The People of the Cobra Province in Egypt : A Local History, 4500 to 1500 BC

The book delivers a history from below for the first half of Egyptian history covering the earliest settlements, state formation and the pyramid age. The focus is on the Wadjet province, about 350 km south of modern Cairo in Upper Egypt. Here archaeological records provide an especially rich dataset for the material culture of farmers. Histories of Ancient Egypt have focussed heavily on the kings, monuments and inscriptions, while the working population is hardly mentioned. The book investigates the life of people far from the centres of power. One main aim of the book is the interaction between farmers and the ruling classes at the centres of power and locally. How did decisions at the royal centre affect the life of ordinary people? The Introduction offers a critical survey of Egyptologists and their attitudes towards the working class. The social and cultural background of these researchers is analysed to assess how heavily they are influenced by time and their political and cultural background. The First chapter then describes the location and gives a history of previous research and excavations. The archaeological sites and the recorded ancient place names of the province are presented to provide a geographical framework for the book. The following chapters are arranged in chronological order, mainly according to the archaeological phases visible in the province. It appears that in phases of a weak central government, people in the provinces were much better off, while in phases of a strong central government burials of poorer people are almost absent. The reasons for this are discussed. A substantial part of the book comprises descriptions of single burials and the material culture in the province. The archaeology of the poorer people is the main focus. Burial customs and questions of production are discussed. For a fuller picture, evidence from other parts of Egypt is also taken into account. Thus settlement sites in other regions are presented to provide contemporary evidence for living conditions in particular periods. As the book will focus on the lower classes, the Tributary Mode of Production will be used as the main theoretical framework. The Tributary Mode of Production (previously known as the Asiatic Mode of Production) is a term that goes back to Karl Marx, but was mainly used in the 20th century to describe ancient societies whose economies were not based on slaves. A constant question will be the status of the working population. Were they slaves, serfs or free citizens? It will be argued that they were most often in a dependent position comparable to that of serfs, while there is little evidence for slavery. The numerous burials presented in the volume are important for highlighting the diversity of burials in the different periods. Many will be placed in special subchapters. Readers can skip these chapters when they prefer to concentrate on the main text. HISTORY / Ancient / Egypt Cover 1 Book Title 2 Copyright 3 Dedication 4 Table of Contents 6 List of figures and tables 8 Chronological chart 11 Introduction 12 1. Setting and history of research in Wadjet Province 40 Archaeology 45 History of research 45 Economy 47 Towns in the Tenth Upper Egyptian province 51 Deities 54 2. The Predynastic and Early Dynastic Periods 62 The Predynastic Period 62 The Badarian Period 63 The Naqada Period 70 The Early Dynastic Period 80 The Wadjet province in Early Dynastic Egypt 84 3. Old Kingdom I 96 The archaeological record from cemeteries 96 Pyramid building 100 Burials of the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties 118 Old Kingdom settlements 124 The Old Kingdom state: summary 126 4. Old Kingdom II, the First Intermediate Period, and the early Middle Kingdom 136 End of the Old Kingdom: the archaeology of the period 136 Part I: the archaeological record 136 Part II: the written records, history and social relations 162 Society and political history of the late Old Kingdom to thebeginning of the Middle Kingdom 166 5. The Middle Kingdom 176 Building a new state in the early Middle Kingdom 178 The late Middle Kingdom 191 Evidence from stelae 198 Middle Kingdom settlements 205 Society in the Middle Kingdom 209 6. The End of the Middle Kingdom andthe Second Intermediate Period 226 Examples of burials 230 Historical overview of the period 233 Settlements of the period 235 The society of the Second Intermediate Period 236 Concluding remarks 242 Appendix: List of people from the Wadjet province 248 Abbreviations and Bibliography 258 Index 285 Back Cover 290