ANCIENT EGYPT
The Predynastic Period and the
First and Second Dynasties, 6000-
2686 B.C.
During this period, when people first began to settle along the banks of
the Nile (Nahr an Nil) and to evolve from hunters and gatherers to settled,
subsistence agriculturalists, Egypt developed the written language, religion,
and institutions that made it the world's first organized society. Through
pharaonic (see Glossary) Egypt, Africa claims to be the cradle of one of
the earliest and most spectacular civilizations of antiquity (see fig. 2).
One of the unique features of ancient Egyptian civilization was the bond
between the Nile and the Egyptian people and their institutions. The Nile
caused the great productivity of the soil, for it annually brought a copious
deposit of rich silt from the monsoon-swept tableland of Ethiopia. Each
July, the level of the Nile began to rise, and by the end of August, the
flood reached its full height. At the end of October, the flood began to
recede, leaving behind a fairly uniform deposit of silt as well as lagoons
and streams that became natural reservoirs for fish. By April, the Nile
was at its lowest level. Vegetation started to diminish, seasonal pools
dried out, and game began to move south. Then in July, the Nile would rise
again, and the cycle was repeated.
Because of the fall and rise of the river, one can understand why the Egyptians
were the first people to believe in life after death. The rise and fall
of the flood waters meant that the "death" of the land would be
followed each year by the "rebirth" of the crops. Thus, rebirth
was seen as a natural sequence to death. Like the sun, which "died"
when it sank on the western horizon and was "reborn" in the eastern
sky on the following morning, humans would also rise and live again.
Sometime during the final Paleolithic period and the Neolithic era, a revolution
occurred in food production. Meat ceased to be the chief article of diet
and was replaced by plants such as wheat and barley grown extensively as
crops and not gathered at random in the wild. The relatively egalitarian
tribal structure of the Nile Valley broke down because of the need to manage
and control the new agricultural economy and the surplus it generated. Long-distance
trade within Egypt, a high degree of craft specialization, and sustained
contacts with southwest Asia encouraged the development of towns and a hierarchical
structure with power residing in a headman who was believed to be able to
control the Nile flood. The headman's power rested on his reputation as
a "rainmaker king." The towns became trading centers, political
centers, and cult centers. Egyptologists disagree as to when these small,
autonomous communities were unified into the separate kingdoms of Lower
Egypt and Upper Egypt and as to when the two kingdoms were united under
one king.
Nevertheless, the most important political event in ancient Egyptian history
was the unification of the two lands: the Black Land of the Delta, so-called
because of the darkness of its rich soil, and the Red Land of Upper Egypt,
the sun-baked land of the desert. The rulers of Lower Egypt wore the red
crown and had the bee as their symbol. The leaders of Upper Egypt wore the
white crown and took the sedge as their emblem. After the unification of
the two kingdoms, the pharaoh wore the double crown symbolizing the unity
of the two lands.
The chief god of the Delta was Horus, and that of Upper Egypt was Seth.
The unification of the two kingdoms resulted in combining the two myths
concerning the gods. Horus was the son of Osiris and Isis and avenged the
evil Seth's slaying of his father by killing Seth, thus showing the triumph
of good over evil. Horus took over his father's throne and was regarded
as the ancestor of the pharaohs. After unification, each pharaoh took a
Horus name that indicated that he was the reincarnation of Horus. According
to tradition, King Menes of Upper Egypt united the two kingdoms and established
his capital at Memphis, then known as the "White Walls." Some
scholars believe Menes was the Horus King Narmer, whereas others prefer
to regard him as a purely legendary figure.
With the emergence of a strong, centralized government under a god-king,
the country's nascent economic and political institutions became subject
to royal authority. The central government, either directly or through major
officials, became the employer of soldiers, retainers, bureaucrats, and
artisans whose goods and services benefited the upper classes and the state
gods. In the course of the Early Dynastic Period, artisans and civil servants
working for the central government fashioned the highly sophisticated traditions
of art and learning that thereafter constituted the basic pattern of pharaonic
civilization.
The Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom,
and Second Intermediate Period, 2686 to 1552 B.C.Historians
have given the name "kingdom" to those periods in Egyptian history
when the central government was strong, the country was unified, and there
was an orderly succession of pharaohs. At times, however, central authority
broke down, competing centers of power emerged, and the country was plunged
into civil war or was occupied by foreigners. These periods are known as
"intermediate periods." The Old Kingdom and the Middle Kingdom
together represent an important single phase in Egyptian political and cultural
development. The Third Dynasty reached a level of competence that marked
a plateau of achievement for ancient Egypt. After five centuries and following
the end of the Sixth Dynasty (ca. 2181 B.C.), the system faltered, and a
century and a half of civil war, the First Intermediate Period, ensued.
The reestablishment of a powerful central government during the Twelfth
Dynasty, however, re-instituted the patterns of the Old Kingdom. Thus, the
Old Kingdom and the Middle Kingdom may be considered together.
Divine kingship was the most striking feature of Egypt in these periods.
The political and economic system of Egypt developed around the concept
of a god incarnate who was believed through his magical powers to control
the Nile flood for the benefit of the nation. In the form of great religious
complexes centered on the pyramid tombs, the cult of the pharaoh, the god-king,
was given monumental expression of a grandeur unsurpassed in the ancient
Near East.
Central to the Egyptian view of kingship was the concept of maat, loosely
translated as justice and truth but meaning more than legal fairness and
factual accuracy. It referred to the ideal state of the universe and was
personified as the goddess Maat. The king was responsible for its appearance,
an obligation that acted as a constraint on the arbitrary exercise of power.
The pharaoh ruled by divine decree. In the early years, his sons and other
close relatives acted as his principal advisers and aides. By the Fourth
Dynasty, there was a grand vizier or chief minister, who was at first a
prince of royal blood and headed every government department. The country
was divided into nomes or districts administered by nomarchs or governors.
At first, the nomarchs were royal officials who moved from post to post
and had no pretense to independence or local ties. The post of nomarch eventually
became hereditary, however, and nomarchs passed their offices to their sons.
Hereditary offices and the possession of property turned these officials
into a landed gentry. Concurrently, kings began rewarding their courtiers
with gifts of tax-exempt land. From the middle of the Fifth Dynasty can
be traced the beginnings of a feudal state with an increase in the power
of these provincial lords, particularly in Upper Egypt.
The Old Kingdom ended when the central administration collapsed in the late
Sixth Dynasty. This collapse seems to have resulted at least in part from
climatic conditions that caused a period of low Nile waters and great famine.
The kings would have been discredited by the famine, because pharaonic power
rested in part on the belief that the king controlled the Nile flood. In
the absence of central authority, the hereditary landowners took control
and assumed responsibility for maintaining order in their own areas. The
manors of their estates turned into miniature courts, and Egypt splintered
into a number of feudal states. This period of decentralized rule and confusion
lasted from the Seventh through the Eleventh dynasties.
The kings of the Twelfth Dynasty restored central government control and
a single strong kingship in the period known as the Middle Kingdom. The
Middle Kingdom ended with the conquest of Egypt by the Hyksos, the so-called
Shepherd Kings. The Hyksos were Semitic nomads who broke into the Delta
from the northeast and ruled Egypt from Avaris in the eastern Delta.
Pyramid Building in the Old
and Middle Kingdoms
With the Third Dynasty, Egypt entered into the five centuries of high culture
known as the Pyramid Age. The age is associated with Chancellor Imhotep,
the adviser, administrator, and architect of Pharaoh Djoser. He built the
pharaoh's funerary complex, including his tomb, the Step Pyramid, at Saqqarah.
Imhotep is famed as the inventor of building in dressed stone. His architectural
genius lay in his use of durable, fine-quality limestone to imitate the
brick, wood, and reed structures that have since disappeared.
The first true pyramid was built by Snoferu, the first king of the Fourth
Dynasty. His son and successor, Kheops, built the Great Pyramid at Giza
(Al Jizah); this, with its two companions on the same site, was considered
one of the wonders of the ancient world. It contained well over 2 million
blocks of limestone, some weighing fifteen tons apiece. The casing stones
of the Great Pyramid were stripped off to build medieval Cairo (Al Qahirah).
The building and equipping of funerary monuments represented the single
largest industry through the Old Kingdom and, after a break, the Middle
Kingdom as well. The channeling of so much of the country's resources into
building and equipping funerary monuments may seem unproductive by modern
standards, but pyramid building seems to have been essential for the growth
of pharaonic civilization.
As Egyptologists have pointed out, in ancient societies innovations in technology
arose not so much from deliberate research as from the consequences of developing
lavish court projects. Equally important, the continued consumption of so
great a quantity of wealth and of the products of artisanship sustained
the machinery that produced them by creating fresh demand as reign succeeded
reign.
The pyramids of the pharaohs, the tombs of the elite, and the burial practices
of the poorer classes are related to ancient Egyptian religious beliefs,
particularly belief in the afterlife. The Egyptian belief that life would
continue after death in a form similar to that experienced on earth was
an important element in the development of art and architecture that was
not present in other cultures. Thus, in Egypt, a dwelling place was provided
for the dead in the form of a pyramid or a rock tomb. Life was magically
recreated in pictures on the walls of the tombs, and a substitute in stone
was provided for the perishable body of the deceased.
The New Kingdom and Third
Intermediate Period, 1552-664 B.C.
Around the year 1600 B.C., a semi-autonomous Theban dynasty under the suzerainty
of the Hyksos became determined to drive the Shepherd Kings out of the country
and extend its own power. The country was liberated from the Hyksos and
unified by Ahmose (ruled 1570-1546 B.C.), the son of the last ruler of the
Seventeenth Dynasty. He was honored by subsequent generations as the founder
of a new line, the Eighteenth Dynasty, and as the initiator of a glorious
chapter in Egyptian history.
During the New Kingdom, Egypt reached the peak of its power, wealth, and
territory. The government was reorganized into a military state with an
administration centralized in the hands of the pharaoh and his chief minister.
Through the intensive military campaigns of Pharaoh Thutmose III (1490-1436
B.C.), Palestine, Syria, and the northern Euphrates area in Mesopotamia
were brought within the New Kingdom. This territorial expansion involved
Egypt in a complicated system of diplomacy, alliances, and treaties. After
Thutmose III established the empire, succeeding pharaohs frequently engaged
in warfare to defend the state against the pressures of Libyans from the
west, Nubians and Ethiopians (Kushites) from the south, Hittites from the
east, and Philistines (sea people) from the Aegean-Mediterranean region
of the north.
Toward the end of the Twentieth Dynasty, Egyptian power declined at home
and abroad. Egypt was once more separated into its natural divisions of
Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt. The pharaoh now ruled from his residence-city
in the north, and Memphis remained the hallowed capital where the pharaoh
was crowned and his jubilees celebrated. Upper Egypt was governed from Thebes.
During the Twenty-first Dynasty, the pharaohs ruled from Tanis (San al Hajar
al Qibliyah), while a virtually autonomous theocracy controlled Thebes.
Egyptian control in Nubia and Ethiopia vanished. The pharaohs of the Twenty-second
and Twenty- third dynasties were mostly Libyans. Those of the brief Twenty-
fourth Dynasty were Egyptians of the Nile Delta, and those of the Twenty-fifth
were Nubians and Ethiopians. This dynasty's ventures into Palestine brought
about an Assyrian intervention, resulting in the rejection of the Ethiopians
and the reestablishment by the Assyrians of Egyptian rulers at Sais (Sa
al Hajar), about eighty kilometers southeast of Alexandria (Al Iskandariyah)
on the Rosetta branch of the Nile.
Art and Architecture in the
New Kingdom
As historian Cyril Aldred has said, the civilization of the New Kingdom
seems the most golden of all the epochs of Egyptian history, perhaps because
so much of its wealth remains. The rich store of treasures from the tomb
of Tutankhamen (1347-1337 B.C.) gives us a glimpse of the dazzling court
art of the period and the skills of the artisans of the day.
One of the innovations of the period was the construction of rock tombs
for the pharaohs and the elite. Around 1500 B.C., Pharaoh Amenophis I abandoned
the pyramid in favor of a rock-hewn tomb in the crags of western Thebes
(present-day Luxor). His example was followed by his successors, who for
the next four centuries cut their tombs in the Valley of the Kings and built
their mortuary temples on the plain below. Other wadis or river valleys
were subsequently used for the tombs of queens and princes.
Another New Kingdom innovation was temple building, which began with Queen
Hatshepsut, who as the heiress queen seized power in default of male claimants
to the throne. She was particularly devoted to the worship of the god Amun,
whose cult was centered at Thebes. She built a splendid temple dedicated
to him and to her own funerary cult at Dayr al Bahri in western Thebes.
One of the greatest temples still standing is that of Pharaoh Amenophis
III at Thebes. With Amenophis III, statuary on an enormous scale makes its
appearance. The most notable is the pair of colossi, the so-called Colossi
of Memnon, which still dominate the Theban plain before the vanished portal
of his funerary temple.
Ramesses II was the most vigorous builder to wear the double crown of Egypt.
Nearly half the temples remaining in Egypt date from his reign. Some of
his constructions include his mortuary temple at Thebes, popularly known
as the Ramesseum; the huge hypostyle hall at Karnak, the rock-hewn temple
at Abu Simbel (Abu Sunbul); and his new capital city of Pi Ramesses.
The Cult of the Sun God and
Akhenaten's Monotheism
During the New Kingdom, the cult of the
sun god Ra became increasingly important until it evolved into the uncompromising
monotheism of Pharaoh Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV, 1364-1347 B.C.). According
to the cult, Ra created himself from a primeval mound in the shape of a
pyramid and then created all other gods. Thus, Ra was not only the sun god,
he was also the universe, having created himself from himself. Ra was invoked
as Aten or the Great Disc that illuminated the world of the living and the
dead.
The effect of these doctrines can be seen in the
sun worship of Pharaoh Akhenaten, who became an uncompromising monotheist.
Aldred has speculated that monotheism was Akhenaten's own idea, the result
of regarding Aten as a self-created heavenly king whose son, the pharaoh,
was also unique. Akhenaten made Aten the supreme state god, symbolized as
a rayed disk with each sunbeam ending in a ministering hand. Other gods
were abolished, their images smashed, their names excised, their temples
abandoned, and their revenues impounded. The plural word for god was suppressed.
Sometime in the fifth or sixth year of his reign, Akhenaten moved his capital
to a new city called Akhetaten (present-day Tall al Amarinah, also seen
as Tell al Amarna). At that time, the pharaoh, previously known as Amenhotep
IV, adopted the name Akhenaten. His wife, Queen Nefertiti, shared his beliefs.
Akhenaten's religious ideas did not survive his death. His ideas were abandoned
in part because of the economic collapse that ensued at the end of his reign.
To restore the morale of the nation, Akhenaten's successor, Tutankhamen,
appeased the offended gods whose resentment would have blighted all human
enterprise. Temples were cleaned and repaired, new images made, priests
appointed, and endowments restored. Akhenaten's new city was abandoned to
the desert sands.
The Late Period, 664-323
B.C.
The Late Period includes the last periods during which ancient Egypt functioned
as an independent political entity. During these years, Egyptian culture
was under pressure from major civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean
and the Near East. The socioeconomic system, however, had a vigor, efficiency,
and flexibility that ensured the success of the nation during these years
of triumph and disaster.
Throughout the Late Period, Egypt made a largely successful effort to maintain
an effectively centralized state, which, except for the two periods of Persian
occupation (Twenty-seventh and Thirty-first dynasties), was based on earlier
indigenous models. Late Period Egypt, however, displayed certain destabilizing
features, such as the emergence of regionally based power centers. These
contributed to the revolts against the Persian occupation but also to the
recurrent internal crises of the Twenty-eighth, Twenty-ninth, and Thirtieth
dynasties.
The Twenty-sixth Dynasty was founded by Psammethichus I, who made Egypt
a powerful and united kingdom. This dynasty, which ruled from 664 to 525
B.C., represented the last great age of pharaonic civilization. The dynasty
ended when a Persian invasion force under Cambyses, the son of Cyrus the
Great, dethroned the last pharaoh.
Cambyses established himself as pharaoh and appears to have made some attempts
to identify his regime with the Egyptian religious hierarchy. Egypt became
a Persian province serving chiefly as a source of revenue for the far-flung
Persian (Achaemenid) Empire. From Cambyses to Darius II in the years 525
to 404 B.C., the Persian emperors are counted as the Twenty-seventh Dynasty.
Periodic Egyptian revolts, usually aided by Greek
military forces, were unsuccessful until 404 B.C., when Egypt regained an
uneasy independence under the short-lived, native Twenty-eighth, Twenty-ninth,
and Thirtieth dynasties. Independence was lost again in 343 B.C., and Persian
rule was oppressively reinstated and continued until 335 B.C., in what is
sometimes called the Thirty-first Dynasty or second Persian occupation of
Egypt.
RETURN
This file extracted from Dept. of Commerce,
Economics & Statistic's Division's
Apr. 1994 NATIONAL TRADE DATA BANK (NDTB) CD-ROM, SuDoc C1.88:994/4/V.2
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