THE OXFORD HISTORY OF ANCIENT EGYPT THE EDITOR Ian Shaw is a Lecturer in Egyptian Archaeology at the University of Liverpool THE OXFORD HISTORY OF ANCIENT EGYPT Edited by Ian Shaw OXPORD UNIVERSITY PRESS OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 0x2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Sao Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Oxford University Press, 2000 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published in hardback 2000 First published in paperback 2002, new edition 2003 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN-I3: 978-0-19-280458-7 11 Typeset in Scala by Footnote Graphics Limited, Warminster, Wilts Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic PREFACE This book describes the emergence and development of the distinctive civilization of the ancient Egyptians, from their prehistoric origins to their incorporation into the Roman empire. In 1961 Alan Gardiner's Egypt of the Pharaohs presented a fresh and detailed view of Egyptian history, based on the textual and archaeological data then available. Gardiner's history was largely concerned with the activities of kings, governments, and high officials through the centuries, from the begin- ning of the pharaonic period until the arrival of the Ptolemies. The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, however, is concerned not only with political change but also with social and economic developments, processes of religious and ideological change, and trends in material culture, whether in the form of architectural styles, techniques of mummification, or the fabrics of ceramics. This more wide-ranging historical picture draws on the new types of evidence that have become available as archaeologists have begun to survey and excavate types of sites that were previously neglected. Each chapter describes and analyses a particular phase in ancient Egyptian history. The contributors outline the principal sequence of political events, traces of which have survived to varying degrees in the textual record. However, against this backdrop of the rise and fall of ruling dynasties, they also examine the cultural and social patterns, including stylistic developments in art and literature. This allows them to compare and contrast purely political phases with archaeological and anthropological evidence ranging from the changing styles of pottery to human mortality rates. Each contributor seeks to explore not only which aspects of culture change at different points in time, but also why some change more rapidly than others or remain surprisingly stable at times of political disruption. A major influence on all of the chapters, however, is the patchiness of the archaeological record, which means that some sites and periods can be viewed through a huge number of different types of sources, while others can be only tentatively reconstructed, because of a lack of certain kinds of evidence (through poor preservation, inadequate excavation, or a combination VI PREFACE of both). Because each of the periods in Egyptian history is no more or less than the sum of its archaeological and textual parts, the individual chapters in this history are direct reflections of such abundance or inadequacy, and the differences in authors' style, emphasis, and content can largely be traced back to the nature of the evidence with which they are dealing. Although the sequence of chapters takes the form of a relatively straightforward historical progression from the Palaeolithic to the Roman period, the various sections incorporate critical approachs to each of the phases, sometimes questioning whether they deserve to be regarded as discrete chronological units, or whether there are broader trends in material culture that transcend (or even conflict with) the perceived political framework. It has been pointed out, for instance, that the decreasing size of royal pyramid complexes after the 4th Dynasty need not be evidence of a decline in royal power, as most historians have tended to assume, but might, on the contrary, indicate a more efficient use of resources in the late Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period. The pace of change in such aspects of Egyptian culture as monu- mental architecture, funerary beliefs, and ethnicity was not necessarily tied to the rate of political change. Each of the authors of this history has set out to elucidate the underlying patterns of social and political change and to describe, with due regard to the dangers of archaeo- logical and textual distortion and bias, the changing face of Egyptian culture, from the biographical details of individuals to the social and economic factors that shaped the lives of the population as a whole. IAN SHAW School of Archaeology, Classics and Oriental Studies, The University of Liverpool 31 January 2000 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am most grateful to Hilary O'Shea, Senior Editor for Ancient History at Oxford University Press, for her help in the early stages of this book in particular. Janine Bourriau would like to thank Manfred Bietak, Irmgard Hein, and David Aston for generously allowing her to draw on unpublished information on the current excavations at the site of Avaris (Tell el- Dabea). This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS List of Plates xi List of Maps and Plans xiii List of Contributors xv 1. Introduction: Chronologies and Cultural Change in Egypt i IAN SHAW 2. Prehistory: From the Palaeolithic to the Badarian Culture (c.700,000-4000 BC) 16 STAN HENDRICKX and PIERRE VERMEERSCH 3. The Naqada Period (0.4000-3200 BC) 41 BEATRIX MIDANT-REYNES 4. The Emergence of the Egyptian State (0.3200-2686 BC) 57 KATHRYN A. BARD 5. The Old Kingdom (0.2686-2160 BC) 83 JAROMIR MALEK 6. The First Intermediate Period (c.2160-2055 BC) 108 STEPHAN SEIDLMAYER 7. The Middle Kingdom Renaissance (c.2055-1650 BC) 137 GAE CALLENDER 8. The Second Intermediate Period (c.1650-1550 BC) 172 JANINE BOURRIAU 9. The 18th Dynasty before the Amarna Period (c.1550-1352 BC) 207 BETSY M. BRYAN 10. The Amarna Period and the Later New Kingdom (c.1352-1069 BC) 265 JACOBUS VAN DIJK