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The Origins of the Egyptian State. Ancient Egyptian civilization arose out of complex processes of forced and voluntary integration along the Nile Valley.
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The Origins of the Egyptian State • Ancient Egyptian civilization arose out of complex processes of forced and voluntary integration along the Nile Valley. • This process was accelerated by increasing trade contacts with Southwest Asia, culminating in the emergence of the ancient Egyptian state in about 3100 B.C.
The Origins of the Egyptian State • Ancient Monopoly? • Egyptologist Barry Kemp - believes that the village farmers of 4000 B.C. had strong ties to their ancestral lands, expressed in deeply symbolic terms. • Some communities acquired more wealth and more power than their neighbors and as they established a monopoly over local trade, food surpluses, and so on, overrode any threat posed by other political or economic players.
The Origins of the Egyptian State • Pre-Dynastic chiefdoms (3500 B.C.) • Naqada - may have been the capital of a major chiefdom • Nekhen (Hierankopolis) - yielded the celebrated Narmer palette, which commemorates King Narmer’s victory over a northern ruler in about 3000 B.C. • Maadi - on the outskirts of modern Cairo • major trading center in about 3650 B.C.
The Origins of the Egyptian State • Writing • Art of writing became fully developed in Egypt in about 3100 B.C. • Hieroglyphs (Greek for “sacred carving”) are commonly thought to be a form of picture writing. In fact they constitute a script that combines pictographs (pictures) and phonetics (vocal sounds), and they were not only written on papyrus but also carved on public buildings or painted on clay or wood.
The Origins of the Egyptian State • A Scenario for Unification - Archaeology and myth combine for a hypothetical scenario of unification: • By 3500 B.C., the kingdoms of Upper Egypt may have had direct contact with southern Arabia and Southwest Asia, bypassing Lower Egypt. • Conflict ensued, with the politically most developed center, Nekhen, emerging victorious.
The Origins of the Egyptian State • Scenario (cont.) • The rulers of Nekhen finally embarked on a campaign of military conquest, which eventually engulfed all of Egypt between the Mediterranean and Aswân. • By 3100 B.C., a semblance of political unity, commemorated by the Narmer palette, joined Upper and Lower Egypt in the symbolic linking of the gods Horus and Seth depicted in later Egyptian art.
The Origins of the Egyptian State • Intensification of Agriculture and Irrigation • With a centralized form of administration, the divine leader, the pharaoh himself, was responsible for the success of the harvest. • Karl Butzer (1976) has pointed out, the Egyptian technology for lifting water was so rudimentary that the early rulers were unable to organize any elaborate forms of irrigation.
The Origins of the Egyptian State • Intensification (cont.) • Butzer pointed out that civilizations can be regarded as ecosystems that emerge in response to sets of ecological opportunities. • The Egyptians persisted in adjusting to a floodplain environment for thousands of years. They overcame external and internal crises by reorganizing their state and economic structure.
The Origins of the Egyptian State • Intensification (cont.) • The key variables were: • the fluctuations of the Nile itself, • occasional foreign intervention, • the character of the pharaohs’ leadership, • and a progressively more out-of-touch society of elite non-producers who persisted in exploiting the common farmer.
Archaic Egypt and the Creation of the Great Culture (2920 to 2575. B.C.) • Egyptologists conventionally divide ancient Egyptian civilization into four broad periods: • Archaic Egypt and the Old Kingdom, • the Middle Kingdom, • the New Kingdom, and • the Late period.
The Old Kingdom and the Pyramids (c. 2575 to 2180 B.C.) • The Old Kingdom saw four dynasties of pharaohs governing Egypt from a royal capital at Memphis, near Cairo. • Egyptologist I. E. S. Edwards believes that the growing influence of the sun cult led to new conceptions of the afterlife that had the deceased ruler following the sun god across the sky. • The pyramids were symbolic depictions in stone of the sun’s rays bursting through the clouds, a permanent stone stairway with the king’s mortuary temple on the east side, the side of the rising sun.
The Old Kingdom and the Pyramids (c. 2575 to 2180 B.C.) • The court cemeteries and pyramid complexes of the Old Kingdom pharaohs extend over a 35-km (22-mile) stretch of the western desert edge, most of it slightly north of Memphis. • In about 2528 B.C., Khufu built the Great Pyramid of Giza, one of the spectacular wonders of ancient Africa and one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
The Egyptian State • Egypt was the first state of its size in history. • The pharaohs ruled by their own word, following no written laws, unlike the legislators of Mesopotamian city-states. • The pharaoh had power over the Nile flood, rainfall, and all people, including foreigners. • He was a god, respected by all people as a tangible divinity whose being was the personification of Ma’at, or “rightness.”
The Egyptian State • An army of 20,000 men, many of them mercenaries, was maintained at the height of Egypt’s prosperity. • The Egyptian Empire was a literate one; that is, trained scribes were an integral part of the state government. • Special schools trained writers for careers in the army, the palace, the treasury, and numerous other callings.
The First Intermediate Period and the Middle Kingdom (2180 to 1640 B.C.) • The last great Old Kingdom pharaoh was Pepi II (2278 to 2184 B.C.), who reigned for a staggering 94 years, having ascended the throne as a 6-year-old. • Expanded irrigation works, canals, and agricultural development of the delta led to a population of over 1 million. • 300 years of drought reduced Egypt to a competing mosaic of small kingdoms.
The First Intermediate Period and the Middle Kingdom (2180 to 1640 B.C.) • In about 2134 B.C., the city of Thebes in Upper Egypt became the center of rebel movements that eventually took over the country under Pharaoh Mentuhotep II in 2040 B.C. • Middle Kingdom pharaohs: • conquered the desert lands of Nubia • developed the Fayyum Oasis • created enormous public works and royal mortuaries
The Second Intermediate Period (1640 to 1530 B.C.) • The Middle Kingdom lasted until approximately 1640 B.C., when another period of political instability and economic disorder began. • Pharaonic control of the Nile Valley as a whole weakened. • By the seventeenth century B.C., the delta had come under the political control of a line of Hyksos kings, who had taken advantage of the weakness of the Thirteenth Dynasty pharaohs to seize power over Lower Egypt. • In their battles with the Thebans, the Hyksos brought new weaponry to the Nile: stronger bows, new forms of swords and daggers, and the horse-drawn chariot.
The New Kingdom(1530 TO 1070 B.C.) • The New Kingdom began when a series of Theban rulers fought and won a war of independence from the Hyksos. • The “Estate of Amun” - Thebes, the home of Amun. • The Temples of Amun at Karnak and Luxor, built mostly during the Eighteenth Dynasty (1550 to 1307 B.C.), were the heart of the sacred capital. • The “Estate of Amun” extended across the Nile to the western bank. Here, the pharaohs erected an elaborate city of the dead.
The New Kingdom(1530 TO 1070 B.C.) • Amarna and Akhenaten • In the fifth year of his reign, the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten founded a brand-new capital at El-Amarna, on land associated with no established deity. • El-Amarna’s greatest significance lies in its unique archaeological evidence concerning New Kingdom Egyptian society. • Most El-Amarna residents lived on two large housing tracts north and south of the central city, huddled in small houses along streets parallel to the river, intersected by smaller alleys.
The New Kingdom(1530 TO 1070 B.C.) • The Restoration of Amun • The cult of Amun was revived at Thebes by Tutankhamun; Amarna was abandoned. • An able general named Horemhab campaigned in Syria. • Tutankhamun himself may have led a raiding party into Nubia in 1323 B.C. • Tutankhamun may have died from complications due to a broken leg.
The Late Period (1070 to 332 B.C.) • Nubian rulers threatened the pharaohs and actually ruled over Egypt for a short time in the eighth century B.C. • The Assyrian army occupied parts of the country and looted Thebes in 665. • After the eclipse of Assyria, the Egyptians enjoyed a few centuries of independence before being conquered by the Persians in 343 B.C. and by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C. • The Ptolemies, pharaohs of Greek ancestry, succeeded Alexander and ruled Egypt until Roman times.
Egypt and Africa • The ancient Greeks and Romans believed that Egypt was the fountain of all civilization. • Most Egyptologists argue that civilization developed in isolation along the Nile. • Some African-American historians of the so-called Afrocentrism school believe that the institutions of urban Western civilization were born in tropical Africa and that ancient Egypt was a black African civilization.
Egypt and Africa • Both tomb paintings and biological data point to a generally Mediterranean population. • However, it was also one that became increasingly cosmopolitan in later centuries as Egypt enjoyed closer contacts with other lands, including tropical Africa.
Nubia: The Land of Kush • The arid country that lay upstream was Nubia, sometimes called the Land of Kush, famous to the ancient Egyptians for its gold, ivory, and slaves. • As Nubian expert William Adams remarked, “For millennia Egypt treated [Nubia] as a kind of private game reserve for human and animal game.” • Between 730 and 663 B.C. Nubian monarchs ruled not only over Kush but also over Egypt itself.
Meroe and Aksum • Meroe lies on the east bank of the White Nile, some 200 km (124 miles) north of Khartoum, Sudan. • Its rulers administered a string of villages and towns along the river from lower Nubia to Sennar on the Blue Nile, controlling the gold, ivory, and slave trade with Egypt.
Meroe and Aksum • Aksum - By the first century A.D., the Kingdom of Aksum – with loose connections to the pre-Aksumite era – had established itself as a powerful kingdom in regular contact with Rome, handling all manner of exotic luxuries and commodities through its port at Adulis on the Red Sea. • By the third century A.D., the Persian Gnostic Mani is reported by his followers to have described Aksum as one of the four most important kingdoms in the world.
North Africa • The Romans realized the agricultural potential of the North African hinterland and turned their new colony into a vast grain combine. • It was said that North African granaries fed Rome’s masses for nine months a year, Egypt’s for four.
Jenne-jeno and the Rise of West African States • Lying as it did at the extreme southwestern end of the Niger Delta, Jenne-jeno was ideally placed to barter savanna gold, iron, and agricultural produce. • It also became a leading exchange point for trading these commodities against Saharan copper and salt (a dietary supplement in poor supply in West Africa).
Jenne-jeno and the Rise of West African States • In addition, it is highly likely that Jenne-jeno’s growth over this period was linked to increased cross-Saharan trade, West African gold being traded on by Saharan merchants to the North African coast, and North African luxury products in turn arriving in West Africa.
Jenne-jeno and the Rise of West African States • Ghana - The kingdom of Ghana straddled the northern borders of the gold-bearing river valleys of the upper Niger and Senegal. • The Ghanians’ prosperity depended on the gold trade and also the constant demand for ivory in the north. • Other products such as kola nuts and slaves also crossed the desert, but trade in gold, ivory, and salt were the foundations of their power. • Mali • Songhay
Jenne-jeno and the Rise of West African States • Mali - The kingdom of Mali appeared when a group of Kangaba people under the leadership of Sundiata came into prominence in about A.D. 1230 and annexed their neighbors’ lands. • The fame of the Mali kings spread throughout the Muslim world. Timbuktu, whose very name evokes dreams of gold and far-flung fortunes, developed at the edge of the desert and was taken into Mali’s power.
Jenne-jeno and the Rise of West African States • Songhay • In approximately A.D. 1325, the most famous of the kings of Mali, Mansa Musa, brought the key trading center of Gao on the Niger under his sway. • Gao was the capital of the Dia kings, who shook off Mali’s yoke in about 1340 and founded the kingdom of Songhay. • Their state prospered increasingly as Mali’s power weakened and then expired in A.D. 1460. • The great chieftain Sonni Ali led the Songhay to new conquests between A.D. 1464 and 1492, expanding the frontiers of his empire deep into Mali country and far north into the Sahara.
Farmers and Traders in Eastern and Southern Africa • Towns and Trade on the East African Coast • The same monsoon winds that linked the Red Sea with India also linked the East African coast between Somalia and Mozambique with a much wider commercial world. • By the end of the first millennium A.D., the lucrative coastal trade was under Islamic control, centered on small towns and strategic bays. • Lamu in northern Kenya was one such port. • So was Kilwa Island off the Tanzanian coast, a strategic transshipment point, where oceangoing dhows (sailing ships) loaded gold dust and ivory obtained from Sofala in southeast Africa.
Farmers and Traders in Eastern and Southern Africa • Great Zimbabwe • During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries A.D., Great Zimbabwe in southern Africa controlled much of the gold and ivory trade in southeastern Africa. • Great Zimbabwe became a sizable town, perhaps with as many as 18,000 people living in it and nearby. • Great Zimbabwe was in part a military state, capable of raising armies from its herding population that could enforce tribute assessments and toll collections.
Europe and Africa • Africans were drawn increasingly into a much wider economic world fueled by insatiable demands for raw materials and, above all, slaves to work the sugar and cotton plantations of the New World. • It was they who controlled the sources of slaves, who mined for gold, and who organized the hunting of elephants. • Increasingly, the destiny of Africa became intertwined with the unfolding economic and political fortunes of a wider and ever more international and industrialized world.
