Conclusion

The history of Egypt’s contact with the outside world is above aU concerned with power and prestige. In the earliest commercial links between the Egyptians and their neighbours in Africa and the Near East, the principal motivation appears to have been to obtain rare or exotic materials and products that could serve to bolster the power base of the individuals or groups concerned. Trade, whether inter-regional or international, was an integral part of the formation and expansion of the early Near Eastern states.

By the time that the full national administrative apparatus was operating, in the Middle and New kingdoms, there were large sectors of royal bureaucracy and military power dedicated solely to the process of obtaining taxes and conscripted labour from the provinces of Egypt. This efficient national economic system formed the ideal basis for the process of exacting tribute (inu) and spoils from the lands outside Egypt’s borders. Both ideologically and economically, the acts of conquering and ruling were inseparable from the idea of absorbing new wealth into the estates of the king and the major religious cults.

It was not, however, simply a question of importing materials and commodities into Egypt. There also appears to have been a steady influx of people, as well as linguistic and cultural influences, leading to the creation of a distinctly cosmopolitan and multicultural society from at least the New Kingdom onwards. The apparent tolerance of foreigners within Egyptian society was nevertheless accompanied by a tremendous continuity in terms of the core values and beliefs of the indigenous population (so far as we can tell, given the bias of surviving data towards the elite end of society). Egyptian culture was apparently strong and flexible enough to survive long periods of Libyan, Kushite, Persian, and Ptolemaic domination without the essence of the Egyptians’ identity as a nation being affected.