The Image of "Ancient Egypt"

What most people mean by the term "Ancient Egypt" is the 2500-year-long "Dynastic" Period of Egyptian history the "Age of the Pharaohs." But there are a number of problems with this meaning, not the least being that many of the cultural patterns and forms which are commonly associated with "Ancient Egypt" persisted well into the Greco-Roman era that followed. Indeed, the best-preserved "Ancient Egyptian" templesthe Temple of Isis at Philae, the Temple of Hathor at Dendera, and the Temple of Horus at Edfuare not, strictly speaking, "Ancient Egyptian" at all, since they were constructed during the Greco-Roman Period of Egyptian history at the order of Greek kings or Roman emperors. Nevertheless, they were built in a archaic style to serve cults that had survived from the earlier pharaonic age, so they may be regarded as the legitimate culmination of three thousand years of pharaonic architecture.

Insofar as scholars employ the term "dynastic" to describe the broad range of pharaonic history, they are following an example set by the Ancient Egyptians themselves. The Egyptiansor at least those literate Egyptians who authored the texts and inscriptions that we still read today, most of whom were (not surprisingly) associated with the royal courts of the pharaohsargued that their history was intimately associated with the existence of monarchy. For them, history itself began with the foundation of the first Egyptian state, an act which was symbolized by the unification of the Nile Valley. According to Egyptian accounts of the period 2000-1000 BC, the first Egyptian king was Menes, with whom began a line of kings that continued for more than two thousand years. Indeed, in Egyptian reckoning, the reality of a long, unbroken line of kings tracing the transmission of royal authority back to a great founding monarch justified the very existence as well as the on-going authority of a unifying, order-providing state.

Several lists of Egyptian kings survive from the Dynastic Period, and these allow us to correct and expand upon a written king-list that survives in a summary of Egyptian history written (in Greek) about 280 AD by Manetho, an Egyptian priest. In these king-lists, the Egyptians grouped their rulers into dynasties, with each dynasty representing a group of kings who were usually (but not always) related to one another by kinship or marriage. Modem scholars maintain this system of organizationhence the very term "dynastic"but superimpose upon it the terms "Archaic Period," "Old Kingdom," "First Intermediate Period," Middle Kingdom,. "Second Intermediate Period," "New Kingdom," and "Third Intermediate Period." These terms are a purely modem convenience: they do not reflect Ancient Egyptian practice. Instead, they refer to periods when the ruling dynasties were either more powerful or less powerful: the "Old", "Middle", and "New" Kingdoms represent peaks of royal centralization and control of Egypt's resources, while the intermediary periods refer to eras in which there was no single, all-powerful monarchy governing the entire Nile Valley. In the intermediary periods Egypt was dominated by regional monarchies, which often ruled simultaneously in different parts of the Nile Valley. It is important to understand that the use of these terms reflects a modern judgment concerning the political history of Ancient Egypt. It provides a framework which proves valuable in discussing the development of Ancient Egyptian art and culture. For example, most of the great pharaonic works of monumental architecture were constructed during the three "Kingdom" eras, for only a state that controlled all of Egypt's resources possessed the means to carry out such grandiose projects as the building of the Giza Pyramids. But the intermediary periods were not necessarily periods of cultural stagnation. For example, some of the greatest surviving works of Egyptian literaturesuch as the Story of Sinubeappear to have been composed in the First Intermediate Period.

The "Dynastic Period" was preceded by several millennia of cultural development, an age that modern historians have imaginatively titled the "Pre-Dynastic Period." The Ancient Egyptians themselves wrote virtually nothing about this era, thus complicating efforts of modern Egyptologists to identify and describe the origins of pharaonic civilization. For the Ancients, this dimly-remembered early age was a time of myth and legend: a time before kings, when gods ruled the earth. Some modern historians have attempted to reconstruct the history of the late Pre-Dynastic Period by seeing it as a time in which real men named Osiris or Sethmen whose names were later attached to divine identitiesstruggled for political power. But most of what we know about this era derives from archaeology. Modern scholars have divided the Pre- Dynastic Period into cultural phases named after major pre-dynastic sites, such as Gerza, Merimde, and Naqada. Indeed, many of the most important and exciting archaeological digs of recent years have been aimed at improving our understanding of the pre-Dynastic era including the excavation of Hierakonpolis, the presumed capital of the Upper Egyptian state whose kings are supposed to have carried out the legendary "Unification of Egypt" about 3000 BC.

But was "Meres," the king whom Egyptians believed had brought about this act of union, one of these kings? Current scholarly opinion doubts that there was a Menesor, more to the point, that the first Egyptian state came into being as the act of a single great conqueror. Indeed, archaeology has revealed a history of the origins of the first Egyptian state that is quite at odds with the legend of a "first unification," for the achievement of a lasting degree of political centralization was a process that occurred not within one lifetime but over many centuries. The problem faced by scholars is that the historical records composed by the Ancient Egyptians may best be described as royal propaganda, the purpose of which was to glorify and legitimize the authority of a reigning king. The Egyptian state justified its very existence by proclaiming that it was Egyptthat Egyptian history had begun with a single glorious act of royal creation (the unification of the Nile Valley), and that the subsequent history of Egypt was inextricably linked with an endless progression of legitimate kings. In this reckoning there were no civil wars, no rival dynasties, and no pretenders to the throne. But it is now known that there were civil wars, rival dynasties, and royal pretenders. Archaeology has revealed that the history of Egypt was not characterized by a long, unbroken line of legitimate kings. If the official king-lists are at odds with the archaeological evidence, it is because the official king-lists were deliberately composed to document and legitimize a political myth: the myth of an unbroken line of royal legitimacy stretching from the ruler on the throne back hundreds of years through his predecessor to the great founder, Menes. The king-lists therefore ignore or delete the names of kings who were regarded, for whatever reason, as being illegitimate, such as Akhnaten or Hatshepsut. They also ignore periods of conflict and strife, and lists sequentially kings and dynasties that in fact existed at the same time and competed with one another for power. They may even have created the legend of a great hero-king to whom they could assign to original act of state-creation, someone about whom the authors of the king-lists actually knew very little.

These factors have made it difficult for modern historians to construct an accurate chronology for Ancient Egypt. In addition, since the Egyptians reckoned time by reference to the regal lengths of their kings instead of by reference to a fixed chronological event (such as the birth of Christ or Muhammad's flight from Mecca to Madina), modern historians may vary by as much as half a century in assigning dates to specific kings. The problem arises because of the combination of contradictory regal lengths in the surviving king-lists with the complicating effect of coregencies. Thus, for example, some Egyptologists date the reign of Tutankhamun to the 1350s BC, while other place him in the 1320's. Therefore, while the broad range of dates for the major periods and dynasties of pharaonic history is accurate enough for most general purposes, it is important to bear in mind that exact dates remain controversial.

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