HIS 104 Chapter 1.2: HIS 104 Chapter 1.: Chapter One (Part 2)
9 Sep 2019
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~ Chapter One: Origins ~
Part 2: Life and Death in Egypt (3000-332 BCE)
o Egypt was connected to the Near East by the ecology of the Fertile Crescent and buy constant contact,
which took every form from brutal warfare two delicate diplomacy.
o Like the Near Eastern State, Egypt was ruled, from the beginning of the third millennium, by
monarchs.
▪ Pharaohs were thought to have the gods’ support thought themselves to be divine.
o Like the Assyrians and Babylonians, the Egyptians built vast temples and other ceremonial
buildings.
o They kept elaborate records using a difficult form of writing practiced by specialized scribes.
o Like the Near Eastern states, Egypt looked back to origins so ancient that no record
described them.
Unification
o Egypt was unique in other regards.
o The King unified two very different worlds:
▪ Southern or Upper Egypt, where a narrow band of agricultural land stretched along
the Nile River, surrounded by immense deserts.
▪ Northern or Lower Egypt, where the Nile branches out into its delta and watered a
vast territory of fields and marshes.
o Somehow, kings took advantage of Egypt’s unique topography and unified these peoples.
▪ Their achievements were celebrated in powerful images.
• Narmer Palette
o Memphis, at the mouth of the Delta, became the capital of a united Egypt.
A Durable Monarchy
o The Egyptian monarchy survived through 30 dynasties that lasted almost 3,000 years.
o By the time of the Old Kingdom (2649-2150 BCE), the Egyptians were already building the
enormous pyramids for which they are still famous.
o Through the Middle Kingdom (2030-1640 BCE) and the New Kingdom (1550-1070), the
monarchy remained mostly united.
▪ Egypt’s strong social and cultural unity prevailed even when a foreign people, the
Hyksos, conquered the country around 1650 BCE, and when the pharaoh Akhenaten
briefly introduced a monotheistic religion in the 14th century.
▪ During the Bronze Age Crisis, the Egyptians fought off the Sea Peoples again and
again, but further tolls were taken around that same time.
• Yet even in the centuries of relative weakness that followed, Egypt
continued to challenge the power of Assyria and to maintain its own
religious and artistic traditions.
o Amid its remarkable longevity, the Egyptian state experience change.
o After the collapse of the Old Kingdom, power passed to local governors and priests.
o One reason that the kings of the subsequent Middle Kingdom built extraordinarily lavish
temples and tombs was that they had to convince important local officials to accept them as
divinely appointed monarchs and to recognize their prerogatives.
o Even in Egypt’s last period, they saw their land as the oldest and grandest of states, favored by the
gods.
o More even that the ancient Near East, Egypt offered a powerful political and social model:
o A single land, vast in extent and varied in its terrain, unified under the rule of a single kind
who enjoyed divine sanction.
The Nile and Egyptian Power
o The Egyptian state had to provide food for its people from an environment that could be both
generous and unpredictable.
o The Nile’s annual flood made the land fertile, but it varied from year to year.
