Text | Duck Prophet
Editor | Old Time Narrative
Foreword
Traditionally, Egyptian antiquities distinguish the main periods of Pharaonic history based on the political situation of the country.
The " kingdom" - defined as an era of political unity and strong, centralized government - alternates with the "intermediate period" , contrastingly characterized by competition among local rulers in their claims to power.
During the first middle period of , the long line of kings who ruled the country from Memphis ended with the last pharaoh of the 8th Dynasty .
End of the Eighth Dynasty
After the Eighth Dynasty, power was ruled by a group of successive rulers from Heracleopolis, which was located in northern central Egypt, near the entrance to Faiyum .
These kings, who appear simultaneously in the Ninth Dynasty and the Los Dynasty in Manito's history, were erroneously subdivided during the dissemination of the original king list (see the discussion of the Egyptians of Manito earlier).
The transfer of the royal residence from Memphis to Heracleopolis was apparently considered by the ancient Egyptians to be a major breakthrough. This is due to the fact that the compilers of the 19th Dynasty Turin Canon inserted the early Egyptian History early sum after the list of 8th Dynasty rulers.
Furthermore, the list of kings in the temple of Seti I at Abydos gives no royal names for the period from the Eighth Dynasty to the beginning of the Middle Kingdom.
In fact, Heracleopolitans never controlled southern Upper Egypt.
Here, in a long struggle between local magnates, a Theban noble family established itself as a leading force, received a royal title, and duly appeared in the Nth Dynasty in the annals of pharaonic kingship.
From this moment on, the two competing states faced off within Egyptian territory until the era of intermittent wars ended.
The Theban king Nebuchpetra Mentuhotep II successfully defeated his rival Heraclei Polytan and reunited the country under Thebes control, thus creating the Middle Kingdom.
A question of time
We know better about the second part of the first middle period - the competition stage between Herculepolis and the Thebans. This stage lasted about 90 to 100 years.
However, the earlier part of this period - the period of Heracleiopolitan's reign before the emergence of Dynasty N - is less clear.
lacks the immediate temporal value of the information, because of the loss of the name of Heraclei's wave and the length of all information reigning in the Turin canon.
Archaeological research in northern central Egypt and the delta, the heartland of the Heraklepolitan kingdom, has been unsatisfactory due to the lack of data directly related to the Heraklepolitans.
There was even a stage where it was suggested that there must have been no period in which the Heracleipolitans were (at least nominally) the sole rulers, and that they must have been completely contemporaneous with the Nth Dynasty.
However, this is impossible, because we know that famous personal and important political events can only be placed in the Eighth to N Dynasties period.
Detailed study of the succession of important administrative and priestly positions in several towns of Upper Egypt, as well as study of the development of archaeological material, strongly suggests that the interval between the 8th and 9th dynasties occupied a considerable time span, perhaps up to some three or four generations.
Furthermore, the length of his Luo dynasty reported by Manito can be interpreted as supporting an estimate of nearly two centuries for the entire first middle period, an assessment that is also fully consistent with topographical and archaeological evidence.
The Nature of the First Intermediate Period
The First Intermediate Period, however, was not simply a period of confusion regarding the succession of the Egyptian throne; it was also a period of crisis and new developments, both of which profoundly affected Egyptian society and culture as a whole.
We can appreciate this whenever we see the evidence of these monuments.
The Old Kingdom mortuary, composed of kings and top officials in the capital city's Memphis cemetery, has played a prominent role in shaping our ideas of the Egyptian nation.
This spectacular series of buildings ceased after the reign of Pepi II, and was restored only by Mentuhotep II and his mortuary temple at Deir el-Bari in western Didis.
To fit this scenario, the time limit for the first intermediate period is sometimes raised to include the thirty years after Pepi II when the last king was still in power.
Although he has his own plans for dividing Egyptian history into dynasties, this approach is not entirely unreasonable. In fact, large buildings can be understood not only as good evidence of the nature of the country's core institutions, but also as good evidence that they are actually still functioning .
Thus, significant gaps in the record of the First Intermediate Period indicate that the social system had become fragmented, both in its political organization and in its cultural patterns.
However, it is also evident that archaeological and epigraphic data from the First Middle Period indicate the existence of a flourishing culture among the poorer social classes and vigorous social development in the provincial towns of Upper Egypt.
The first middle period was not a complete collapse of Egyptian society and culture, but was characterized by significant but temporary shifts in its centers of activity and vitality.
To understand the crisis of the pharaonic state and the process that ultimately led to the reconstruction of a unified political organization on a new basis, it is crucial to investigate the ways in which political institutions are embedded in society.
Much of Egypt's history tends to focus on the royal residences, kings, and "court culture", but in writing the history of the first middle period it is necessary to focus on the provincial towns and the people themselves, who formed the most basic elements of society.
Capital and other provinces
The state of Fallon originally emerged as a centralized system for .
From its earliest days, its main institutions - the king and his court - were firmly established in the capital. The social elite was also concentrated there, as well as administrative expertise and control of high cultural traditions.
In addition, the facilities of the state religion, as well as the worship of the king and his divine ancestors, were located in the vicinity of the capital . The administration of the country was controlled by royal emissaries, who were responsible for administering large areas of the Nile basin.
Although these administrators were dealing with the provinces, they retained their attachment to the royal residence and continued to view themselves as members of the capital's elite society.
Until the Fifth Dynasty, no cultural achievements that testify to the greatness of the Old Kingdom were seen outside the Memphite region.. There is a vast gulf of social and cultural inequality between the country and its rulers.
However, a profound change in the system began to appear in the 5th Dynasty, and was fully in place by the end of the 6th century. From this period onwards, provincial administrators were appointed to single ethnic groups and permanently settled in their regions.
As in other branches of the executive branch, members of the same family often succeed one another. While this political move may have been intended to increase the efficiency of provincial administration, it would have far-reaching and unforeseen consequences.
First of all, it means that socioeconomic changes are located in the mode at the core of the system. Initially, economic resources were concentrated in the royal residence and redistributed by the central government to beneficiaries .
However, the nobility living in the provinces now had direct access to the country's products. Opposition between the center and the provinces began to become a distinguishing factor among a previously homogeneous group of elite officials.
The local nobility was keen to ensure that its lifestyle matched that of the court.
This is evident in the decorated monument tombs that are beginning to appear in cemeteries in regional centers across the country.
Iconographic modes, textual modes, and religious and ritual knowledge flowed from court culture to the margins.
In addition, the king himself provided expert craftsmen, ritualists trained here with expensive goods to maintain and strengthen the bonds of loyalty between the local nobility and the court.
However, these tombs of are just the tip of the iceberg.
In fact, the various provincial elites and their staffs acted as independent centers in political organization, maintaining professionals and keeping more and more local production in use in the province itself (rather than allowing it to be exploited by the crown), thus leading to changes in the social and economic model of the province.
Egypt's rural economy became richer and its culture more sophisticated.
Provincial Environment
The cultural and economic transformation of each province has affected the entire society. This process can be accompanied by profound changes in the archaeological record, which is rooted in the Sixth Dynasty and reaches its climax in the first half of the First Intermediate Period.
We had to turn again to cemeteries to obtain the necessary data - partly due to the unfortunate lack of excavated settlements from this period, but mainly because of the inherent significance of funerary cultural remains.
If we compare the situation in the Early Old Kingdom with that of the Late Old Kingdom and the First Middle Period, the change in the number of tombs becomes immediately apparent.
In the later period, more cemeteries will be known, and once a particular area is systematically explored, the number of tombs will increase significantly.
In order to explain this phenomenon, two factors must be taken into account.
Firstly, the increase in tombs is clear evidence of population growth during the Old Kingdom, and the most influential factor in the change may have stemmed from the local environment itself, where population growth may have been accompanied by more intensive and efficient development of available agricultural resources.
Secondly, during the late Old Kingdom and the first Middle Period , ordinary tombs became quite large and tombs began to provide better grave goods. Not only are graves like
easier to identify and date (because of their larger size and more varied contents), but they also attract more diggers. In fact, among early archaeologists, the provincial cemeteries of the First Part of the Old Kingdom were famous for not repaying them for the labor of excavation.
Like the monumental tombs decorated in Egypt on , the number of tombs in provincial cemeteries continued to increase. Therefore, reflected to an important extent changes in society's consumption patterns .
This phenomenon seems particularly evident in funeral records, but it is not limited to this area. In fact, the most valuable objects most abundantly and widely represented in tombs of the Early First Middle Period—decorated stone tools, ornaments and gemstone amulets, and even gold—were everyday objects of everyday life rather than specially crafted for funerary purposes.
It is therefore clear that during the late Old Kingdom and the First Intermediate Period, the provinces enjoyed good economic conditions . The distribution of
cemeteries may also provide some indication of settlement patterns. It is dotted with villages, and the ruins of the capital of Nome contain not only the rock tombs or monumental tombs of provincial nobles, but also a large number of cemeteries of ordinary citizens.
The graves of city dwellers are in principle no different from those of villagers; however, they tend to be larger and better equipped. Urban structures thus dominate the settlement pattern of the province not only politically and socially, but also demographically and economically.
References
"History of Ancient Egypt"
" History of Ancient Egypt "
"History of War"
