Chronology
Dynasty “0.” 3100-3000
Early Dynastic Period (Dynasties 1-2): 3000-2680
Old Kingdom (Dynasties 4- 6): 2680-2180
First Intermediate Period (Dynasties 7-11) 2180-2050
Second Intermediate Period (Dynasties
14-17) 1780-1570
New Kingdom
(Dynasties 18-20)
1570-1070
1.
The period from 3000-2700 BC was one of consolidation of the pharaonic social
order. From this time until 17-1600 BC
(with the partial and temporary exception of the First Intermediate Period)
this system dominated the Egyptian state, accommodating various social,
political and ideological changes in its structure. Only with the 2nd Intermediate Period and invasion from outside
came structural change.
2. Traditionally, the unification of Egypt
around 3050 BC was seen as a symmetrical geo-political process. First, in the century prior to overall
unification, both southern Egypt and the Delta were believed to have
experienced a phase of inter-center competition that led to the creation of two
states - Upper and Lower Egypt.
Subsequently around 3050 King Narmer, a Thiite (Abydos) king was
believed to have led united Upper Egypt in an invasion of the Delta, conquering
it and incorporating it into a unitary Egyptian state with a new capital at
Memphis at the junction of the two regions.
However,
recent work at the Abydos late predynastic cemeteries suggests that there had
been some unification prior to Narmer with kings like Ka, “Scorpion” and two
other un-named kings involved. This is
the period now named Dynasty “O.”
In
the light of these findings, the most probable scenario is that the process of
Egyptian unification involved a series of raids between Upper and Lower Egypt
and warfare for supremacy among the towns of at least Upper Egypt. The final unification under Narmer or a
counterpart around 3050-3000 was thus no a dramatic event but the culmination
of a process that had been continuing for decades, and had been prepared by the
significant cultural unification that is seen in the later predynastic Delta
towns. This cultural integration had
accompanied the building of commercial links with Asia and continued unabated
after the political unification with the establishment of actual colonies in
the Levant and Sinai.
3.
Following unification and during the Early Dynastic Period of 3000-2700 BC the
first 2 dynasties completed the unification of Egypt and created the
underpinnings of its social order.
However,
residual competition among the previous centers of power may well have
continued into the early dynastic period.
4.
This consolidation probably happened in the context of traditional rivalry
between the towns and deities of Hierakonpolis/Abydos (Horus) and Naqada
(Seth), each vying for supremacy. The
Abydos rulers ultimately prevailed with king Narmer’s ascendancy and Horus
became the first dominant deity of united Egypt while Seth retained a more
restricted identification as probably the most prominent divinity of Upper
Egypt (see the Memphite Theology lecture).
5. Archaeologically, we see this competition through the changing burial locations of the 2nd Dynasty Kings. The early kings transferred their burial site from Upper Egypt (Abydos) to a new royal cemetery near their new capital, Memphis, in Lower Egypt, and their use of the Horus deity in their symbols of kingship. However, two of the later 2nd Dynasty kings (Peribsen and Khasekhemwy) moved this important site back south to Abydos in Upper Egypt and adopted the symbols of the rival divinity, Seth.
6. The system that ultimately emerges during this early stage of consolidation builds on the progressive evolution of a social hierarchy and political unification process centered on the person of the divine ruler that occurred through the predynastic phases. The final system contrasts greatly with Mesopotamia:
- An extensive unified polity rather than a
number of autonomous city-states.
- The ruler as a divinity and divine king
rather than as merely the steward of a god.
- The political administration integrated into the ideology and institutions of divine kingship rather than through the "palace" organization of Sumer.
7. The symbolism of Early Dynastic Egypt
emphasizes the unity-within-duality that emerged from the unification
process. This is best seen in the
ritual and symbolism of power that focused in the king from the earliest times:
- The Egyptian king is “lord of the two lands”.
- He wears the dual crown
- His symbolism include, the goddesses of
Upper and Lower Egypt - Wedhjet and Nekhbet and their symbols – the vulture and cobra.
- The coronation ceremony that originally
included the circuit of the walls of Memphis.
- The sed festival ritually unites
Egypt under the king at important dates in his reign. The ritual included a
ritual run around the shrines of Egypt and references to the dual nature of
the country with the dual
throne of the festival.
- The opening of the canals symbolizing the
king’s control over the inundation and fertility of the land.
- The regalia of power (scepters, staffs,
shepherd’s crook, flail, uraeus, crowns, headdresses, royal standards).
8. By the end of the Second Dynasty the divine
king ruled a fully centralized polity through a complex bureacracy and
religious system that incorporated administrative and economic functions.
Each
of these divisions of government included a number of component administrative
departments, each with its bureaucrats at a variety of levels. Together they operated all of the
administrative, religious economic and financial affairs of the state.
2. Religious foundations articulated with all
areas of the national government, bringing the divine nature of the king into
practical daily administration with the great ideological authority that this
involved. Religious primacy of the
state is also seen through the practice whereby important individuals from
throughout the entire country were buried in the vicinity of the royal pyramids
at Saqqara and Gizeh.
3. Central power during this period is most
clearly seen through the erection of great funerary structures – the
pyramids. These enormous building
projects required the development of managerial structure that could oversee
such projects as the organization of huge bodies of workers, the acquisition
and transportation of vast quantities of building materials from local and
distant sources, the development of adequate architectural skills, construction
technology, recording techniques (writing) and the complex administration that
all of these necessitated. Indeed it
has been suggested that development of the organizational and managerial skills
required for building the pyramids played a major role in initiating the
Egyptian version of complex society with its distinctive civilization.
4. During the Old Kingdom. Egyptian foreign
policy continued to develop with intrusion southward into Nubia and eastward
into Asia. Foreign involvement was probably spurred by economic needs and
required the existence of state and temple specialists traveling to the areas
immediately adjacent to Egypt to bring back the raw resources required by the
state.
1. This was a period of over a century of
internal disunity and internal conflict brought about by the growing power of
regional governors, especially those of the south. Weakness at the governmental center in the face of rising
regional power in combination with a cycle of unusually low Nile floods may
have contributed to the disruptions.
Echoing the initial unification of Egypt, competing southern rulers of
the towns of Thebes and Hierakonpolos were instrumental players in the civil
disruption and ultimately the former re-united the country under the 11th
Dynasty.
2. Significantly, even in the face of disunity,
the texts reveal that each of the competing rulers aspired to be pharaoh of the
entire country and to reestablish the pre-existing social order, not to set up
his own autonomous state. Clearly the
idea of the Egyptian state and its divine core was so established by this time
that political disruption could not threaten it.
1. This was a period of renewed vigor with
foreign expansion to the south now being supported by permanent fortification
south of the 1st Cataract, the traditional southern border of
Egypt. The Middle Egyptian kings were
no longer satisfied to act as senior partners with their southern neighbors who
acted as middle-men in the African trade routes, but now took over the routes
directly through military control.
2.
The Middle Kingdom ended in renewed unrest in which Asiatic invaders for the
first time successfully overcame Egyptian resistance and installed a foreign
“Hyksos” dynasty, at least in the Delta.
It is possible that this invasion was distantly linked with the collapse
that ended the Indus Valley and BMAC civilizations far to the east and
displaced the Old Babylonian rulers of Mesopotamia.
New
Kingdom
1. The New Kingdom was a period of great
military expansion and the formation for the first time (with the partial
exception of the earlier Nubian conquests) of a lasting territorial empire that
dominated much of the Levant as well as lands to the south. This expansion brought Egypt into the wider
context of Middle Eastern political interactions and largely ended its
traditional isolation from wider interregional affairs.
2.
While the political capital was located at Memphis, Thebes experienced a great
rise in importance as the center of the religious cult to the sun god Amun,
which now became the focus of state ritual.
New Kingdom rulers dedicated great temples at Thebes to Amun, his
consort Mut, and son Khonsu, to house the rituals of the state.
3. New Kingdom mortuary ritual rejected the
pyramid architecture of the Middle Kingdom and used instead rock cut tombs for
the king in the “Valley of Kings” in the cliffs to the west of Thebes and
accompanying large mortuary temples on the fringes of the Nile Valley
nearby. These temple establishments
were large landowning centers with extensive staffs and retainers.
4. Economic expansion paralleled the formation
of empire with the imperial conquests being exploited for commodities and trade
missions traveling as far as the Horn of Africa to obtain incense and other
exotic goods.
5. Amunhotep IV, Akhenaten, conducted a
short-lived revolution against the prevailing state ideology by replacing the
cult of Amun with a new religion that focused on the visible disc of the sun
and rejected the manifold divine manifestations of Amun. An entirely new iconography accompanied the
change and a new capital, Akhetaten, was built at tel-el Amarna. The king resided here during his reign but
shortly following his death the traditional religion of Amun was re-established
and most vestiges of the “Amarna” period destroyed.