Scaling the state: Egypt in the third millennium BC

Discussions of the early Egyptian state suffer from a weak consideration of scale. Egyptian archaeologists derive their arguments primarily from evidence of court cemeteries, elite tombs, and monuments of royal display. The material informs the analysis of kingship, early writing, and administration but it remains obscure how the core of the early Pharaonic state was embedded in the territory it claimed to administer. This paper suggests that the relationship between centre and hinterland is key for scaling the Egyptian state of the Old Kingdom (ca. 2,700-2,200 BC). Initially, central administration imagines Egypt using models at variance with provincial practice. The end of the Old Kingdom demarcates not the collapse, but the beginning of a large-scale state characterized by the coalescence of central and local models

Human occupation of the Nile delta during pre- and early dynastic times. A view from Kôm el-Khilgan

Research in the Nile Delta over the past twenty years has confirmed interest in the study of the northern part of Egypt. At the crossroads of Saharan Africa, the Nile Valley and Levant, this area saw original cultures borrowing their principal features from various sources. Their development announces the rise of Pharaonic civilisation and the birth of the state in Egypt. Work carried out in this area, which is considered to be the part of Egypt the most threatened by urbanism and agricultural pressure, gives rise to new ideas about human occupation during the 4'h millennium BC. The aim of this paper is to present the interest in geoarchaeology in the context of the Nile Delta in order to the study of the relationships between man and his environment. From the example of Kom el-Khilgan, to which several geoarchaeological techniques have been applied (geological profiling, classical hand augering, geo-electrical profiling and sounding) this study makes possible a better understanding of the original morphology of the landscape during the course of its history.20 page(s