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Ancient Egypt Magazine

Issue Five - January / February 2001

The Old Kingdom: ideas, approaches, beliefs

The enduring appeal of ancient Egypt is in part due to those qualities that make it immediately recognisable, particularly the Egyptian approach to representations of the human form. Despite its impossibility, with bodies shown partly in profile, partly from a frontal perspective, it has a logic of its own. As much information as possible about the scene or individual is conveyed in a way which still manages to appear harmonious and attractive, or compelling and impressive.

It is true that the Egyptian Old Kingdom (c. 3100)  represents a great flourishing of thought, creativity and technical advances.  During this period, much which that we still recognise and can visualise easily in association with the words “ancient Egypt” came into being. However, it did not erupt spontaneously. Centuries of development in tomb architecture, funerary items and complex social and religious belief systems preceded it. Communication between the different settlements along the highway of the Nile had resulted in the emergence of minor kingdoms which eventually, by various means, coalesced and were finally united under one king; power in Egypt was then focussed on this single monarch, the ruler of the two lands of Upper and Lower Egypt, the Nile Valley and the Delta.

The monarch credited with this final stage of the process of unification of Egypt is the famous King Narmer. At this point, it is worth bringing in some debate. Was Narmer the first king of the First Dynasty, or the last king of a “Dynasty 0” proposed by some Egyptologists? This has something of the flavour of the current debate over the proper start of “the year 2000” and Early Dynastic specialist Toby Wilkinson is surely correct in suggesting that “the debate is actually rather anachronistic, since the dynasties were not invented until some two-and-a-half-thousand years after Narmer’s life-time.” (Toby Wilkinson, Early Dynastic Egypt – you will find a useful reading list in this feature.)

In other words, the concepts of dynasties, Kingdoms, and periods is a useful tool for studying ancient Egypt – but it does not help us to understand how the ancient Egyptians viewed history, kingship, or time. For over 100 years, however, Egyptologists have used this tool, each “Kingdom” (Old, Middle, New) being divided into dynasties interspersed with less dramatic “acts” entitled the First, Second and Third Intermediate Periods, before finally trailing off into the Late, Graeco-Roman and subsequent times. Is history really like that? 

It is also worth reminding ourselves that the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom were essentially technologists in stone, and supremely knowledgeable and successful technologists.

This was not a world dominated by metal or other materials. From the tiniest of vases in polished stone, exquisitely balanced and shaped, to the massive structures produced from the Third Dynasty onwards, they were masters of the world of stone. Stone Age? The Old Kingdom, surely, merits the application of the phrase “Age of Stone”. The early dynastic Egyptians saw and exploited the resources of the world around them consummately. The permanence of the rocks of Egypt became in time a metaphor, and the reality, of a human desire to express permanence and continuity in a cosmos that changes.

Naqada III/Dynasty '0'   c 3200 - 3000 BC

Early Dynastic        c 3000 - 2686 BC

1st Dynasty Kings    (c3000 - 2890 BC)

2nd Dynasty Kings   (c2890 - 2686 BC)

Old Kingdom    (c 2686 - 2125 BC)

3rd Dynasty Kings    (2686 - 2613 BC)

4th Dynasty Kings    (2613 - 2498 BC)

5th Dynasty Kings    (2494 - 2345 BC)

6th Dynasty Kings    (2345 - 2181 BC)

7th Dynasty Kings    (2181 - 2160 BC)

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