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[introduction.]

Egypt is situated in the north-east corner of the African continent and consists of a narrow valley (ranging from 3 to 20 miles in width) in the lower reaches of the River Nile, with desert stretching on either side.

Natural Conditions

p The River Nile plays an enormously important role in the life of the country. It is significant that in ancient times Egypt was referred to as the "gift of the Nile”. The territory of NorthEast Africa with the exception of the Nile valley had long since turned into an arid desert. The Nile valley thanks to annual floods (between July and November) contains fertile land which is extremely easy to cultivate. For this reason conditions in this area favoured the development of primitive agriculture.

The Nile valley in ancient times was already rich in valuable species of fruit-bearing trees, such as date palms and the sycamore, which could also be used as sources of building materials. The mountains bordering the valley were rich in building stone such as granite and limestone and there was gold in the mountains of nearby Nubia. Thus it can be seen that apart from its fertile soil, the Nile valley was also rich in natural resources.

The Formation of a Class Society
and State in Egypt

p The people of ancient Egypt consisted of various tribes which had settled in the Nile valley from time immemorial. The population was chiefly engaged in land cultivation, although hunting 18 19 and fishing were also important. Cultivation in this area required the construction of irrigation systems. Since this task was too great for isolated families and clans and since it was also far from expedient to dig canals for the irrigation of small plots of land, increasingly large groups made up of a number of clan communities came into being. These groups were called nomes. Each nome had its own name, its own particular customs and sometimes its own dialect. Nomarchs or rulers emerged, each family within the nome had its elder, and slavery became an increasingly widespread practice. Gradually these nomes started to unite among themselves and two kingdoms emerged in Egypt— the Southern and the Northern kingdom.

A conflict then started between the two kingdoms, from which the Southern kingdom emerged victorious. In approximately the year 3200 B.C. the Pharaoh Menes first united the whole land of Egypt under his rule. State power was established in the country from then on. This power was in the hands of the nobility, the large landowners. The history of Egypt is generally divided into three main periods: those of the Old, Middle and New kingdoms.

The Old and the Middle Kingdoms

p In the Old Kingdom the main activity of the people was still agriculture. The land was cultivated by peasant communes and each commune was administrated by its council of elders. These councils organised the collection and payment of taxes and also the recruitment of labour for the "royal projects”. This was the name used in Egypt for labour conscription compulsory for all working in the peasant communes. Slaves in Egypt as a rule were used on the large estates belonging to the king’s courtiers or on land belonging to the temples.

p Egyptian Pharaohs of that time wielded enormous power. They were given the title of kings of Upper and Lower ( Southern and Northern) Egypt and they wore two crowns, a white one and a red one. The Pharaoh’s chief advisor was called a vizier who in his turn supervised those who directed the various spheres of the administration. The vizier’s duties included supervision of the various storehouses for grain, gold, vineyards, the round-up of oxen, military affairs and sacrifices to be managed. In addition the vizier also supervised all the work for the Pharaoh, the exchequer and the high court. The vizier himself and the various storehouses all had large staffs of scribes.

p The Pharaohs of the Old Kingdom conducted military campaigns against the peoples of the Sinai peninsula and Nubia. 20 These campaigns brought Egypt rich booty, including malachite, copper ore, gold, ivory, ebony and also a large number of prisoners who were not killed but enslaved. It was with good reason that these Egyptian prisoners were called the “living dead".

p It was in the Old Kingdom that the remarkable custom existed of building pyramids, the enormous stone tombs which the Pharaohs and their courtiers had built for themselves during their lifetime. In Egypt approximately seventy of these pyramids have survived right down to the present day. The largest and most famous of them is the pyramid of Cheops or Khufu which is 475 feet high and approximately 2,400 feet square at its base; its construction required 2,300 thousand stone blocks each weighing two tons. The pyramid took twenty years to build despite the fact that the whole of the rural population of Egypt was conscripted for this work, at the rate of 100,000 every three months. Such were the conditions of work in the royal household in the Old Kingdom.

p The construction of the pyramids was bound up with the Egyptian religion and in particular with the belief in an after-life, provided the body was specially preserved and regularly supplied with food and drink. This belief lies at the root of the custom of embalming, that is of mummifying the deceased, an art in which the Egyptians came to excel.

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p At the end of the Old Kingdom the central power of the kings began to weaken and Egypt was once again divided up into a series of nomes, not infrequently warring against each other. Reunification of the country was achieved shortly before the beginning of the twentieth century B.C. This period is known as the Middle Kingdom.

p During the Middle Kingdom large-scale works were undertaken to extend and improve the irrigation system at the Fayum oasis. Trade and a wide variety of crafts flourished. A feature of this period was the stratification of the peasant communes, large sections of the peasantry becoming impoverished and ruined.

p In the middle of the eighteenth century B.C. a large-scale revolt of peasants, artisans and slaves took place in Egypt. The whole country was engulfed in this uprising, the Pharaoh was obliged to abdicate and the rich landowners were driven from their palaces. Mummies of former kings were looted and cast out of their tombs and pyramids. The royal granaries and treasure-houses and the temples were captured and the stores of food and valuables distributed among the people. All tax and tribute documents were destroyed. As is written in one of the ancient Egyptian chronicles, "the earth whirled round like a potter’s wheel”, because the poor took up residence in the houses of the rich lords, donned their garments and forced the lords to work for them.

At the end of the eighteenth century B.C. Egypt was laid waste by an invasion of a nomadic Asian tribe, the Hyksos. This people conquered the country and for nearly a century and a half the Egyptians lived under the yoke of these foreign oppressors until finally a liberation movement gathered sufficient momentum to drive out the invaders and reunite the country. This event marked the beginning of the New Kingdom.

The New Kingdom

During this period Egypt became a strong military power. Pharaoh Ahmose I who freed Egypt from the Hyksos conquerors pursued them deep into Hither Asia and then embarked on an expedition against Nubia. However, the true founder of this new Egyptian military power was Tuthmosis III (1525-1491 B.C.) who led seventeen expeditions into Asia, conquering Syria, Palestine, Libya and Nubia. He had large forces at his disposal, made up of infantry, armed with bows and arrows and spears, and cavalry, equipped with chariots. Apart from his land troops Tuthmosis also possessed a war fleet including both rowing galleys and sailing ships.

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p These campaigns brought home great quantities of booty which went mainly to fill the king’s coffers and granaries; thousands of slaves and cattle were also brought back to the king’s estates. The Pharaohs also bestowed rich gifts and privileges on the temples and those who served in them. For example, the temple of Amon Ra—the god who was most popular in Thebes, the capital—was granted complete authority over a whole region in the Lebanon with three large towns after one of these campaigns.

p All this led to an extremely rapid growth of the power of the priesthood in the political life of the country. Of particular importance was the temple of Amon Ra in Thebes: this temple owned more land, slaves and peasants than all the rest of the temples put together. Hence the enormous political influence exerted by the Theban priests, who even tried to wrest certain powers from the Pharaohs themselves.

p Pharaoh Ikhnaton (Amenhotep IV, 1424-1388 B.C.) took measures to put an end to this state of affairs and decided to introduce a religious reform. Polytheism was abandoned and replaced by the worship of one god, the Sun-god Aton. Temples were built to Aton all over the country, and the Pharaoh assumed the name Ikhnaton—"Beloved of Aton" in preference to his original title Amenhotep.

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p However Ikhnaton’s reforms were short-lived. The struggle against his reforms even led to an uprising and, although Ikhnaton succeeded in quelling it, after his death the reforms were soon abandoned and the priesthood became even more powerful than before. For instance, during the reign of Ramses II (1317- 1251 B.C.) the area of temple lands doubled and the leading members of the priesthood felt themselves quite independent of the king. Meanwhile the office of high priest became hereditary.

p During the reign of Ramses II the last large-scale military campaigns were undertaken. On Syrian territory the Egyptians had to match their strength for the first time with that of a new and mighty power—the Hittites, who by that time had conquered almost the whole of Syria. The fighting lasted for a long time, and the outcome was not decisive, Syria being divided between the Hittites and the Egyptians.

The end of the New Kingdom saw a marked weakening of Egypt’s military might. A number of her vassal states reasserted their independence and separatism among the various nomes came into play again. Soon Egypt was herself to fall prey to foreign conquerors.

The Religion and Culture of Ancient Egypt

p Religion was a central feature in the life of the ancient Egyptians. A typical feature of Egyptian religious belief was the deification of animals and birds. The town of Memphis had its cult of the bull-god Apis, the hawk-headed sky-god Horus was worshipped in the towns of Tanis and Buto and several nomes were named after animals: the Antelope nome, the Crocodile nome, etc. Gradually the gods worshipped by the most powerful nomes came to be worshipped on a national scale, for example the Sun-god Ra, the creator of the world Amon, and the god and goddess of fertility Osiris and Isis. The cult of Osiris and Isis was closely bound up with agricultural traditions. The legend of the death of Osiris and his subsequent resurrection was an allegory of the planting and sprouting of corn. At sowing and harvest time magnificent dramatic pageants were organised in the honour of Osiris and his consort.

p A major achievement of ancient Egyptian culture was the development of writing. For writing on stone the Egyptians used special signs or hieroglyphs, from which a simplified script was developed for writing on papyrus. Important advances were also made in literature (songs, legends, travel annals, etc.), architecture and the fine arts. Quite apart from the pyramids the ruins of 24 splendid temples, such as that at Karnak for example, are still to be seen today.

The ancient Egyptians were also familiar with the basic principles of a number of sciences such as mathematics, astronomy and medicine. They used a decimal counting system and were able to calculate the surface area of the triangle, trapezium and even that of the circle, using n =3.16. On the basis of observations of the movements of the heavenly bodies a calendar dividing the year into twelve months and 365 days was worked out. The widespread practice of embalming led to increasing familiarity with human anatomy and to the development of such fields of medicine as surgery.