The old kingdom in Ancient Egypt |
The 4th dynasty (c. 2575–c. 2465 BCE)
The first king of the 4th dynasty, Snefru, probably built the step pyramid of Maydūm and then modified it to form the first true pyramid. Due west of Maydūm was the small step pyramid of Saylah, in Al-Fayyūm, at which Snefru also worked. He built two pyramids at Dahshūr; the south of the two is known as the Blunted Pyramid because its upper part has a shallower angle of inclination than its lower part.
This difference may be due to structural problems or may have been planned from the start, in which case the resulting profile may reproduce a solar symbol of creation. The northern Dahshūr pyramid, the latter of the two, has the same angle of inclination as the upper part of the Blunted Pyramid and a base area exceeded only by that of the Great Pyramid at Giza. All three of Snefru’s pyramids had mortuary complexes attached to them. Snefru’s building achievements were thus at least as great as those of any later king and introduced a century of unparalleled construction.
From a long perspective, the 4th
dynasty was an isolated phenomenon, a period when the potential of
centralization was realized to its utmost and a disproportionate amount of the
state’s resources were used on the kings’ mortuary provisions, almost certainly
at the expense of general living standards.
No significant 4th-dynasty sites have been found away from the Memphite area.
Tomb inscriptions show that high officials were granted estates scattered over
many nomes, especially in the delta. This pattern of landholding may have
avoided the formation of local centers of influence while encouraging intensive
exploitation of the land. People who worked on these estates were not free to
move, and they paid a high proportion of their earnings in dues and taxes. The
building enterprises must have relied on drafting vast numbers of men, probably
after the harvest had been gathered in the early summer and during part of the
inundation.
Snefru’s was the first king’s name that was regularly written inside the cartouche, an elongated oval that is one of the most characteristic Egyptian symbols. The cartouche itself is older and was shown as a gift bestowed by gods on the king, signifying a long duration on the throne. It soon acquired associations with the sun, so that its first use by the builder of the first true pyramid, which is probably also a
a solar symbol is not coincidental
Snefru’s successor, Khufu (Cheops), built the Great Pyramid at Giza (Al-Jīzah), to which was added the slightly smaller second pyramid of one of Khufu’s sons, Khafre (more correctly Rekhaef, the Chephren of Greek sources), and that of Menkaure (Mycerinus). Khufu’s successor, his son Redjedef, began a pyramid at Abū Ruwaysh, and a king of an uncertain name began one at Zawyat al-ʿAryan. The last known king of the dynasty (there was probably one more), Shepseskaf, built a monumental mastaba at south Ṣaqqārah and was the only Old Kingdom ruler not to begin a pyramid. These works, especially the Great Pyramid, show a great mastery of monumental stoneworking: individual blocks were large or colossal and were extremely accurately fitted to one another. Surveying and planning also were carried out with remarkable precision.
Apart from the colossal conception of
the pyramids themselves, the temple complexes attached to them show great
mastery of architectural forms. Khufu’s temple or approach causeway was
decorated with impressive reliefs, fragments of which were incorporated in the
12th-dynasty pyramid of Amenemhet I at
Al-Lisht. The best-known of all Egyptian sculptures, Khafre’s Great Sphinx at Giza and his
extraordinary seated statue of Nubian gneiss, date from the middle 4th dynasty.
The Giza pyramids form a group of more or less completed monuments
surrounded by many tombs of the royal family and the elite, hierarchically
organized and laid out in neat patterns. This arrangement contrasts with that
of the reign of Snefru when important tombs were built at Maydūm and Ṣaqqārah,
while the King was probably buried at Dahshūr. Of the Giza tombs, only those of
the highest-ranking officials were decorated; except among the immediate
entourage of the kings, the freedom of expression of officials was greatly
restricted. Most of the highest officials were members of the large royal
family so that power was concentrated by kinship as well as by other means.
This did not prevent factional strife: the complex of Redjedef was deliberately
and thoroughly destroyed, probably at the instigation of his successor, Khafre.
The Palermo Stone records a campaign to Lower Nubia in the reign of Snefru may be associated with graffiti in the area itself. The Egyptians founded a settlement at Buhen, at the north end of the Second Cataract, which endured for 200 years; others may have been founded between there and Elephantine. The purposes of this penetration were probably to establish trade farther south and to create a buffer zone. No archaeological traces of a settled population in Lower Nubia have been found for the Old Kingdom period; the oppressive presence of Egypt seems to have robbed the inhabitants of their resources, as the provinces were exploited in favor of the king and the elite.
Snefru and the builders of the Giza pyramids represented a classic age
to later times. Snefru was the prototype of
a good king, whereas Khufu and Khafre had tyrannical reputations, perhaps only
because of the size of their monuments. Little direct evidence for political or
other attitudes survives from the dynasty, in part because the writing was only
just beginning to be used for recording continuous texts. Many great works of
art were, however, produced for kings and members of the elite, and these set a
pattern for later work. Kings of the 4th dynasty identified themselves, at
least from the time of Redjedef,
as Son of Re (the sun god); worship of
the sun god reached a peak in the 5th dynasty.
The 5th dynasty (c. 2465–c. 2325 BCE)
The first two kings of the 5th dynasty, Userkaf, and Sahure, were sons of
Khentkaues, who was a member of the 4th Dynasty royal family. The third
king, Neferirkare,
may also have been her son. A story from the Middle Kingdom that makes them all
sons of a priest of Re may derive from a tradition that they were true
worshipers of the sun god and implies, probably falsely, that the 4th Dynasty kings were not. Six kings of the 5th dynasty displayed their devotion to the
sun god by building personal temples for his cult. These temples, of which the
two so far identified are sited similarly to pyramids, probably had a mortuary
significance for the king as well as honoring the god. The kings’ pyramids
should therefore be seen in conjunction with the sun temples, some of which
received lavish endowments and were served by many high-ranking officials.
Pyramids have been identified for seven of the nine kings of the
dynasty, at Ṣaqqārah (Userkaf and Unas, the last
king), Abū Ṣīr (Sahure,
Neferirkare, Reneferef, and Neuserre), and south Ṣaqqārah (Djedkare Izezi, the
eighth king). The pyramids are smaller and less solidly constructed than those
of the 4th dynasty, but the reliefs from their mortuary temples are better
preserved and of very fine quality; that of Sahure gives a fair impression of
their decorative program. The interiors contained religious scenes relating to the provision for Sahure in the next life, while the exteriors presented his
“historical” role and relations with the gods. Sea expeditions to Lebanon to acquire
timber are depicted, as are aggression against and capture of Libyans. Despite
the apparent precision with which captives are named and total figures are given,
these scenes may not refer to specific events, for the same motifs with the
same details were frequently shown over the next 250 years; Sahure’s use of
them might not have been the earliest.
Something of the working of the central administration is visible in
papyri from the mortuary temples of Neferirkare and Reneferef at Abū Ṣīr. These
show well-developed methods of accounting and meticulous recordkeeping
and document the complicated redistribution of goods and materials between the
royal residence, the temples, and officials who held priesthoods. Despite this
evidence for detailed organization, the consumption of papyrus was
modest and cannot be compared, for example, with that of the Greco-Roman times.
The last three kings of the dynasty, Menkauhor, Djedkare Izezi, and Unas, did not have personal names compounded with “-Re,” the name of the sun god (Djedkare is a name assumed on accession), and Izezi and Unas did not build solar temples. Thus, there was a slight shift away from the solar cult. The shift could be linked with the rise of Osiris, the god of the dead, who is first attested from the reign of Neuserre. His origin was, however, probably some centuries earlier. The pyramid of Unas, whose approach causeway was richly decorated with historical and religious scenes, is inscribed inside with spells intended to aid the deceased in the hereafter; varying selections of the spells occur in all later Old Kingdom pyramids. (As a collection, they are known as the Pyramid Texts.) Many of the spells were old when they were inscribed; their presence documents the increasing use of writing rather than a change in beliefs. The Pyramid Texts show the importance of Osiris, at least for the king’s passage into the next world: it was an undertaking that aroused anxiety and had to be assisted by elaborate rituals and spells.
The 6th dynasty (c. 2325–c. 2150 BCE)
No marked change can be discerned between the reigns of Unas
and Teti, the first king of the 6th dynasty. Around Teti’s pyramid in the
northern portion of Ṣaqqārah was built a cemetery of large tombs, including
those of several viziers. Together with tombs near the pyramid of Unas, this is
the latest group of private monuments of the Old Kingdom in the Memphite area.
Information on the 6th Dynasty's political and external affairs is more
abundant because the inscriptions of high officials were longer. Whether the
circumstances they describe were also typical of less loquacious ages
is unknown, but the very existence of such inscriptions is evidence of a
tendency for greater independence among officials. One, Weni, who lived from the
reign of Teti through those of Pepi I and Merenre, was a special judge in the trial of a conspiracy in
the royal household to mount several campaigns against a region east of Egypt
or in southern Palestine and organized two quarrying expeditions. In the
absence of a standing army, the Egyptian force was levied from the provinces by
officials from local administrative centers and other settlements; there were
also contingents from
several southern countries and a tribe of the Eastern Desert.
Three biographies of officials from Elephantine record trading
expeditions to the south in the reigns of Pepi I and Pepi II. The location
of the regions named in them is debated and may have been as far afield as the
Butāna, south of the Fifth Cataract. Some of the trade routes ran through
the Western
Desert, where the Egyptians established an administrative post at Balāṭ in
Al-Dākhilah Oasis, some distance west of Al-Khārijah Oasis. Egypt no longer
controlled Lower Nubia, which was settled by the C Group and formed into
political units of gradually increasing size, possibly as far as Karmah (Kerma), south
of the Third Cataract. Karmah was the southern cultural successor of the Nubian
A-Group and became an urban center in the late 3rd millennium BCE,
remaining Egypt’s chief southern neighbor for seven centuries. To the north, the Karmah state stretched as far as the Second Cataract and at times farther
still. Its southern extent has not been determined, but sites of similar material culture are
scattered over vast areas of central Sudan.
The 7th and 8th dynasties (c. 2150–c. 2130 BCE)
Pepi II was followed by several ephemeral rulers,
who were in turn succeeded by the short-lived 7th dynasty of Manetho’s history
(from which no king’s name is known) and the 8th, one of whose kings, Ibi,
built a small pyramid southern Ṣaqqārah. Several 8th-dynasty kings are known
from inscriptions found in the temple of Min at Qifṭ (Coptos)
in the south; this suggests that their rule was recognized throughout the
country. The instability of the throne is, however, a sign of political decay, and the fiction of the centralized rule may have been accepted only because there was no alternative style
of government to kingship.
With the end of the 8th dynasty, the Old Kingdom's system of control collapsed. At about that time, there were incidents of famine and local violence. The country emerged impoverished and decentralized from this episode, the prime cause of which may have been a political failure, environmental disaster, or, more probably, a combination of the two. In that period the desiccation of northeastern Africa reached a peak, producing conditions similar to those of contemporary times, and a related succession of low inundations may have coincided with the decay of central political authority. These environmental changes are, however, only approximately dated, and their relationship with the collapse cannot be proved.
The 9th dynasty (c. 2130–2080 BCE)
After the end of the 8th dynasty, the throne passed to kings from
Heracleopolis, who made their native city the capital, although Memphis continued
to be important. They were acknowledged throughout the country, but
inscriptions of nomarchs (chief
officials of nomes) in the south show that the kings’ rule was nominal. At Dara,
north of Asyūṭ, for example, a local ruler called Khety styled himself
in a regal manner and built a pyramid with a surrounding “courtly” cemetery. At
Al-Miʿalla, south of Luxor, Ankhtify,
the nomarch of
the al-Jabalayn region, recorded his annexation of the Idfū nome and
extensive raiding in the Theban area. Ankhtify acknowledged an unidentifiable
king Neferkare but campaigned with his own troops. Major themes of inscriptions
of the period are the nomarch’s provision of food supplies for his people in
times of famine and his success in promoting irrigation works. Artificial
irrigation had probably long been practiced, but exceptional poverty and crop
failure made concerns with it worth recording. Inscriptions of Nubian
mercenaries employed by local rulers in the south indicate how entrenched
military action was.
The 10th (c. 2080–c. 1970 BCE) and 11th (2081–1938 BCE) dynasties
A period of generalized conflict focused on rival dynasties at Thebes and Heracleopolis. The
latter, the 10th, probably continued the line of the 9th. The founder of the
9th or 10th dynasty was named Khety, and the dynasty as a whole was termed
the House of Khety. Several Heracleopolitan kings were named Khety;
another important name is Merikare. There was intermittent conflict,
and the boundary between the two realms shifted around the region of Abydos.
As yet, the course of events in this period cannot be reconstructed.
Several major literary texts purport to describe the upheavals of the First Intermediate period—the Instruction for Merikare, for example, is ascribed to one of the kings of Heracleopolis. These texts led earlier Egyptologists to posit a Heracleopolitan literary flowering, but there is now a tendency to date them to the Middle Kingdom so that they would have been written with enough hindsight to allow a more effective critique of the sacred order.
Until the 11th dynasty made Thebes its capital, Armant (Greek, Hermonthis), on the west
bank of the Nile was the center of the Theban nome.
The dynasty honored as its ancestor the God’s Father Mentuhotep, probably the
father of its first king, Inyotef I (2081–65 BCE), whose successors were
Inyotef II and Inyotef III (2065–16 and 2016–08 BCE, respectively). The
fourth king, Mentuhotep
II (2008–1957 BCE, whose throne name was Nebhepetre), gradually
reunited Egypt and ousted the Heracleopolitans, changing his titulary in stages
to record his conquests. Around his 20th regnal year, he assumed the Horus name
Divine of the White Crown, implicitly claiming all of Upper Egypt. By his
regnal year 42, this had been changed to Uniter of the Two Lands, a traditional
royal epithet that he revived with a literal meaning. In later times Mentuhotep
was celebrated as the founder of the epoch now known as the Middle Kingdom. His
remarkable mortuary complex at Dayr al-Baḥrī, which
seems to have had no pyramid, was the architectural inspiration for Hatshepsut’s later
structure built alongside.
In the First Intermediate period, monuments were set up by a slightly larger section of the population, and, in the absence of central control, internal dissent and conflicts of authority became visible in public records. Nonroyal individuals took over some of the privileges of royalty, notable identification with Osiris in the hereafter, and the use of the Pyramid Texts; these were incorporated into a more extensive corpus inscribed on coffins (and hence termed the Coffin Texts) and continued to be inscribed during the Middle Kingdom. The unified state of the Middle Kingdom did not reject these acquisitions and so had a broader cultural
basis than the Old Kingdom.
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