The king needed allies: the reign of Shepseskaf suggests that the advance of the priests was occasionally resisted. There is evidence that more and more the king rewarded his courtiers and officers with grants of land, drawn from what must at the outset have seemed an inexhaustible bank, from the royal domains. But as the prosperity of the magnates increased, so did their arrogance; over the generations they lost their loyalty to the crowns, other than in the increasingly merely formal recognition of the king’s sovereignty. The position was still more acute in the case of the nomarchs, the governors of the provinces into which Egypt was immemorially divided: there were generally forty-two of them. In the later Old Kingdom these governorships, once the gift of the king conferred on those servants on whose service he could rely, became more and more frequently regarded as hereditary fiefs, descending from father to son with only a passing nod to the royal prerogatives. The nomarchs, ‘great overlords’ as they were called, became, in effect, independent princes, ruling their districts with little concern either for the central authority or, it may in general be suspected, for the welfare of their subjects who, in earlier times, always had recourse to the justice of the king if ever they had cause to show oppression or exploitation either by their masters, if they were workers on the land, or by the officials of the state.
As the pride of the provincial nobles increased, the state which they maintained becoming more and more superb at the expense of the dues which should have been applied to the royal and central government, another force began to emerge which likewise demanded recognition and reward. This was the class of ‘new men’; artisans, craftsmen, and specialists whose particular skills, practiced in a trade or a vocation, brought them prosperity and the desire for advancement for themselves and their families.
All of these influences, wholly alien to the original social structure of the unified kingdom which the Thinite princes had made, began to wear away the foundations of the state. Though this must be speculation further down the scale still, it is not unreasonable to suspect that similar pressures for advancement (in the next world as much as in this one, for this was, after all, Egypt) began to affect even the lowly amongst the population; it may be speculated that the most potent of political motivations, envy, was already manifesting itself. It would be contained for long centuries because of the nature of Egyptian society but beneath the surface it must have been suppurating ripely.
The diminishing of the royal authority and its decline from the status of absolute divinity must have allowed these influences to grow and to gain a hold from which they could not be uprooted. The king might for the while attempt to limit the power of the priests as Shepseskaf evidently did: the incitement of the pious mob and some effective religious sleight of hand would soon set the balance in the temples’ favour once again. Similarly Pepi II, whilst still in command of his powers, would try to hold back the arrogance of the nobles, but to no avail. They could continue to assert themselves and to ride roughshod over every interest but their own, no doubt excepting the interests of the priesthoods, for those of a recalcitrant nobility and an avaricious clergy have always found common cause.
But there was a still greater menace facing Egypt, from beyond the hitherto secure frontiers with which she had surrounded herself. The phenomenon which now bore down in Egypt was one which had been piling up, like a dense and threatening storm cloud on the horizon, and which had already brought destruction and black ruin to other lands around.
INCURSIONS FROM THE DESERT
The changes which overcame Old Kingdom Egypt were similar to those experienced by other Near Eastern societies in the late third millennium. The dangers which now beset the Valley, and in doing so unleashed all the tensions and dissensions which were ready to tear the fabric of Egypt asunder, emerged from the desert. The menace was represented in real terms by the tribes and savage hordes which had always lived in the heartlands of the deserts, alternately looking with envy and contempt (to judge at least by later, similar cases) at the mighty civilization which they now saw lying open and vulnerable to them.
The way of life of the desert peoples was markedly different from those of the Sumerians and the Egyptians. They eschewed the cities which were so typical of Sumerian society, and they did not attempt to create the highly centralized nation-state which was Egypt’s particular and unique contribution to the history of politics. Some had, of course, come to settle around the coasts and in the oases but many were in all probability nomadic though closely linked by the complex but enduring network of familial and clan ties which have always bound the desert peoples together. To the Sumerians the majority of the desert people were those ‘who know not grain’, just as to the
Egyptians they were ‘the sand-dwellers’ and were accorded other, less restrained, sobriquets.
The desert people had long standing and mutually supportive relationships with the settled people. The nomads, to use a term which is probably anachronistic in that they did not necessarily display the cohesion and accepted customs of those to whom the term may be applied today, were important in the exchange systems on which so much ancient trade depended and for the provision of livestock from the herds which they managed. However, towards the last quarter of the third millennium this relationship began to change and the desert dwellers began to scent the prospect of political power and, hence, access to the wealth and sophistication of the Valley peoples.
World History
