The apex of the Nile Delta emerges as a crucial region from the very beginning of Egyptian history (Figure 10.3). It was here that the early kings of a united Egypt chose to establish their capital city, the centre of the administrative apparatus created to supervise and control the new nation state. However, Memphis was certainly not founded in a virgin location, nor was the choice of location arbitrary. Three localities displaying the ceramic assemblage characteristic of the Predynastic northern tradition have been excavated along a short stretch of the Nile’s east bank, perhaps indicating that there was a significant density of settlement in the Memphite region in the early Predynastic period.
The sudden demise of Maadi in the latter part of Naqada II raises important questions; the most plausible explanation would appear to lie in the changes in climate, ecology and subsistence patterns which seem to have occurred throughout Egypt at this time. The desiccation of the desert savannahs following the end of the Neolithic subpluvial was accompanied by a change to agriculture as the principal subsistence base. The decline in the importance of herding and the deterioration of the previously advantageous desert-edge ecosystem seem to have led to the widespread relocation of settlements to the floodplain. The alluvium now offered the most attractive environment for human activity, which was based almost entirely on agriculture. Maadi, situated on the low desert with easy access to the now arid pasturages, was no longer an attractive location for a local population of farmers. It is likely that this population moved to a new settlement in the floodplain, and the site later occupied by the city of Memphis would be an obvious candidate.
At the beginning of the Early Dynastic period incipient urbanism - and in particular the establishment of Memphis as the national capital - seems to have had a major impact on the smaller, surrounding settlements. The growth of Memphis as the dominant population centre of the region, and changes in local topography—caused by the eastward movement of the Nile channel and the rising height of the river’s floodplain - emerge as the major factors affecting settlement and cemetery distribution in the Memphis region during the Early Dynastic period.
Figure 10.3 Map of the Memphite region showing sites mentioned in the text (after Jeffreys and Tavares 1994:161, fig. 1).
The early city of Memphis
It would not be surprising if future excavations revealed that the city of Memphis had indeed come into existence during the late Naqada II period. Isolated stone palettes found in the vicinity of Abusir (Kaiser 1964:106-7) strongly suggest a late Predynastic presence and, as we have seen in Chapter 9, the earliest graves at Helwan pre-date the beginning of the First Dynasty, the traditional date for the foundation of Memphis.
A strategic location
The choice of Memphis by Egypt’s first kings as their new national capital reflects the site’s strategic importance. First, and most obvious, the apex of the Delta was a politically opportune location for the state’s administrative centre, standing at the ‘balance of the Two Lands’ (a later appellation for Memphis) and offering ready access to both parts of the country. The older, Predynastic centres of power, This and Hierakonpolis, were too remote from the vast expanse of the Delta which had been incorporated into the unified state. Only a city within easy reach of both the Nile valley to the south and the more spread out, difficult terrain to the north could provide the necessary political control that the rulers of Early Dynastic Egypt required.
Second, the region of Memphis must have served as an important node for transport and communications, even before the unification of Egypt. The region probably acted as a conduit for much, if not all, of the riverine trade between northern and southern Egypt. Moreover, commodities (such as wine, precious oils and metals) imported from the Near East by the royal courts of Predynastic Upper Egypt would have been channelled through the Memphite region on their way south. In short, therefore, the site of Memphis offered the rulers of the Early Dynastic period an ideal location for controlling internal trade within their realm, an essential requirement for a state-directed, redistributive economy. Equally important for the national administration was the ability to control communications within Egypt. The Nile provided the easiest and quickest artery of communication, and the national capital was, again, ideally located in this respect. Recent geological surveys of the Memphite region have revealed much about its topography in ancient times. It appears that the location of Memphis may have been even more advantageous for controlling trade, transport and communications than was previously appreciated. Surveys and drill cores have shown that the level of the Nile floodplain has steadily risen over the last five millenniums (Jeffreys and Tavares 1994:157-8). When the floodplain was much lower, as it would have been in Predynastic and Early Dynastic times, the outwash fans of the Wadi Hof and Wadi Digla would have been much more prominent features on the east bank. The fan associated with the Wadi Hof extended a significant way into the Nile floodplain, forming a constriction in the vicinity of Memphis. The valley may have narrowed at this point to a mere 3 kilometres (Jeffreys and Tavares 1994:158), making it the ideal place for controlling river traffic.
Third, the Memphite region seems to have been favourably located for the control not only of riverine trade, but also of desert trade routes (cf. Jeffreys and Tavares 1994:158). The two outwash fans already mentioned gave access to extensive wadi systems of the eastern desert. In Predynastic times, the Wadi Digla may have served as a trade route between the Memphite region and the Near East, to judge from the unusual concentration of foreign artefacts found in the Predynastic settlement of Maadi. Access to, and control of, trade routes between Egypt and the Near East seems to have been a preoccupation of Egypt’s rulers during the period of state formation. The desire to monopolise foreign trade may have been one of the primary factors behind the political unification of Egypt. The foundation of the national capital at the junction of an important trade route with the Nile valley is not likely to have been accidental. Moreover, the Wadis Hof and Digla provided the Memphite region with accessible desert pasturage. As we have already seen in the cases of Hierakonpolis and Elkab, the combination of desert pasturage and alluvial arable land in the same area was a particularly attractive one for early settlement; this combination no doubt contributed to the prosperity of the Memphite region from early Predynastic times.
The settlement and cemeteries of Memphis in the Early Dynastic period
The extensive Early Dynastic cemeteries of North Saqqara/Abusir (on the west bank) and Helwan/el-Maasara (on the east bank) are eloquent testimony to the size of early Memphis and to the wealth of its highest officials. The elite mastabas strung out along the edge of the escarpment at North Saqqara are impressive funerary constructions (Emery 1949, 1954, 1958). A cemetery of poorer graves was excavated by Bonnet (1928) a little to the north, near the modern village of Abusir, and more recent investigations by the Egyptian Antiquities Organisation have uncovered further Early Dynastic graves in this area (Leclant and Clerc 1992:242, 1993:200, 1994:376). It is now clear that both cemetery areas in fact comprise a single, large burial ground which served the early city of Memphis. Over on the east bank of the river, and directly opposite the elite cemetery of North Saqqara, the huge necropolis of Helwan (more precisely, el-Maasara) represents the largest Early Dynastic burial ground anywhere in Egypt (Saad 1947, 1951; Wilkinson 1996a). Helwan clearly served as the capital’s second cemetery during the first three dynasties. The sheer number of burials indicates a considerable Early Dynastic population, including a large administrative class.
Drill cores taken by the Egypt Exploration Society’s Survey of Memphis have revealed deposits of Early Dynastic material concentrated in a band running along the base of the North Saqqara escarpment (Giddy and Jeffreys 1991). Here, it seems, was the core of the early city, and such a location fits well with the distribution of cemeteries in the vicinity: the Early Dynastic city would have stood directly between its two principal cemeteries, North Saqqara and Helwan. The inhabited area also seems to have spread northwards, occupying an area close to the modern village of Abusir. This probably reflects the location of the Nile channel in ancient times, which evidently flowed quite close to the edge of the Saqqara escarpment, providing only a thin strip of land on its western bank for cultivation and settlement (Jeffreys and Tavares 1994:155-7). Hence, the early city of Memphis would have extended as a ribbon development along the river’s edge, and evidently in a northerly direction. Towards the end of the Third Dynasty, the eastward progression of the river channel and the steady rise in the height of the floodplain seem to have caused the centre of population to shift southwards. The Abusir Wadi continued to serve as a burial ground, but the main access route to the necropolis seems to have been further south, and entered from the plateau from the east (Jeffreys and Tavares 1994:159). The elite cemetery of North Saqqara, so closely linked to the early city, was abandoned, and high-status burials were constructed further south, closer to the Step Pyramid enclosure of Netjerikhet.
The foundation and growth of Memphis: regional effects
The foundation of Memphis, and its growth to become the largest concentration of population and employment in the region, might be expected to have had profound effects upon the demography of the surrounding area. However, the degree to which these developments affected individual communities seems to have depended very much upon local factors. Thus, some communities were dealt a fatal blow by the rise of Memphis; others, perhaps with greater natural advantages, survived and prospered.
The repercussions were certainly felt as far afield as Tarkhan. Having been an important centre during the period of state formation (‘Dynasty 0’), Tarkhan subsequently declined to a provincial backwater by the end of the First Dynasty. It is probable that, by the middle of the First Dynasty or so, Memphis had become the largest city in Egypt. Hence, whilst there is no evidence to support Petrie’s suggestion that the Tarkhan settlement was actually ‘the temporary capital of the dynastic people, before the founding of Memphis’ (Petrie 1914:1), his linkage of the growth of Memphis with the decline of Tarkhan is probably a valid one. The rise of Memphis and the huge expansion of the cemetery at Helwan seem to have had little effect, however, on the community at Tura. This was probably a direct successor of the Predynastic settlement at Maadi, since the two sites are only 1 kilometre apart. The area’s ecological and strategic advantages (discussed above) were clearly attractive to settlement. Such local factors seem to have enabled the community to survive and prosper even after the growth of Memphis: the burial record at Tura continues unbroken throughout ‘Dynasty 0’ and the Early Dynastic period, with some of the wealthiest graves dating to the First Dynasty. Also largely unaffected was the community at Abu Rawash, at the northern end of the Memphite necropolis. The sequence of Early Dynastic cemeteries continues unbroken, the number of interments undiminished, throughout ‘Dynasty 0’, the First and Second Dynasties. At Zawiyet el-Aryan, nearer Memphis, the picture is very different. The foundation and growth of the new capital appears to have dealt the small community a fatal blow, the number of burials in the cemetery showing a dramatic decline after the beginning of the First Dynasty (although the burial rate increases again slightly towards the end of the First Dynasty; and a similar temporary resurgence of local activity may also be reflected in the First Dynasty elite mastabas at Tarkhan [Wilkinson 1993a:211]).
World History
