THE ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM OF EARLY DYNASTIC/OLD KINGDOM EGYPT

 

 

                     GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION

 

Outline

 

A] The King

 

B] Royal Relatives/Highest Governors and Rulers

 

C] The Vizier

 

D] 1. The Royal Household and Royal Activities (Under departmental overseers)

 - The Royal Works      

 - Royal Household

 - Royal Foundations

 - Royal Palace 

 - Royal Ceremonial

 

D] 2. The Treasury (Under a Chancellor and subsidiary departmental administrators)

 - Taxation and Collection

 - Manufacture

 - Storage

 - Redistribution and Provisioning

 

D] 3. Regional and Local Government

 - Upper and Lower Egypt (District/Nome governors)

 - Town Mayors

 - Conquered Territories (Under an overseer)

 - Peripheral Regions (Desert administrators)

 

 

General Summary

 

1. Government was solidly in the hands of the king as the sole ruler of the Two Lands with responsibility for its care and renewal and the maintenance of ma'at (justice and cosmological balance) in Egypt.

 

2. Following the unification of Egypt the center of government was usually located in the new capital Memphis where the king and his chief advisers had their institutional homes. However, in the early periods it is probable that the king and his household conducted frequent tours of the provinces of Egypt to enhance the perception of the immediacy of power and the involvement of the divine king in the affairs of all his subjects.

 

3. This royal authority was integrally interwoven with religious ideology and ritual. In fact the administration of Egypt comprised a well-integrated combination of governmental institutions with their officials (the royal household and administrators) on one hand, and religious foundations supported by the state on the other hand.

 

4. Royal relatives comprised the dominant advisors and governors of the state, especially in the early periods.  However, a Vizier who acted as the King’s human chief minister supervised formal institutional bureaucracy.  In later periods the institution of vizier became more powerful and by the New Kingdom had divided into a dual office with viziers for both Upper and Lower Egypt).

 

5. A subsidiary hierarchy of bureaucrats - provincial governors, priests (often the same), tax-collectors, scribes, soldiers, craftsmen, traders etc. wielded the king’s authority and implemented the policies of central government throughout the extensive Egyptian territory.

 

6. The provincial districts of Egypt were ruled by governors or nomarchs. These officials were appointed directly by the central government and resided in their local capitals. These governors were responsible for seeing that all aspects of provincial government were exercised properly, that the requisite state enterprises were implemented, and that state taxes were collected. They were also responsible for state storage, the redistribution of the agricultural provisions thus accumulated, and all other economic administration.  In early time such powerful officials were often the king’s relatives.  This minimized the possibility of local governors using their position to create competing power centers in opposition to the central government, a situation that actually occurred at the end of the Old Kingdom. In addition, through much of the early periods they were moved regularly to other districts, another practice that counteracted the creation of rival power centers.

 

7. The vast majority of the common populace lived a rural life in small farming villages scattered along the Nile with more intensive occupation in the Delta and Fayum with their large farming areas.  These communities were responsible for providing the surpluses required by the government, often producing these for the religious temple foundations that were scattered throughout Egypt and in many ways acted as adjuncts of state government.

 

 

Distant Economic System

 

1.  In the Old and Middle Kingdoms Egyptian long-distance contacts were primarily economic, not political.  The need for metal, semi-precious stones, timber and aromatics required the existence of a fairly permanent and effective acquisition system.

 

2.  Much of the resources that Egypt needed were within close reach in the Eastern Desert and were usually acquired by expeditions from the large religious foundations, either in conjunction with central government or on their own behest.  However, copper from Sinai, gold from Nubia, timber from Lebanon, and frankincense and myrrh from Arabia or the Horn of Africa (Punt) required a more formal state-run system.

 

3. Thus from the beginning of the 1st dynasty there were probably Egyptian economic posts in Southern Palestine and the Sinai, the latter in the form of mining settlements for turquoise and copper exploitation.  Tablets with the symbols of King Narmer have been found in this region.  This is a natural development of the later pre-dynastic trade between Egypt and the Levant seen in the archaeology of such sites as Ma’adi.

 

4. By the 1st Dynasty there was also direct expansion into Nubia and the government later established forts for permanent control. In Nubia Egyptian expansion of the early dynastic period eliminated the earlier Nubian A-Group culture that had rivaled the early Upper Egyptian towns in size, elaboration, and probably power.  From this time Egypt directly controlled the trade routes to central Africa rather than having to depend on autonomous middlemen.

 

 

 

       RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS AS AGENTS OF ADMINISTRATION

 

 

a. The mortuary temple and its estates

1. In the Early Dynastic Period the mortuary temple was usually separated from the tombs of the kings buried at Abydos.  However, from the time of King Netjerikhet (Djoser) and the step-pyramid complex at Saqqara the temple was located in the chief funerary architecture complex.

 

2. The mortuary temple represented the core of the cult of the divine king centered on his statues in the temple shrine.  The establishment was endowed and supported by the royal government through the granting of provisions required for the upkeep of the temple, its ritual and personnel. These were derived from agricultural “taxation” or the granting of specific estates along the Nile.  Temple personnel were integrally linked with and acted as agents of the state in both religious and political ways.

 

3. The temple establishment incorporated a hierarchy of priests and retainers who ran temple affairs, including the royal rituals and, very importantly, administered their designated estates. These estates were scattered throughout Egypt and constituted an "archipelago" of state land and state agricultural workers throughout the land, thus representing an omnipresent state presence.  Temple personnel were also given royal sanction to conduct trading expeditions to obtain materials (aromatics like frankincense) used in temple rituals and state construction.

 

 

4. Thus the mortuary temples were major foci of ongoing religious and economic, thus political, activities connected with the royal divinity and dominant political ideology.  Because of their articulation with, and dependence on, the central government they actually served as agents of the state throughout Egypt, supplementing specifically governmental institutions in this respect.

 

b Provincial Religious Foundation (State and Private)

1. In addition to the chief mortuary temple the Egyptian state established other religious foundations, temples and shrines, to perpetuate the religious cults of earlier kings, local divinities and the high divinities of the Egyptian pantheon. 

 

2. These foundations were usually more modest establishments, scattered along the Nile Valley in provincial towns.  They were either subsidiary to the chief cult temples or independent of them, founded by the state.  Local foundations were operated by priests and supported by royal endowment and provincial estates and other commercial grants, similar to the pattern of the major mortuary temples.  They were usually granted tax immunity in return for support of royal economic and political policy. 

 

3. By contrast to the chief temple establishments, provincial foundations could also contain the reliquaries of multiple deities and individuals within the larger institution.  Thus a temple dedicated to the god Ra, and overseen by priests accountable to the central government, might well also contain shrines to an earlier king. The temple might also contain smaller shrines endowed by important local individuals and containing their statues. These individuals would usually have been connected to the temple in some way but were acting in their own interests in establishing their own foundation in the larger temple institution.  All of these various foundations were officially supported by and tied to the central government, a situation that again fostered state presence at all levels of Egyptian society.

 

 

4. While in the early periods local leaders were not able to create permanent power centers through these foundations, later in the Old Kingdom the office of head priest appears to have become hereditary in some instances.  Moreover situations emerged where the head religious officer was also the chief secular authority, this accumulation of power raising the possibility of provincial rivalry with central government.  Thus by the 5th Dynasty the chief-priest was often a hereditary town governor and ultimately nomarch (regional governor).

 

5. This does not appear to have caused significant problems in the 4th and 5th dynasties when central government was strong but led to major disruption later at the end of the Old Kingdom when provincial leaders played a major role in overthrowing a weakened center. At this time the balance between the royal government and religious foundations was lost and Upper Egyptian nomarchs at Thebes emerged during the First Intermediate Period as a dynasty of kings, elevating this city to a position of importance that was later to rival Memphis.

 

 

 

         SUMMARY OF THE EGYPTIAN ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM

 

1. Egyptian administration of the Old and Middle kingdoms comprised at best a well-balanced and interlocking network of governmental and religious institutions, both of which gained authority from their identification with the divine person of the king. Through governmental officials and bureaucrats, central and local religious foundations, and the royal and religious estates, the central structure dispersed itself throughout Egyptian social structure.  Moreover this system bound the most powerful private individuals to it through incorporating them into the central or regional state centers and activities.

 

2 When central power was strong, this system represented an effective and diffuse administrative structure that was expressed the concepts and practice of divine kingship and centralized power while penetrating all levels of society.