Egypt

Egypt has been called ‘the civilization without cities’. While the lack of evidence for major urban centers with domestic residential quarters dating to the earlier part of Egyptian history may partially be due to heavy sedimentation or later human activities, one should not ignore the fact that large cities would hardly have had enough room to flourish in the tight Nile Valley (Figure 3).

From the beginning of sedentism in the Nile Valley up to the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt and the foundation of the Egyptian state (c. 4500-3100 BC), one can distinguish three broad patterns of settlement development:

Phase 1 - Tasian-Badarian period (c. 4500-3900 BC). Small, more or less self-sufficient farming communities were located on the margins of the floodplain, levees, and the low desert to avoid annual flooding, but to have easy access to rich alluvium left behind by the Nile.

Phase 2 - Amratian or Naqada I period (c. 39003500 BC). Small towns, perhaps centers for craft activities, involved in regional exchange, were located along the edge of the floodplain and on the levees. These towns were usually associated with cemeteries that began to exhibit signs of social differentiation.

Phase 3 - Gerzean or Nagada II period (c. 3500-3200BC). Small cities that housed protokingdoms exercised control over a stretch of the floodplain and towns and villages within it. The Egyptian state seems to have emerged in Naqada III or protodynastic period (c. 3200-3000 BC) within the context of competition and coalition among three major protokingdoms in the Upper Egypt: This, Naqada, and Hierakonpolis.

This

This or Thinis (ancient Abedjo) is actually famous for its funerary satellite site Abydos. Abydos may have started out as a burial ground on the outskirts of the city of This, but a large number of protodynastic burials, not to mention the main burial ground for the kings of the first and second dynasty, turned Abydos into the most prominent necropolis in Egypt, already signifying its later importance as the main cult center of the god Osiris, the primary god of the land of the dead.

Naqada

In the protodynastic period, the South Town at Naqada (ancient Nubt) housed a large mudbrick enclosure, perhaps a royal compound, some 50 m long and 34 m wide with walls 2 m thick. At the Naqada cemetery, one can also see increasing evidence for social differentiation in larger, better constructed, and more lavishly furnished tombs. One particular example is Tomb T5, where an individual was found accompanied with remains of human sacrifice.

Hierakonpolis

The city of Hierakonpolis (ancient Nekhen), perhaps the most important protodynastic center in Upper

Egypt, consists of two zones: the low mound located in the floodplain where the remains of the town and the Temple Mound are found, and a group of interrelated sites stretching westward for 2 km into the Western Desert. Excavations at the Temple Mound have exposed traces of an early shrine - perhaps dedicated to Horus, the god of Hierakonpolis - in which the famous Main Deposit was discovered, including some of the most important artifacts pertaining to the era of state formation, such as the King Scorpion macehead and the Narmer Palette. To the north of the Temple Mound, remains of a monumental building have been excavated, featuring a 20 m wide gate built with mudbrick in the distinct niche-and-buttress style reminiscent of Uruk period Mesopotamian masonry.

Excavations at the Hierakonpolis cemetery indicate an accelerated process of social differentiation from late predynastic to protodynastic period, as one can see a marked difference in the size and contents of the burials. One remarkable burial is Tomb 100, where the walls are decorated with colorful painting combining Egyptian and Near Eastern motifs.

As urbanism and political developments were underway in Upper Egypt, a number of cities flourished in Lower Egypt, most importantly Buto.

Buto

Founded in the mid-fourth millennium BC on a sand dune about 30 km south of the Mediterranean coast in marshlands of northwestern delta, Buto soon became an important town engaged in exchange networks of the eastern Mediterranean, evident in pottery finds from the Levant and Syria and the so-called ‘clay-cones’ reminiscent of Uruk Mesopotamia.

By the Naqada II period, people from Upper Egypt began expanding northward into Lower Egypt. While this movement may have initially been a peaceful process to allow people of Upper Egypt more direct access to the eastern Mediterranean and its resources, archaeological and iconographic evidence suggests that the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt was achieved through military campaigns waged by several generations of Upper Egyptian rulers culminating in a Thinite ruler called Narmer.

According to Manetho, the third century BC high priest at Heliopolis who composed a history of Egypt, the legendary first pharaoh of Egypt, Menes (who may or may not be the same person as Narmer), founded a city at the juncture of Upper and Lower Egypt to serve as the capital of the unified kingdom. This city came to be called inbu-hedj (‘white walls’) in Egyptian and Memphis in Greek.

Memphis

The ruins of Memphis, about 20 km south of Cairo, occupy an area of c. 4 km from north to south and 1.5 km from east to west. Despite sustained archaeological fieldwork since the nineteenth century, no settlement remains earlier than the First Intermediate period have been discovered, mostly due to heavy overburden of later periods. The city of Memphis is important for a number of monuments, including the Temple of Ptah that may have begun in Early Dynastic period, although nothing earlier than Nineteenth Dynasty has been discovered so far. The area around Memphis is, however, dotted with remains of Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom times: to the south is Saqqara where mastabas of the Early Dynastic officials and the Step Pyramid of Djoser are located, and to the north Giza where the pyramid complexes of the Fourth Dynasty pharaohs Khufu, Khafra, and Menkaura are to be found.

As the capital of Egypt during Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom times (c. 3000-2165 BC), Memphis was the most important political and cultural center in the land. The temple of the sun god Ra’ at Heliopolis to the northeast of Memphis was an important religious center with strong influence on Old Kingdom royal ideology, gradually replacing Horus with Ra’ as the primary deity associated with the pharaoh. Memphis also produced one of the more important Egyptian myths of creation revolving around Ptah. Ateliers working out of Memphis under the patronage of the royal court were responsible for creating splendid works of art and architecture that characterize the distinct Old Kingdom style, highly regarded and emulated in later phases of Egyptian history. However, despite its political and cultural importance, Memphis was basically a royal city where the court and high officials resided, while the population continued to live in small towns and villages along the Nile.

With the decline of the Old Kingdom and disintegration of the central government, Memphis ceased to be the capital and two other cities laid claim to power: Herakleopolis in Middle Egypt where the Ninth and Tenth Dynasties ruled and Thebes in Upper Egypt where Eleventh and subsequently Twelfth Dynasty pharaohs embarked on another series of campaigns to reunify Egypt and establish the Middle Kingdom.