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Ancient Egypt, the land of the pharaohs, was also the land of the sun. The waters of the Nile
enriched the soil in annual floods, then receded and left the crops to the care of the abundant sun. The first pyramids were made from sun-dried bricks. The stone blocks of later pyramids were said to be petrified rays of the sun. The greatest of Egypt's many gods was the sun god,
Ra—and the pharaohs, gods themselves, were sons of Ra.In the prehistoric
period men and women had lived and farmed in small settlements along the Nile. Egypt was united under one ruler in about 3100 BC, when the pharaoh Menes joined Upper and Lower Egypt by force. He and his successors
developed in Egypt one of the strongest kingships known to history.The pharaohs owned all the land, and those who raised crops were required to give their ruler roughly one fifth of their yield. The rulers presided over
a bureaucracy of royal officials, priests, and local governors known as nomarchs.
The most famous of their achievements—and a stunning example of the pharaohs' power—was the construction of the great pyramids. Once thought to be the work of slaves, we now know the pyramids to be the product of free labour, efficiently organized by the royal bureaucracy. Throughout the year quarrymen cut huge blocks of stone. In the late summer, when floods raise the waters of the Nile as much as 9 m (30 ft), an army of labourers—freed from farmwork by the deluge—floated the stones on barges over the flooded land towards the site of the pyramid then under construction. Egyptians built their greatest pyramids during the years of the Old Kingdom, so named because it was the first of three sequences of Egyptian dynasties. Given the proficiency shown in their pyramid building, the pharaohs might have used their power to create great armies and dominate their neighbours. But with the exception of a few local expeditions, the rulers of the Old Kingdom were content to rule their own land and confine their foreign contacts to trade. The achievements of the early Egyptians include hieroglyphic writing, fine sculpture and painting, and the first 365-day calendar. Egyptian medical knowledge included familiarity with surgery, antiseptics, and the circulatory system.
The Old Kingdom fell into decline during the 23rd century BC. Famine plagued the land, and Bedouins attacked the borders. The central power of the pharaohs gave way to the growing power of the local nomarchs. Egypt entered a period of feudalism, known as the First Intermediate Period, lasting from 2258 to 2000 BC. |
