THE GLORY OF EGYPTTHE GLORY OF EGYPTMuch of the emerging picture of daily life in ancient Egypt is one or ardous and repetitive toil. While there may have been a strong belief in the common goal, life was hard for those who supported the Old Kingdom. While irrigation supported a vast agricultural system, all of it was done by hand. Farmers filled two heavy jars from the canals and then carried them on their shoulders to the fields. Oxen dragging simple wooden plows tilled the fertile soil followed by men sowing grains of emmer wheat. Villages were crowded and probably dirty. Huts were made of thatch and mud brick.
What tied the kingdom together was an interplay of belief and the Nile itself. Hand dug canals and the annual flooding of the Nile provided for the extensive empire. The population of the Old Kingdom was probably between 1,000,000 and 1,500,000 people. Less than 1% was literate. Egyptians believed that writing had been invented by the god Thoth and words were spoken and written with magical power. Scribes, therefore, played an important role in ancient Egyptian society as they did elsewhere (refer to the Maya for another example of the importance of scribes.)
It is now becoming clearer that the elite of the Old Kingdom were devoted to excessive self-indulgence. Murals depict royal banquets, where guests sat on beautifully woven mats and servants attended. Great amounts of food and drink were consumed.
It is possible to construct a picture of life where Egyptians were pre-occupied with the pharaohs' immortality. It was a belief that through the king there was an expression of the divine nature of society itself. People really believed in building pyramids as a matter of faith. The pyramid itself was an enormous machine that helped the king go through the wall of the dead, achieve resurrection, and live forever in the world of the gods. It made his transfer into a god complete and legitimized his successor as the son of a god.
While this helped unify the Old Kingdom, it had a potential downside. Around 2465 B.C., pyramids suddenly became less important. It was at this point, nearly in the middle of the Old Kingdom, that people grew weary with each Pharoah's effort to outdo his predecessor. In addition, several Pharoahs died before their pyramids were finished causing embarrassment and shaking the faith of the masses. After this point, no Pharoah ever again build a colossal mortuary pyramid. Yet, the funerary culture grew more complex and sophisticated, even as the Pharoah's omnipotence waned.
Toward the end of the Old Kingdom,
rulers became more aggressive sending out armies to conquer the desert nomads
to the east and south. By 2200 B.C., the Old Kingdom was in real trouble.
Its last ruler, Pepi II, gained the throne as a boy and ruled the Nile for
90 years as the state collapsed around him. A climatic shift may have tipped
Egyptian life from hard to worse. The life-giving flood of the Nile grew
undependable and droughts made crop yields drop. Local authorities found
they could make decisions without the instruction of the Pharoah as government
collapsed. Under weak rule, the royal coffers of Pepi II dwindled and wealth
emerged at lower levels of governing authority. Famines and chaos disrupted
trade routes, especially to the north. Eventually, the god's blessing of
the Pharoah was revoked. By 2150 B.C., the Old Kingdom ended with a complete
collapse. All the pyramids were looted, not secretly by by organized bands
in broad daylight. Temples were burned and these was widespread violence
and even evidence of cannibalism.
Egypt was to rise twice again. It never again held the same basis of social order and at times was controlled in a manner we might recognize as a police state. The Old Kingdom would be glorified as the "Golden Age."
