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3	The Pharaohs and the Rising State

This and the next four chapters will consider the course and major features of the history of Egypt in the third millennium bc.¹ According to traditional scholarship, the third millennium saw several defining moments: the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, the accession of King Netjerykhet Djoser to the throne at the beginning of the Third Dynasty, the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty and the reign of Sneferu, the transition between the Fourth and Fifth Dynasty, the reign of Niuserre, the late Fifth Dynasty reigns of Djedkare and Unas, the reign of Pepy I of the Sixth Dynasty, and finally the end of the Sixth—or, perhaps more important, the Eighth—Dynasty. This marked the beginning of a dramatic decline in the complexity of the ancient Egyptian state and its disintegration into smaller, largely separate entities, which signified the end of the first unified state in the history of ancient Egypt.²

The centuries-long process outlined above was not a linear sequence of historical events or singular personal achievements: this period saw real changes in the nature and character of Egyptian society and state, and evidence gleaned from archaeology, literature, and the natural sciences suggests that these changes followed a pattern of punctuated equilibria. The evidence allows us to pinpoint major turning points that shaped and changed society in the third millennium.

In doing so, we will focus on periods when major changes took place, typically in a leap-wise fashion. Nevertheless, the traditional dynasties may be shown not to be wholly without value. Our understanding of these has relied significantly on the writings of an Egyptian priest called Manetho, from Sebennytus in the Nile Delta, who compiled a history of ancient Egypt for the early Ptolemaic rulers.³ And it is possible that Manetho’s sources really did reflect the way the ancient Egyptians perceived the significant events of their time rather than simply transitions between royal lineages.

Changing Perspectives of the Period

This book proposes the following periodization of third-millennium bc Egypt, based on points at which significant changes may be detected:

1. The beginning of the First Dynasty and the accession of Narmer, who unified Upper and Lower Egypt into one state, followed by Hor-Aha.

2. Rule of King Den in the middle of the First Dynasty, when he carried out a fundamental administrative transformation of the country, removed the political elites in Nubia, and made important strategic decisions that changed Egypt’s relations with the Near East.

3. The beginning of the Second Dynasty, when Hetepsekhemwy had to pacify both lands of Upper and Lower Egypt again as a consequence of political instability at the end of the First Dynasty.

4. The beginning of the Third Dynasty and the rule of King Djoser, during which the development of script was completed, the state administration grew substantially more complex, and the first monumental stone tomb complex was built.

5. The period of the reigns of Kings Shepseskaf and Userkaf at the end of the Fourth and beginning of the Fifth Dynasty, marked by the rise of nonroyal officials to the highest levels of state bureaucracy and by many other related changes taking place in religion, art, architecture, and state administration.

5. The reign of King Niuserre, which saw a democratization of the afterlife, an expansion of the power and influence of nonroyal officials, and a rise in the importance of nepotism.

6. The reign of Kings Djedkare and Unas toward the close of the Fifth Dynasty and the introduction of essential reforms, especially in the sphere of the symbolic presentation of the king.

7. The reign of King Pepy I, when the status of the center and the provinces changed fundamentally.

8. The final phase of the reign of Pepy II, whom most scholars consider to be the last ruler of the Old Kingdom.

9. The gradual decline of the Old Kingdom form of government and state during the Seventh and Eighth Dynasties.

Of course, it is not possible to separate one historical era from the next with surgical precision. After all, several millennia separate us from the Early Dynastic Period (First to Second Dynasties) and the Old Kingdom (Third to Eighth Dynasties). What is more relevant is that despite the progress made by contemporary multidisciplinary Egyptology, we still cannot identify all the reasons for these changes (granted that this is a problem all historians face).

Here we will try to demonstrate that in every turning point defined along the punctuated equilibria model, there is much evidence that sudden changes in the Old Kingdom were critical and numerous, and affected many aspects of ancient Egyptian society, from administration and religion to monumental architecture—with its symbolic forms that often represent the basic pillars of the society’s ideology and organization—and finally, to the level of material culture. Monumental architecture in particular—royal and nonroyal—is significant and characteristic of the specific context and development of ancient Egyptian society, and as such it will also be frequently used in this study. Hence the German term Architektur der Macht—‘architecture of power.’⁴

It should be noted that there is a relative paucity of evidence from the First and Second Dynasties. We must therefore rely more heavily on architecture, together with the meager written sources (mostly title sequences of individual officials) to identify the ground-breaking changes in the development of the ancient Egyptian state and society during this period.

One might object that changes may only appear to take place at a particular time because we have incomplete archaeological and historical evidence: there may be a lack of data for the periods before and after the moment we have identified as the point when the equilibrium was disturbed. While this is always a possibility, it does not seem likely to apply to Egypt in the third millennium bc, as most of this period is relatively well known and the general picture has not yet been changed by discoveries made in recent years. This does not mean, of course, that we cannot expect any modifications in the future.

White Walls

Around the end of the fourth millennium bc, it is generally agreed that the region from the First Cataract in the south to the Mediterranean Sea in the north was controlled by a single chieftain of Thinis (near modern Girga).⁵ This was a moment when essential decisions had to be made, whose impact on the geopolitical and economic situation was immediate and substantial.

The location of the then-capital of Upper Egypt, Thinis, was impractical in terms of controlling the northern part of Egypt, as well as its economic flows, administration, and foreign trade. As a result, a new capital was established for unified Egypt in the region lying east of the present-day pyramid fields of Abusir and Saqqara. It was given the name ‘White Walls’ (in ancient Egyptian, the first phase of the city classically called Memphis, nowadays believed to have been near the modern village at Kom Fakhry in Mit Rahina). We know it existed some two or three generations before the unification of the country, as attested by a rock inscription in Wadi Ameyra, Sinai, dating to the period of the Predynastic ruler Iry-Hor.⁶ The shifting of the capital led to a major leap in the quality and sophistication of the way in which the country was administered.

The town-like agglomeration—or this is at least what we Egyptologists tacitly suppose—was situated west of the main river channel of the Nile, where it became the heart of the unified state. Later tradition, as preserved by Manetho, had it that the town was founded by a King Menes, who is sometimes considered to be identical to Hor-Aha (see further below).⁷ According to Manetho, it was Menes who diverted the flow of the Nile to allow a city to be built on the reclaimed land, strategically located on the border between Upper and Lower Egypt. The most recent paleohydrological study of the Nile riverbed suggests that the individual distributaries of the Nile started branching exactly around White Walls and that this was where the Nile Delta began in the earliest times, some twenty-five kilometers south of the modern division.⁸

Fig. 3.1. The White Walls of Memphis probably originally referred to the white cliffs of the North Saqqara cemetery. (M. Bárta)

The name ‘White Walls’ presents an interesting uncertainty. It could imply a single meaning or several simultaneous ones. The toponym definitely referred to a clearly delineated area, probably a smaller fortified settlement or citadel, surrounded by an extensive and largely agricultural settlement. The walls would presumably have been built of mud bricks and plastered white. But the name may also have reflected the fact that the settlement was founded by rulers from Hierakonpolis, in Upper Egypt, traditionally depicted wearing the White Crown. The name would thereby have expressed the supremacy of Upper Egypt in the region and been visible symbolic proof of the outcome of the battles for unification. If that is the case, it might have been Iry-Hor of Upper Egypt—or an even earlier king—who ordered the city to be built, possibly to exercise some kind of supervision over the Nile Delta. The name may also have referred to the naturally white limestone plateaus of North Saqqara, where the tombs of the governors appointed by the Upper Egyptian rulers were later located and which must have been an impressive sight when observed from the valley.

The broader archaeological context of the city’s origin is important as well. As far as is known, there was no earlier settlement in the immediate vicinity. Meanwhile on the eastern bank, although no settlement has yet been found, the Egyptian archaeologist Zaki Youssef Saad (1901–82) explored a necropolis at Helwan from 1942 to 1954. The locality contained more than ten thousand graves.⁹ This important cemetery has since been further excavated and studied by an Australian expedition led by Christiana Köhler.¹⁰ It is only now that the importance of these finds can be fully understood in the context of other archaeological discoveries made around Abusir and Saqqara.

The vast majority of the Helwan tombs are simple pit graves approached from the surface by stairs cut into the bedrock. There were only a few dozen richer tombs with more spacious subterranean areas and limestone components, such as ceiling blocks and lined burial chambers. The tombs differed on the surface, too—their elevated parts were made of mud bricks and were decorated with the palace façade motif (niching). The built-up area of the tombs (250–400 m2) also suggests that they were primarily built for persons of relatively low status. At Saqqara, the tombs cover areas of more than 600 m2 and some an area of more than 1,000 m2.

Very little can be said about the social status of the owners of the Helwan tombs, which would have been important testimony in view of the growing social complexity of the then-capital city and its environs. All we know through archaeological excavation is this: some fifty tombs were originally equipped with stelae showing the owner of a tomb sitting before an offering table. An important part of each stela’s decoration consisted of the owner’s name and titles. Although several dozen stelae have been preserved, only a few are in a good condition. Men’s tombs outnumbered those of women by approximately 2:1. An interesting finding was that two of the women bore the title of Royal Daughter. In the other women’s tombs, the titles have not been preserved; we can only assume that the interred were the wives of officials, women of the royal court, or women of the harem. In any case, the number of socially significant women’s tombs (judging by the sheer size of the tombs, their structure, and their position in the cemetery) is high, especially compared to the cemetery at Saqqara from the same period. More titles were listed in the tombs of men: one was a prince and the son of a king, two others were court officials, four were artisans, and the same number were priests. But on the whole, the record is sparse.¹¹

Fig. 3.2. So-called ceiling stela belonging to a royal daughter buried in Helwan, Second Dynasty. Egyptian Museum, Cairo. (M. Bárta)

There are fewer sources than one would wish to reconstruct the history of the First Dynasty. Indeed, as late as 1895 Egyptologists had no inkling that ancient Egypt existed before the reign of King Sneferu at the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty. The reason was simply the absence of sources.¹²