I. Predynastic Egypt (c.4000-2700)  ["Archaic Period" 3100-2700] 

             Herodotus called Egypt "gift of the Nile."  "The Nile is a unique river, beginning in the heart of Africa and coursing northward for thousands of miles.  It is the longest river in the world.  The Nile was responsible for creating an area several miles wide on both banks of the river that was fertile and capable of producing abundant harvests.  The "miracle" of the Nile was its annual flooding" (Spiel.21; see map p.21).  ”Each September the Nile floods its valley, transforming it into a huge area of marsh or lagoon.  By the end of November the water retreats, leaving behind a thin covering of fertile mud ready to be planted with crops" (McKay 22).
            "Unlike Mesopotamia's rivers, the flooding of the Nile was gradual and usually predictable, and the river itself was seen as life enhancing, not life threatening.  Although a system of organized irrigation was still necessary, the small villages along the Nile could make the effort without the massive state intervention that was required in Mesopotamia.  Egyptian civilization, consequently, tended to remain more rural with many small population centers congregated along a narrow band on both sides of the Nile....
            Unlike Mesopotamia, which was subject to constant invasion, Egypt was blessed by natural barriers that fostered isolation, protected it from invasion, and gave it a sense of security.  These barriers included the deserts to the west and east, the cataracts (rapids) on the southern part of the Nile, which made defense relatively easy, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north.  These barriers, however, did not prevent the development of trade.  Indeed, there is very evidence of very early trade between Egypt and Mesopotamia itself....
            In essence, Egyptian geography and topography played important roles in the early history of the country.  The regularity of the Nile floods and the relative isolation of the Egyptians created a sense of security and a feeling of changelessness" (Spiel. 22). 

1.      Lower Egypt and Upper Egypt. 

 By 4000 BC Neolithic villagers had begun to build dikes and a canal network to control the Nile for irrigation--a feat that required cooperative effort and ingenuity as well as engineering and administrative skills.  "By about 3100 B.C. there were some forty of these communities in constant contact with one another.  This contact, encouraged and facilitated by the Nile, virtually ensured the early political unification of Egypt" (McKay 22).

            Late in the 4th millennium 2 kingdoms emerged: 

                        Lower (northern) Egypt--broad Nile delta north of Memphis

                        Upper (southern) Egypt--southward along narrow 10-20 mi. wide valley to                         1st cataract at Syene (Aswan)

            2. MENES (or Narmer), the ruler of Upper Egypt, united the two kingdoms and founded the 1st dynasty of kings with capital at Memphis in 2900 BC (3100 McKay). This was inevitable because a single government was necessary to ensure the free flow of traffic along the entire length of the Nile, as well as to provide centralized direction of irrigation projects.  "Henceforth, the king would be called `King of Upper and King of Lower Egypt', and the royal crown would be a double diadem, signifying the unification of all Egypt" (Spiel.22).       

Interesting fact:  Menes, the founding king of the First Dynasty and the first pharaoh to unify Upper and Lower Egypt into one kingdom, oversaw the construction of the world’s first dam—a massive wall that protected Egypt’s capital Memphis from the Nile’s ravaging flood waters.

 II. The Old Kingdom  (c.2700-2200) 3rd-6th dynasties with capital at Memphis

1.      pharaoh
            The nobility had lost independence and all power in Pharaoh (per-ao "Great House."  "The king's surroundings had to be worthy of a god.  Only a magnificent palace was suitable for his home; in fact, the very word pharaoh means `great house'" McKay 24).  In fact, the pharaoh was considered man and god:  the earthly embodiment of the deity Horus (not just human agent of god like Mesopotamia).  Thus, the people's welfare rested on fidelity to pharaoh:  he owned all lands (did give grants to temples and individuals); he controlled irrigation system; he decided planting season; he given surplus of crops produced on royal estates and with it he supported administrators [“Especially important was the office of vizier, `steward of the whole land.'  Directly responsible to the king, the vizier was in charge of the bureaucracy with its numerous departments, such as police, justice, river transport, and public works" (Spiel.23).]  
            "Although they possessed absolute power, Egyptian kings were not supposed to rule arbitrarily, but according to set principles.  The chief principle was called Ma'at, a spiritual precept that conveyed the idea of truth and justice, but especially right order and harmony.  To ancient Egyptians, this fundamental order and harmony had existed throughout the universe since the beginning of time.  Pharaohs were the divine instruments who maintained this order and harmony and were themselves subject to it" (Spiel.23).
                        The Old Kingdom is also called the "Pyramid Age" as the Egyptians began to build colossal tombs or pyramids for their kings to preserve pharaoh's mummy for eternity.  “The religious significance of the pyramid is as awesome as the political.  The pharaoh as a god was the earthly sun, and the pyramid, which towered to the sky, helped him ascend the heavens after death.  The pyramid provided the dead king with everything that he would need in the afterlife.  His body had to be preserved from decay if his ka, an invisible counterpart of the body, was to survive.  So the Egyptians developed an elaborate process of embalming the dead pharaoh, wrapping his corpse in cloth, and carving a statue of him in stone.  The need for an authentic likeness of the pharaoh accounts for the naturalism of Egyptian portraiture" (McKay 24).
            Whereas contemporary Sumerians built solely with mud bricks and prior Egyptians had gone no further than erecting edifices from a few tons of limestone, all of a sudden, under the guidance of Zoser's chief builder, Imhotep, one million tons of limestone were quarried, hauled without wheeled vehicles, and fitted precisely into place to a summit about 200 feet high.  Though that would be the first stone building ever erected on Earth,  that was just the beginning.  
    Soon after, in the century from roughly 2700 to roughly 2600 B.C., a total of some 25 million tons of limestone were hewn out of rock cliffs, dressed, hauled, and piled in the course of building a series of pyramids that are the most famous and beautiful of all.  Of these the gem of gems is no doubt the pyramid of Khufu (a pharaoh know to the Greeks as Cheops), which rose to a height of 482 feet at the `perfect' angle of 52°, making its pinnacle stand in relation to its circumference as in the `pi' ratio of circles.  When the Greeks decided to count the seven wonders of the world, they unhesitatingly ranked the pyramid of `Cheops' as the first.
      "While the great pyramids remain for us to see, many questions arise as to how and why they were built.  By a conservative estimate some 70,000 laborers were needed to put up a pyramid.  These were almost certainly seasonal laborers.  During the summer months, when the Nile was at its flood stage, there was little or nothing for farmers to do, so they could be employed on massive building projects without detrimental effect to the Egyptian agricultural economy.  But one summer does not make a pyramid.  Rather, it has recently been concluded that pyramid laborers must have worked summer after summer, starting on a new pyramid after the last one was finished, without reference to whether a reigning pharaoh had died or not, because that is the only way to account for the transformation of 25 million tons of stone into several enormous pyramids during the course of one century.  Thus for thousands of people, hewing and hauling limestone in the raging heat of an Egyptian summer was a yearly way of life without prospect of termination" (Burns WC 63).

NOTE:  GREAT SPHINX at Giza (c.2500) is another monument of enormous interest.  This Sphinx of Chephren (Khafre), 4th Dynasty, width of face 13½ ft.  "The guardian Sphinx was fashioned out of a knoll of rock left in the quarry where the blocks were hewn for the Chephren pyramid.  It has the body of a lion and the head of a human being in royal headdress.  Despite signs of weathering, recalling that it has stood guard over the burial places for many thousands of years, it still retains the fascination it had for the Greeks who took it as symbolic of everything mysterious and enigmatic" (Myers 34). 65 ft. high and probably bore the features of Chefren whose pyramid it stands next to (Jansen 60)            

2.      RE (Amon-RE)

"It is misleading to speak of religion in Egyptian society.  The Egyptians had no word for religion, because it was an inseparable element of the entire world order to which Egyptian society belonged.  By Dynasty V the old local deities had been fused into the great sun god RE (Ra) later at Thebes called Ammon-Re (identified with old Theban god Amon).  Re had a human body but the head of a falcon.  The religion at this time had no strong ethical character; the Egyptians sacrificed to receive benefits.
 

3.      First Intermediate Period (2200-2050)  Dynasties 7 to 11.

 The government was founded on peace & non-aggression; the pharaoh had no standing army.  Therefore at any threat of invasion local units were assembled at the call of Pharaoh.  Though things went relatively well for half a millennium, late in the 6th Dynasty security and prosperity was ruined by the burden of building and maintaining pyramids.   The resources of the state were exhausted and the because the Nile floods failed taxes were raised.  All these problems resulted in a revolt in which the nobles took over (growth in power of provincial governors) and civil war, famine, robbery, oppression by tyrants, and raids from foreigners occurred.  In addition, there was a revolution in religion:  the Egyptians now perceived the gods as interested in good character and love for one’s fellow man.  

III. The Middle Kingdom (c.2050-1652)  DYNASTIES 11 & 12 with capital at Thebes

1.      “Shepherds of the People"

            "This era of anxiety and strife ended when Mentuhotep, the ruler of Thebes, reunited the 42 nomes of Upper and Lower Egypt and founded the Middle Kingdom..." (Greaves 26) after he defeated the ruler of Heracleopolis.

            "In the Old Kingdom, the pharaoh had been viewed as an inaccessible god-king.  Now he was portrayed as the shepherd of his people with the responsibility to build public works and provide for the public welfare" (Spiel. 24).  These "shepherds of the people" promoted the welfare of the downtrodden:  the wealth of nation was now spent on public works rather than pyramids.  For example, a drainage and irrigation project in the marshy Fayum district south of Memphis reclaimed 27,000 acres of arable land. "Egyptians later portrayed the Middle Kingdom as a golden age, a clear indication of its stability" (Spiel.24).
 

2.      Osiris

             With the supremacy of Thebes Amon rises to national prominence (obscure before).  In addition, the Egyptians developed views of afterlife with the democratization of the cult of Osiris—the lower classes were allowed mummification to also enjoy immortality.  "Religion now emphasized proper moral conduct instead of ritual dependent on wealth" (Burns WC 54).  "Later Egyptian spiritual practice developed an emphasis on morality by stressing Osiris's role as judge of the dead.  The dead were asked to give an account of their earthly deeds to show whether they deserved a reward" (Spiel. 25).
 

3.     SECOND INTERMEDIATE PERIOD (c.1652-1567)  DYNASTIES 13-17            A revolt of the nobles left Egypt vulnerable to the Hyksos (Egyptian for "Rulers of the Uplands"; mixed people; mostly Semitic + Indo-European) from Palestine who were able to conquer Delta and make most of Egypt tributary.  [This is a time when Joseph  could have served under Hyksos king!]

                        The Hyksos introduced 1) horse-drawn chariots, 2) bronze armor and weapons, 3) the compound bow which the Egyptians would eventually use to overthrow them.  These foreigners caused the Egyptians to forget differences and unite.  

 IV. The New Kingdom ("Empire") (c.1567-1085)  DYNASTIES 18---20 

1.      Hatshepsut 

            The 18th Dynasty was founded by Ahmose I, and the pharaohs expelled  the Hyksos back to Palestine and reunited Egypt.  The "Egyptian warrior-pharaohs inaugurated the New Kingdom--a period in Egyptian history characterized by enormous wealth and conscious imperialism.  During this period, probably for the first time, widespread slavery became a feature of Egyptian life.  The pharaoh's armies returned home leading hordes of slaves, who constituted a new labor force for imperial building projects.  The kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty created the first Egyptian empire" (McKay 27). So this was a period of aggressive imperialism; Egypt was no longer pacific and isolationist; the pharaoh had personal army; and Egypt required tribute and slaves from conquered lands.

            Hatshepsut (1490-1469) declared herself “king” and ruled Egypt when her husband and half-brother Thutmose II (4^th ruler of 18^th dynasty) had chosen Thutmose III, his young son by a concubine, to rule. Her plan was to make the office of god's-wife a means of determining the succession, thereby ensuring that the royal family would become a true matriarchy.  The succession would pass only through the queen, the god's wife whose mystical union with Amon produced the royal heir, "son of Amon."  No longer would a king be able to choose his successor arbitrarily. 

            "Hatshepsut represented the traditional Egyptian isolationist school that saw Egypt's destiny not in overseas expansion but in the preservation of its unique and separate culture.  Consequently, she sought to enhance the glory of Egypt with building projects at home rather than military expeditions abroad.  She built a peaceful, graceful temple at her tomb at Deir el-Bahri and erected huge obelisks from the quarries at Aswan in the temple of Amon at Karnak" (Greaves 28).

            She could not hope to outlive him (T III) and insure the permanence of matriarchy (her daughter Neferure predeceased her), and indeed, when she died after 20 years of rule, T III ordered her name and inscriptions erased, her obelisks walled up, her reliefs effaced, and her statues broken and thrown into a quarry.  Her name is not contained in any official list of Egyptian rulers, and the title and role of god's-wife gradually faded out of existence.

            After Hatshepsut died Tuthmose III (c. 1480-1450) renewed the imperialism of his famous grandfather and campaigned against Syria, Nubia and S. Sudan (17 expeditions to Palestine & Syria in 30 years of his reign).  He seized some of Syria, Palestine & Phoenicia, Egyptianized them and sent them back to rule as loyal vassals.  He also erected obelisks (tall pointed shafts of stone) to commemorate his reign (4 of these still exist in Istanbul, New York, Rome and London).

            It is with Amenhotep III (c.1412-1375) that Egypt reaches the peak of its Empire in power (conquered lands) & Wealth (tribute). Thebes became the showcase for world with its temples built for sun-god Amon east of Nile at Luxor & Karnak.  

2. Amenhotep IV

            But then the decline begins with the reign of Amenhotep IV (c.1364-1347) who proposed the worship of the sun's disk (i.e. the physical sun) and moved against the worship of Amon and all other gods;.  He changed his name to Akhenaton ("devoted to Aton: "It is well with Aton" "he with whom Aton is satisfied"), left Thebes (Amon's city) and founded Akhetaton ("the Horizon of Aton" "dedicated to Aton") [probably to lessen power of Amon-Re priesthood at Thebes!]. This required his engineers to develop far faster building techniques. Within two years, the bustling city housed 20,000 people.  In addition to weakening his power by opposing the influential priests of Amon, it was during this time the pharaohs had begun to lose power anyway:  "Although the pharaoh was still viewed as a god, he lost a significant amount of real power to three strong institutions--the army, the royal bureaucracy, and the priesthoods" (Spiel.29).

            Akhenaton made some political mistakes when he ignored some Asian princes’ appeals for aid against some invaders:  they defected.  He also lost Syrian and Palestine to the Hittites because he was too occupied with the religious revolution that he had initiated.

            Upon his death, his 9 year old son Tutankhamen (1352-1344), who was controlled by the priests of Amon, returned Egypt to the worship of Amon and the capital to Thebes.  "The Aton experiment had failed to take hold, and the eighteenth dynasty itself came to an end with the rise to power of a military officer and vizier, Horemhab, who assumed the kingship in 1333; he had monuments to Aton destroyed along with records and inscriptions with Akhenaton's name.  King Tutankhamen would be a little known pharaoh except for one happenstance:  "In 1923, Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamen's tomb; within a short time, 22 of his colleagues died, mystifying the scientific-minded and leading some to accept as a curse the inscription found in the tomb:  `The wings of death shall smite him who disturbs the peace of the Pharaoh'....the actual cause of death:  bacteria from the decomposing food placed in the tomb" (review of the film THE CURSE OF KING TUT, 43 minutes, color).

19th DYNASTY

3.      RAMSES II (c.1279-1213)

Ramses regained Palestine by making a treaty with the Hittites.  He claims that he won the battle of Kadesh, but Hittites say they defeated Ramses in an ambush (since Ramses married a Hittite princess, the Hittites are probably  telling the truth).

            Ramses would build structures that rivaled the Pyramid Age:  Hypostyle Hall built for Amon at Karnak with columns up to 70 ft. high and more than 20  ft. in diameter is one of the largest buildings on earth.  Another impressive monument is the famous        Temple at Abu Simbel with 4 colossal statues of Ramses.  [Because of his building projects and his time period, Ramses II may be the pharaoh of the Exodus.] 

  V. Period of Decadence (1090-332) DYNASTIES 21-30 

1.      By the 12^th century, problems abound for the Egyptians.  Around the 1100's raids by the "Sea Peoples" causes chaos.  Then the Amon priesthood becomes so strong that the high priest able to found dynasty and rule Upper Egypt.  Merchant princes set up dynasty in Delta.  From this point on foreigners will rule Egypt.  By  940-730 BC Libyans establish a dynasty in central Egypt under Shishak (time of Solomon).  From 730 to 656 BC  black Kushites (Nubians) of Nubia establish the 25th dynasty and rule from Naponta at the 4th cataract.  By 671 the Assyrians make Egypt a province.  Though the Egyptians under Psamtik I are able to establish the 26th Dynasty (663-525) by the expulsion of the Assyrians with the help of Greek mercenaries, they were not able to establish a new empire.  In 525 BC the Persians end the 30 dynasties of Egypt!  There is a brief period of independence from 404-341, by it is followed by Second Persian Period 341-333.  Next comes the Greek Period in 332 BC with Alexander the Great and after his death the Macedonians (Ptolemaic Egypt) until Cleopatra VII dies 30 BC.  The Romans will then make Egypt a Roman province.  

VI.              SUMMARY

1.      RELIGION

      "The unification of the country resulted not only in a consolidation of territory but in a fusion of divinities as well.  All of the guardian deities were merged into the great sun god Re.  Under the Theban rulers of the Middle Kingdom, this deity was called Amon or Amon-Re from the name of the chief god of Thebes.  The gods who personified the vegetative powers of nature were fused into a deity called Osiris, who was also the god of the Nile.  Thereafter these two great powers who ruled the universe, Amon and Osiris, vied with each other for supremacy.  Other deities...were recognized also, but they occupied a distinctly subordinate place....

      "The cult of Osiris...began its existence as a nature religion.  Osiris personified the growth of vegetation and the life-giving powers of the Nile.  His career was marked by elaborate legend.  In the remote past, according to belief, he had been a benevolent ruler, who taught his people agriculture and other practical arts and gave them laws.  After a time he was treacherously slain by his wicked brother Seth, and his body cut into pieces.  His wife Isis, who was also his sister, went in search of the pieces, put them together, and miraculously restored his body to life.  ....                                                                                           

      "The death and resurrection of Osiris symbolized the drying of the Nile in the autumn and the coming of the flood in the spring.  But in time the Osiris legend began to take on a deeper significance.  The human qualities of the deities concerned--the paternal solicitude of Osiris for his subjects, the faithful devotion of his wife and son--appealed to the emotions of average Egyptians, who were now able to see their own tribulations and triumphs  mirrored in the lives of the gods.  More important still, the death and resurrection of Osiris came to be regarded as conveying a promise of personal immortality.  As the god had triumphed over death, so might the individual who worshipped him inherit everlasting life.

      "(By the Middle Kingdom) The dead were now believed to appear before Osiris to be judged according to their deeds on earth.  All of the departed who met the tests entered a realm of physical delights.  In marshes of lotus-flowers they would hunt geese and quail with never-ending success.  Or they might build houses in the midst of orchards with luscious fruits of unfailing yield.  They would find lily-lakes on which to sail, pools of sparkling water in which to bathe, and shady groves inhabited by singing birds.  But the unfortunate victims whose hears revealed their vicious lives were utterly destroyed" (Burns WC 57-9).

2.      HIEROGLYPHICS (Greek for "priestly carving") 

      "...Egyptian writing, hieroglyphic, emerged after the appearance of cuneiform writing in Mesopotamia, perhaps even with an awareness of the Mesopotamian precedent....as early as the time of the Old Kingdom, Egyptian hieroglyphic was based on three types of characters:  the pictographic, the syllabic, and the alphabetic.  The first two were already components of cuneiform, but the last was a crucially significant innovation.  Had the Egyptians taken the step of separating their alphabetic characters--twenty-four symbols, each representing a single consonant sound of the human voice--from their non-alphabetic ones and using the former exclusively in their written communication they would have developed a writing system that was fully modern.  Since conservatism kept them from doing this, it was left for a Semitic people of the eastern Mediterranean shore, the Phoenicians, to devise the first exclusively alphabetical system around 1400 BC.  The Phoenician alphabet in turn became the model for the alphabets of the Hebrews, Arabs, Greeks, and Romans" (Burns WC 60).

      "Most of the ancient Egyptian literature that has come down to us was written on papyrus rolls and wooden tablets.  The most popular literature consisted of adventure stories about the deeds of historical kings and famous men.  The so-called Wisdom Texts were the most highly regarded pieces of literature.  Written in the form of instructions from a father to his son, they provided sound advice based on tradition and worldly experience" (Spiel.27).

      ROSETTA STONE  "The Napoleonic invasion of Egypt in 1798 was organized from its inception not only to exert French political control over the country but also to extend French knowledge of the newly conquered territory.  Napoleon brought with him a team of French scholars in all disciplines who were soon busy exploring the country, collecting antiquities, and making detailed drawings of monuments and sites.  Because their activities were well known to the army at large, when, during construction work at Rosetta (in the western Delta), an inscription was uncovered featuring three different scripts [hieroglyphics, demotic & Greek], the scholars were immediately notified.  One of the texts was in Greek, which was easily read; the other two were in ancient Egyptian writing, and it was correctly assumed that all three scripts recorded the same text.  The Rosetta Stone was to become the key to the decipherment of ancient Egyptian.  When the French forces were obliged to evacuate Egypt in 1801, their antiquities, including the Rosetta Stone, were surrendered to the British and then deposited in the British Museum.  Copies of the Rosetta Stone were, however, widely circulated.  The drawings of the French Scientific Commission were eventually published in a series of volumes entitled Description de l' gypte and served to stimulate public interest in the antiquities. 

      "...Thomas Young (1773-1829) identified the royal names in the hieroglyphic text, but it was left to Jean-Francois Champollion (1790-1832) to recognize the true nature of the hieroglyphic script.  He had been attracted to the study of ancient Egypt since childhood, and his ambition was to decipher the ancient language.  In preparation, he had mastered the Coptic language and script that was to be revealed as the last form of ancient Egyptian.  His study of the royal names, identified from the surrounding rings known as cartouches, convinced him of the largely alphabetic nature of the hieroglyphic script, and he announced his discover in 1822 in his Lettre   M. Dacier.  He was able through the royal names to determine the basic ancient Egyptian alphabet, and then with the help of the Rosetta Stone and his knowledge of Coptic, to read the texts themselves" (Potts Egypt 41). 

COMPARE AND CONTRAST OLD KINGDOM VS. NEW KINGDOM

 OLD KINGDOM                                                            NEW KINGDOM