Egyptian civilization arose more than 5,000 years ago. It is one of the earliest civilizations - and one for which we have much information, not only of material remains but also of texts. Spanning over 3,000 years, ancient Egyptian civilization can be studied in terms of the processes of evolution and long-range development of an early civilization. Ancient Egypt can also be analyzed in comparative studies of early civilizations, such as Bruce Trigger’s admirable work Understanding Early Civilizations (2003).
For prehistorians Egypt provides a rich body of evidence, beginning with its long sequence, from the Lower Paleolithic to the introduction and adoption of agriculture in the Neolithic. The Predynastic Period is studied both as the continuation of that sequence and as the rise of complex society and the origins of a pristine state.
Although settlement evidence is generally not well preserved, ancient Egypt was an urban society, and the processes of urbanization can also be studied there. It is not merely a coincidence that the largest city in Africa today, Cairo, is in the same region in northern Egypt as was the earliest capital of Memphis, founded some 5,000 years ago.
Ancient Egypt provides rich data on the socio-political and economic organization of an early state and on changes in this through three millennia. Pharaonic Egypt was a highly stratified society, as is apparent in both the textual and the archaeological evidence. It was the earliest large territorial state, and, unlike most early states, it was a stable one, in existence for over 800 years, from Dynasty 0 to the end of the Old Kingdom. Its political organization, with the strong institution of kingship, can be studied in different periods, from the earliest state to Egypt’s empire in the New Kingdom, as well as later in the 1st millennium Bc. Control of the New Kingdom empire was very different in southwest Asia than in Nubia, and different forms of colonialism can be examined. Both the archaeological and the textual evidence provide information about different ethnic groups with whom the Egyptians came in contact and of whom members settled in Egypt, and how these groups interacted with Egyptians and reacted to Egyptian culture.
The agricultural system that developed in Neolithic and Predynastic Egypt, which later provided the economic base of the pharaonic state - with huge surpluses - can be studied in terms of the very successful adaptation of farming and eventually irrigation agriculture within the floodplain ecology of the lower Nile Valley. Destruction of the natural habitats of a number of wild animals and plants is not something that has happened only in modern times: this occurred in Egypt as farming spread throughout the Valley and Delta. Environmental studies are relevant for this ongoing process in Egypt - over the course of 7,000+ years. How the ancient Egyptians and the state responded (or did not respond) to environmental change, especially increasing aridity, is also a factor that should be of interest to ecologists and environmentalists today.
Warfare as a factor in socio-political change can be examined in the different periods of pharaonic history, especially in the New Kingdom when military campaigns in Nubia and Syria-Palestine played an important role in expanding and then maintaining Egypt’s empire and were an important source of state and temple income. The technology, organization, and
An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, Second Edition. Kathryn A. Bard. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Logistics of ancient warfare can all be studied from the Egyptian evidence, as can the ideology of the king as war leader.
For some ancient Egyptian technology, such as quarrying and mining, there is much information. Quarry sites are plentiful in the desert regions and the end products of stone quarrying are visible. But there is also representational evidence of stone masonry and other crafts as well as the finds of real tools used in these activities.
Although the wheel was known in Egypt as early as the third millennium bc, wheeled vehicles were not used to transport large stones until Roman times. Why some technology did not change throughout the Dynastic period should be of great interest to us in the modern world, where the pace of technological change is extraordinarily rapid.
From early times the Egyptians developed impressive boat-building technology and had knowledge of navigation. Paintings, reliefs, and models of boats exist, as well as real boats and parts of boats which have been excavated. There are also texts about seafaring expeditions. Long-distance trade and exchange are evident from Predynastic times onward, and in Dynastic times we know that state expeditions were conducted both overland and by sea. There is textual information about the organization and control of this trade and the wide-ranging foreign contacts that it represents.
Ancient Egypt was a literate society, and the invention of writing there was a very important development. Although the hieroglyphic writing system is one of great visual appeal, it may seem cumbersome to us who use the Latin/Roman alphabet today. But the ancient Egyptian writing system was a highly adaptive one that evolved though the millennia. In its latest form it was written using the Coptic alphabet, which is still in use.
Despite the problems posed by the limited range of texts that have survived and the biases in them, writing greatly expands our knowledge of this early civilization. The archaeological evidence cannot be understood alone. For archaeologists, texts are of great importance, for the (often specific) historical context in which evidence is excavated as well as for more culture-specific information.
From the ancient texts we have works of literature, and writing was used to record what could be termed history, law, natural history, science, and medicine. Ideology is in evidence not only in the temples, statues, and reliefs of the gods, but also in texts that illuminate ancient Egyptian beliefs, including the role of the king and the state in religion. The impressive royal monuments in Egypt provide evidence of the nature of Egyptian kingship and cult practices and beliefs, as do the texts that are found on these monuments. Texts also give insight into the processes of legitimization of Egyptian kingship, an institution which controlled vast resources, both human and material.
Ancient Egyptian religion, which has been a major focus of scholarly studies, changed over the course of more than three millennia and its long-term evolution can be studied in the architectural, archaeological, and textual evidence. But religion was also practiced by individuals outside the context of cult temples, in houses and chapels associated with villages such as at Amarna and Deir el-Medina. This personal evidence provides a contrast to the imposing monuments of state religion.
Throughout Egypt, from the Great Pyramid at Giza to the much simpler graves of workers, there is much evidence of the great importance of afterlife beliefs in this civilization. There is also a large body of mortuary texts spanning nearly three millennia which give very detailed information about the wide range of ancient Egyptian beliefs about the afterlife.
Ancient Egyptian mortuary beliefs required that human remains were preserved and protected in burials. Although most ancient burials have been robbed since antiquity for their grave goods, huge numbers of human remains have been excavated and curated over the course of the last 100+ years, providing much potential data for physical anthropologists who study ancient diseases and pathologies, nutrition and diet, and other information that may be preserved in human remains. Ancient cemeteries are still known in Egypt: for example, the cemetery associated with the town of Philadelphia in the Faiyum region, which spans the Greco-Roman Period into the Christian era and contains more than a million bodies, according to an estimate of the excavators (Brigham Young University). When excavated by modern techniques, these burials can enhance the data from earlier excavations of human remains.
The Giza pyramids, and now the excavated evidence of the pyramid town there, represent the great capability of the ancient Egyptian state to plan and complete complex state work projects on an enormous scale. Pharaonic Egypt became very skillful at the organization of its bureaucracy and the extraction of dues and taxes which supported the state.
Although it might be expected that the Giza pyramids were built by slave labor, which was common in the ancient world, we know from Egyptian texts that slavery did not develop in Egypt until the Middle Kingdom, and then only on a small scale. Social relations in this stratified society can be studied through both archaeological and textual evidence.
Egypt was a moneyless society until the later first millennium bc, but there is much information about the economy. The control of wealth and resources, and the economic base of the state, can be studied from archaeological and textual evidence. The role of elites, and control of resources by centralized versus local institutions (both provincial administration and cult temples), can be examined in the economy, as well as the relations of labor. Who controlled what, and how this operated - and changed through time - can all be investigated.
Egyptian civilization did not collapse with the end of periods of centralized control - or throughout the periods of foreign rule, of the Persians, Ptolemies, and Romans. The cults of the gods, mortuary beliefs, the idea of ancient Egyptian kingship, and what John Baines and Norman Yoffee have called “high culture” were fundamental in the continuity of this early civilization, and are worth examining in their cultural, historical, and ideological contexts as well as in comparative studies of early civilizations.
Roman Egypt, which was still pharaonic in much of its culture, was one of the regions where Christianity first spread. It is within this cultural context that the sects and communities of early Christianity in Egypt need to be understood, which may also provide insights into how the new religion developed in different forms in other parts of the Roman world.
Pharaonic Egypt has fascinated people of different cultures who have visited the country in ancient times as well as in recent centuries. Traveling exhibitions of Egyptian art, especially selections from Tutankhamen’s tomb, attract huge crowds of viewers, and Egyptian collections in major museums in the West are very popular. The great beauty and distinctiveness of Egyptian art and the impressiveness of its monumental architecture are readily understood by people today, but how such works functioned in ancient Egyptian culture - and how they can be understood in this context - are issues that I have tried to address in this book. For those who simply want to be better informed about ancient Egypt, and not misled by speculation and the fantastical claims often made in movies and television about this early civilization, I hope that this book is useful.
World History
