THE REGIONS OF EGYPT

As we have seen, the scale and pace of urban development in Early Dynastic Egypt depended to a large extent on local factors, economic, political, ecological and topographic. To appreciate the full complexity of local variation, it is important to consider the evidence from a regional perspective. The geographic location of settlement sites, their hinterlands and economic resources, and their relationships with neighbouring settlements all provide valuable evidence for the nature of provincial life in ancient Egypt (cf. Bietak 1979:133). The dominance not only of particular sites but also of certain regions during the period of state formation and the following Early Dynastic period can be understood by looking at the distribution of natural resources along the Nile valley.

‘Nature may often set the stage for history’ (Seidlmayer 1996b: 108), and the regions with an advantageous resource base—ideally a combination of agricultural potential, access to minerals, and a strategic position allowing control of trade or transport routes— emerged as the main centres of power in the late Predynastic period. The foundation of the Egyptian state brought overtly political factors into play, occasionally overriding local conditions—as in the case of Elephantine—to promote the development of a particular location as an outpost of central government control. The foundation of the new national capital at Memphis propelled the surrounding region to prominence far beyond that which it had enjoyed before the First Dynasty. As the Early Dynastic period progressed and the court established ever more effective mechanisms for controlling the national economy, some of the older centres of influence lost out to newer state foundations. The history of the regions of Egypt during the late fourth and early third millenniums BC therefore reflects the complex interplay of a host of factors, local, regional and national. As Egypt headed towards the centralised state characteristic of the Old Kingdom, the success or failure of a particular region in attaining or maintaining prominence depended to an ever greater degree on the priorities of the court. In the Early Dynastic period, as in later phases of Egyptian history, regional development is thus an instructive barometer of central authority.