Introduction

The relationship between production and consumption defined both social structures and the interaction between people and their environment in the Nile Valley. Egypt was a large country, of small villages, with regional centers focused on local temples, but few major cities. Patterns of settlement, population densities, and economic activity were defined by the Nile and the reliability of flood-based agriculture (Butzer 1976). Communications were dependent on the river: a rapid highway in ideal conditions, but travel out of season was difficult. Individual settlements, towns, and villages, relatively isolated within their agricultural hinterlands for significant parts of the year, show strong local identities, and central government penetration of the provinces was uneven and erratic. It is important, then, to distinguish between the imperatives of local economies - micro-economics at the local level - and the functioning of the national economy, in terms of the macroeconomic structures represented by central government activity.

Cycles of prosperity and crisis are associated with fluctuations in the Nile flood, short and long term, although warfare, imperial expansion, and internal conflict characterize the peaks and troughs of individual cycles. Such cycles are recognized in the archaeological record as periods of major monument building, against periods of few and poor quality monuments. Long-term change is more difficult to evaluate. The greatest mass of data comes from the New Kingdom, but differences are visible in the political and cultural regimes of the Old or Middle Kingdoms, which must be reflected in economic activity. Evidence for the prehistoric, pre-Pharaonic economy of the Nile Valley is very limited and provides little basis for speculation about economic factors in the origins of Egyptian civilization. However, deep common imperatives run throughout the Pharaonic economy at all levels and all periods.