powered waterwheel, still used in Egypt today, also the introduction of a summer crop, sorghum. The result was much higher agricultural productivity and higher population densities. The population of Egypt rose from less than a million in 3000 B.C. to approximately 5 million during the New Kingdom.
New Kingdom rulers adopted new burial customs and abandoned conspicuous sepulchers. Their mummies were buried in the desolate Valley of Kings on the west bank of the Nile. Despite every precaution, nearly all their tombs were robbed by the ancient Egyptians themselves soon after burial. Only the rock-cut sepulcher of an obscure Pharaoh named Tutankhamun survived intact until modern times. The discovery and clearance of Tutankhamun's tomb ranks among the greatest archaeological finds of all time. It gives us an impression of the incredible wealth of the New Kingdom Pharaohs' courts.
With the death of Pharaoh Rameses III in 1085 B.C., Egypt entered a period of prolonged political weakness that saw foreign armies invade the hitherto sacrosanct Nile valley. Its conservative rulers were slow to adapt to the rapidly changing eastern Mediterranean world. Nubians, Assyrians, Persians, and the Ptolemies, Pharaohs of Greek ancestry, and finally the Romans, ruled over Egypt for varying periods of time.
