Towards a New History for the

Egyptian Old Kingdom

Perspectives on the Pyramid Age

Edited by

Peter Der Manuelian and Thomas Schneider

LEIDEN | BOSTON

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Contents

Editor’s Introduction vii

Preface viii

1 Ancient Egyptian History as an Example of Punctuated Equilibrium:

An Outline 1
Miroslav Bárta

2 Economic Implications of the Menkaure Triads 18

Florence Dunn Friedman

3 Did the Old Kingdom Collapse? A New View of the First

Intermediate Period 60
John Gee

4 The Chronology of the Third and Fourth Dynasties according to

Manetho’s Aegyptiaca 76
Roman Gundacker

5 The Entextualization of the Pyramid Texts and the Religious History of

the Old Kingdom 200
Harold M. Hays†

6 Shareholders: The Menkaure Valley Temple Occupation in Context 227

Mark Lehner

7 Harvard University–Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition

Contributions to Old Kingdom History at Giza: Some Rights and
Wrongs 315
Peter Der Manuelian

8 Cattle, Kings and Priests: Phyle Rotations and Old Kingdom Civil
Dates 337
John S. Nolan

9 The Sed-Festival of Niuserra and the Fifth Dynasty Sun Temples 366
Massimiliano Nuzzolo

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vi contents

10 The State of Egypt in the Eighth Dynasty 393

Hratch Papazian

11 The Old Kingdom Abroad: An Epistemological Perspective

With Remarks on the Biography of Iny and the Kingdom of
Dugurasu 429
Thomas Schneider

12 The Dawn of Osiris and the Dusk of the Sun-Temples: Religious

History at the End of the Fifth Dynasty 456
Racheli Shalomi-Hen

13 Centralized Taxation during the Old Kingdom 470

Leslie Anne Warden

Index 497

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 Chapter 1

Ancient Egyptian History as an Example of

Punctuated Equilibrium: An Outline

Miroslav Bárta
Charles University in Prague

Abstract

The present study attempts to identify and characterize some basic principles that
underlined historical development in ancient Egypt, specifijically during the Old
Kingdom period. Looking at the ever-increasing corpus of the evidence, it applies the
theory of punctuated equilibrium for explaining some of the major features operating
human society from a diachronic perspective. The explanatory potential of the punctu-
ated equilibrium concept seems to work rather well when applied to the historical evi-
dence we have at hand. As a consequence, Old Kingdom history is not any more a rather
homogenous continuum represented by individual pharaohs and monuments arranged
into a regular evolutionary scheme; on the contrary, it emerges as an intricate open
system punctuated by several historically brief “events” during which major changes
in society took place and which were divided by longer periods of stasis, a continuum
with seemingly no signifijicant development. The Old Kingdom era emerges as an open
system in which the specifijic role of the individual in specifijic historical circumstances
is able to signifijicantly enhance our understanding of new discoveries, historical facts,
and known contexts.

1 Introduction

In this brief paper I would like to address the specifijic dynamics which—in
my view—best illustrate the nature of general historical processes and cycles
in the development of civilisations. In doing so, I shall use the example

* I wish to express my thanks to V.G. Callender who was patient enough to discuss over and
over individual issues connected to this piece of research. She also kindly revised the text.
The research presented in this paper was supported by the Grant Agency of the Czech
Republic No. P405/11/1873.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004301894_002

For use by the Author only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV
2 Bárta

of ancient Egyptian civilisation, specifijically of the Old Kingdom period

(ca. 2700–2200 BCe). The reason for doing this is a very simple one: modern
observers (including some of us scholars) tend more often than not to view
ancient Egyptian history as a more or less continuous and perhaps unevent-
ful parade of reigns marked by isolated royal monuments that is interrupted
from time to time by unique events, such as building monumental architec-
ture, foreign trade or military expeditions, Sed-Festivals, cattle counts, dona-
tion of land and inventory to temples, or incursion of enemies, to name but a
few such incidents.1 In the best case, we divide this historical continuum into
dynasties which are in turn used to provide a sufffijicient historical framework
for ancient Egypt.2
Ancient Egypt is renowned for several deeply rooted concepts which formed
the perceived basic nature of that state and which permeated virtually every
single aspect of the society of the day. In particular, we may note the ancient
Egyptians’ cyclical concept of time. Equally important was the concept of
Maat, a concept which advocated stability and the unchanged order of mat-
ters within the society and its culture whereupon it was the pharaoh, earthly
and chosen representative of the gods, who was in charge of its maintenance.
This paradigm was endorsed by the king and the ruling elite, and the ritual of
honouring Maat was expected to be re-enacted by every new king.3 On the
cultural front, for example, one can best observe the enactment of Maat by
the superfijicial “sameness” within Egyptian iconography and the visual arts (for
instance, in royal statuary, or in royal iconography representing the king smit-
ing his enemies, etc.) (Fig. 1.1). Thus it may seem that the ever-repeating cycle
and unchanging order of things dominated the ancient Egyptian mind. Yet it is
appropriate to inquire if this modern observation can really be an undistorted
reflection of the past.
The specifijic period under discussion is the third millennium BCE in Egypt,
and specifijically the Old Kingdom. While we are indeed capable of seeing and
identifying profound diffferences between, for instance, the later Predynastic
Period and the First Dynasty in terms of art, administration, or history, or the
changes in building techniques separating the reigns of Khasekhemwy and
Khufu or Nyuserra, we might hesitate to outline major diffferences between

1 Stadelmann, Die ägyptischen Pyramiden and Die grossen Pyramiden von Giza; Verner, The pyr-
amids: a complete guide; Hawass, The treasures of the pyramids; Lehner, Complete Pyramids;
Wilkinson, The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt.
2 Redford, Pharaonic king-lists, annals, and day-books.
3 Assmann, Maat: Gerechtigkeit und Unsterblichkeit im alten Ägypten.

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Ancient Egyptian History 3

a b

c d
Figure 1.1 The “sameness” of the Egyptian civilization can be demonstrated by many
iconographic details. One of the most principal ones is the motif of the king smiting
his enemies. 1a—Gilf Kebir, Cave of the Beasts (6th mill. BCE, Bárta, Swimmers in
the sand, 44); 1b—so-called Painted Tomb L 100 in Hierakonpolis (late 4th mill. BCE,
Quibell and Green, Hierakonpolis. Part II, pl. 76); 1c—pylon of the temple of Ramesse
III in Medinet Habu (12th century BCE); and 1d—pylon of the Ptolemaic temple at
Philae (3rd century BCE). Figs. 1c and 1 d, photographs by M. Frouz.

the reign of Unas and Pepy I at the other end of the historical scale. Focusing
in this particular case on the Old Kingdom, it is not difffijicult to assume that
this period was a rather monolithic and uneventful series of longer or shorter
reigns marked by a dotted line of monumental pyramid complexes, two- and
three-dimensional art, and formulaic written statements, be it administrative

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4 Bárta

documents or biographical inscriptions, which, in most cases, were following a

strict, and only very slowly changing, set of rules.4
In contrast to that opinion, the aim of this discussion is to demonstrate that
the history within this epoch was not developing in a linear but rather “punc-
tuated” mode, a state of afffairs that has long been indicated by the emerging
evidence provided about Egyptian history through archaeology and texts.
It will be shown that longer periods of stasis were interrupted by relatively
brief periods during which major changes were taking place as if in the very
same moment, and that these changes largely modifijied and even determined
the nature and character of the society. In other words, important historical
processes or major changes display a tendency towards clustering in discrete
“pockets” of time rather than being distributed evenly throughout time and
proceeding in a regulated linear way.5

2 Historical Overview

The Old Kingdom period covers the era that saw the fijirst Egyptian centralized
state in the history of Ancient Egyptian civilisation, and probably of human
society in Africa. This state came into being around 3000 BCE and lasted for
some eight centuries. The time span accommodated under the term “Old
Kingdom” covers the so-called Third-Sixth Dynasties dated from ca. 2592 to
2150 BCe.6 The nature of the evidence we have at our disposal for this epoch
is luckily manifold—we have ample historical and archaeological data which,
in combination with biographic and administrative texts, provides us with a
lively picture of the distant past.7
When dealing with diachronic trends during the Old Kingdom, it may be
useful to refer to the so-called “multiplier efffect,” a phenomenon identifijied by
the British prehistorian Colin Renfrew in the 1970s. The multiplier efffect as
defijined by Renfrew implies that smaller and formally independent changes
(that taken in isolation would have no far-reaching potential) taking place in

4 Arnold, When the Pyramids Were Built; Strudwick, Texts from the Pyramid Age.
5 I have applied this concept, though implicitly, on the development of administration in
the Egyptian state during the third millennium BCE—see Bárta 2013, “Kings, viziers and
courtiers.”
6 This chronology is based on Hornung, Krauss and Warburton, Ancient Egyptian Chronology,
490; see also Málek, “The Old Kingdom” and Verner, “Archaeological remarks on the 4th and
5th Dynasty chronology.”
7 Arnold, Grzymski, and Zeigler, Egyptian Art in the Age of the Pyramids (catalogue).

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Ancient Egyptian History 5

virtually the very same moment may have had a combined—or “multiplied”—
efffect that might have led to fundamental and very rapid changes in society
(and therefore in architecture, art, structure of the state administration, soci-
ety, or religious concepts, to name but a few of them).8 The multiplier efffect
can thus be used to identify the most critical changes of pace within Egyptian
history, and these can then be used to chart the punctuated trajectory of
Egyptian history. The multiplier efffect is in my view identifijiable during several
short periods of Old Kingdom history:

Multiplier Efffect Period 1 (MEP 1): reign of Netjerikhet 2592-2566: 26 years;

MEP 2: Sneferu, 2543-2510: 33 years;
MEP 3: Shepseskaf, 2441-2436: 4 years and Userkaf 2435-2429: 6 years;
MEP 4: Neuserre, 2402-2374: 28 years;
MEP 5: Djedkare, 2365-2322: 43 years.

In most of these cases, the specifijied rulers and their respective periods of reign
are known for many signifijicant changes that shaped the state and the society
of the day. We can now have a closer look at them and cursorily outline the
major signifijicance of each of the periods.

2.1 Mep 1: Netjerikhet Djoser

Djoser is known for setting several benchmarks.9 During his reign, the fijirst
complete cult complex built of stone came into being—in a sense he was
expanding the experience of the late Second Dynasty architects who used
stone extensively during construction of the tomb of Khasekhemwy at Abydos
(use of limestone) and a sanctuary in Hierakonpolis (red granite).10 Besides
this milestone, the fijirst recorded grammatical sentences are attested from this
period, demonstrating that the development of the ancient Egyptian script
now gained solid ground. This is in contrast to former periods, when inscrip-
tions had consisted merely of labels for objects or titles for offfijicials; the First
Dynasty stela of Merka is the most extended of all private inscriptions at this
time.11 Most likely beginning in Netjerikhet’s reign, decorated tombs seem

8 Renfrew, The emergence of civilisation, 37.

9 Lauer, Fouilles à Saqqarah; Baud, Djéser et la IIIe dynastie.
10 Flandrin, Chapuis, The Labyrinth of the Pyramids.
11 For the most prominent ones, the slab stelae, see Saad, Ceiling stelae in second dynasty
tombs from the excavations at Helwan; Köhler and Jones, Helwan II. For the Merka stela,
see Regulski, A palaeographic study of early writing in Egypt.

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6 Bárta

to appear more frequently, decorated with stone or wooden slabs.12 Hand in

hand with the rising power of the incipient state went the ability of the centre
to mount and fijinance long-distance expeditions abroad, such as to the Sinai
(Wadi Maghara).

2.2 MEP 2: Sneferu

The Palermo Stone shows that during Sneferu’s reign the concept of annals
underwent some modifijications—such as a clear tendency towards detailed
record keeping, the accumulation of bureaucratic offfijices, and the abandon-
ment of the regular “following of Horus” tours of the country by the king, a
tradition enacted by the kings of the fijirst three dynasties.13 Moreover, Sneferu
instigated a parsimonious policy in regard to building works sponsored by the
king which was reflected in regularized cemeteries and the standardization of
mastabas in Dahshur, a trend which peaked during the time of his son Khufu
in his new residential necropolis in Giza.14
Signifijicantly, Sneferu seems to be the king who also concentrated on
cementing his influence in the provinces. In order to attain this goal, he seems
to have established most of the local pyramids all over the country. These pyra-
mids served exclusively as tokens of the royal presence in areas of prominent
political and economic importance: Elephantine, Edfu, Hierakonpolis, Naqada,
Abydos, Zawiet el-Meitin, Seila, and Abu Rawash.15
The lengthy biography of Metjen demonstrates a marked improvement in
the physical appearance of hieroglyphic script and its ability to convey sophis-
ticated ideas, as well as an increase of titles and therefore offfijices.16 Another
sphere which was deeply influenced by this trend was the so-called “material
culture” wherein the appearance of new pottery forms profoundly changed the
philosophy of the mortuary cults.17 It is also in non-royal tombs dated to his
reign that, for the fijirst time, offfering formulas appeared, and this, too, became

12 Quibell, Excavations at Saqqara, 1911–12: the tomb of Hesy; Bárta, Vymazalová, Coppens,
Tomb of Hetepi (AS 20), Tombs AS 33–35 and AS 50–53.
13 Wilkinson, Royal Annals, 90–91.
14 Fakhry, Sneferu; Reisner, A History of the Giza Necropolis; Bárta, “Pottery inventory and the
beginning of the IVth Dynasty;” Alexanian and Seidlmayer, “Die Nekropole von Dahschur.”
15 Dreyer and Kaiser, “Zu den kleinen Stufenpyramiden Ober- und Mittelägyptens”; Bárta,
“Location of the Old Kingdom pyramids in Egypt”; Marouard and Papazian, “The Edfu
Pyramid Project.”
16 Gödecken, Eine Betrachtung der Inschriften des Meten.
17 Bárta, “Pottery inventory and the beginning of the IVth Dynasty.”

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Ancient Egyptian History 7

traditional for the remainder of pharaonic culture.18 We can also observe a sig-
nifijicant development in offfijicials’ biographical inscriptions.19

2.3 MEP 3: Transition between the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties

The next signifijicant period was reached during the transition from the Fourth
to the Fifth Dynasties.20 This transition was also marked by the ancient
Egyptians, as the Palermo Stone makes an explicit break at this point. From
the formal point of view, it is precisely this period when the verso recording of
these annals begins. Moreover, the entries on the verso side of the stone have
diffferent characteristics, in that they tend to be more detailed than before.
And, perhaps more importantly, instead of the enumeration of the most sig-
nifijicant achievements of the kings, as was done previously, the annalists now
focus on the enumeration of pious donations by the rulers to divine temples
and royal mortuary complexes.21
At the same time, we have explicit evidence for a major change within the
political tradition of the Old Kingdom. The royal family resigned from or gave
up (or was made to give up) controlling all of the vital components of the
Egyptian state. The state machine had now become so complicated that a sin-
gle family, however large it might be, was simply no longer capable of running
it. Thus, a high number of offfijicials of non-royal origin start to enter the scene
and assume the highest places in the state administration, including even the
offfijice of the vizier.22 To a certain extent, one can say that it was from this point
onwards that the term “Egyptian state” becomes justifijied.23
There are also many demonstrable changes reflected in Old Kingdom mate-
rial culture that might be mentioned. For example, the royal burial grounds
returned from Giza southwards to the Abusir-Saqqara area; Userkaf was the
fijirst king after some generations to return to Saqqara, building his mortuary
complex to the northwest of the Step Pyramid complex. At the same time,
it was this king that started almost a century-long tradition of building solar
temples north of Abusir, in Abu Ghurob, and thus created a new trend in state

18 Barta, Aufbau und Bedeutung der altägyptischen Opferformel.

19 Baud, “The Birth of Biography.”
20 Bárta, “The sun kings of Abusir and their entourage.”
21 Wilkinson, Royal Annals, 148.
22 Helck, Untersuchungen zu den Beamtentiteln; Strudwick, Administration; Piacentini, Les
scribes.
23 Bárta, “Kings, viziers and courtiers,” 163.

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8 Bárta

policy with regard to religion.24 In addition, the pyramid temples became more
sophisticated in their decoration and thematic scope whereas the pyramids
themselves shrank signifijicantly in size.25

2.4 MEP 4: Reign of Nyuserra

King Nyuserra has been a bit in the shadow with regard to modern Egyptological
research. However, it is without a doubt that his reign turned out to be one of
the most decisive for the way in which the Old Kingdom began to collapse.26
During his reign, the cult of Osiris entered the scene, the offfijice of the Overseer
of Upper Egypt emerged—an offfijicial with over-riding power in Upper Egypt—,
and we can also observe the fijirst centrifugal tendencies within the central state
administration.27 During this time, prominent offfijicials began to gain more
independence and exert more power and influence. They also showed a ten-
dency to retain their privileges, by keeping their offfijicial posts within the family
and, as a consequence, many offfijices became hereditary.
As a clear result of these shifts, two essential classes of tombs emerged. The
fijirst class was comprised of the wealthy mastabas belonging to the highest
offfijicials of the state. The second class was made up of poorer family tombs.
Both categories had very diffferent standards of wealth, but they conveyed the
same concept of inheriting the family offfijices and communicating the social
standing of their patriarch.28 Thus these tombs were also a means of legitimi-
sation and authorisation for certain offfijices occupied by the surviving members
of each family. It is precisely during this time that we can observe the fijirst
centrifugal tendencies in the provinces that are symptomatic of an increasing
independence of wealthy offfijicials and their families. Here we have the real
origins of what later became widespread nepotism.29
Many new iconographic motifs also appear for the fijirst time in the deco-
ration of non-royal tombs. Just as suddenly, the positive factors of the state
machine that lay behind the dramatic growth and proliferation of the Egyptian
state—such as monumental projects, initiation of certain procedures such as
the tax system, innovation within technologies, and the growth of the admin-

24 See the overview by Krejčí and Magdolen, “Research into Fifth Dynasty sun temples—
past, present and future.”
25 Verner, Abusir: realm of Osiris; El Awady, Sahure—the pyramid causeway.
26 Bárta, “Architectural Innovations.”
27 Brovarski, “Overseers of Upper Egypt in the Old to Middle Kingdoms.”
28 Weeks, Mastabas of Cemetery G 6000; Bárta, “Non-royal tombs of the Old Kingdom at
Abusir”; Krejčí, The architecture of The Mastaba of Ptahshepses.
29 Richards, “Text and Context in late Old Kingdom Egypt.”

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Ancient Egyptian History 9

istrative body—began to exert a negative impact on the efffijiciency of the state.

We can witness this fijirst of all with the steadily growing number of offfijicials
and the influence exercised by both the senior offfijicials as well as the lesser
ones, followed by the system of tax exemption for prestigious ancestral monu-
ments and cults; these all began, step-by-step, to place an unsustainable bur-
den upon the ancient Egyptian economy.30
At the same time, we can observe a tremendous intensifijication of the mor-
tuary cults as a consequence of the fact that payments originating from them
represented a considerable contribution to the economic profijit of a class of
numerous offfijicials. In accordance with this trend, we can follow the rapid
growth of the numbers of store-rooms in pyramid complexes. In some way,
these acted as a kind of ancient “bank”: virtually all the commodities stored
within the magazines were supplied by the central administration. Then, after
the specifijic offfering rites were accomplished, the goods were transferred as
a type of payment to the offfijicial elite. The end result was that the existence
of a huge number of mortuary complexes for which the royal purse was
responsible—at least partially—and for which the royal purse had to supply
the on-going costs of maintaining the cult, sapped the wealth of the country
(as attested by selected texts from Abusir papyrus archives).31

3 Fluctuation and the Absence of Stasis

Nyuserra paved the way for the reforms of Djedkara and his successors. At this
stage, we can observe another highly interesting phenomenon: namely, that
the periods of relatively long stasis dividing individual major events or periods
of change cease to be present, and diffferent ways of running the country were
installed with each new king: Djedkare appointed offfijicials to permanent posts
in the provinces; Unas cancelled this move and brought the men back into the
capital. Time and again, offfijicials had duties and responsibilities taken away
from them as one king followed another.32 The once sole offfijice of Overseer of
Upper Egypt became an offfijice that was found in the majority of provinces—a
title usually held by the nomarch of the province—until Merenra cancelled
all but one of them.33 Meanwhile, the numbers of titles for offfijicials continued

30 Müller-Wollermann, Krisenfaktoren im ägyptischen Staat; Gundlach, Der Pharao und sein

Staat, 227 fff.
31 Posener-Kriéger, Verner, and Vymazalová, The pyramid complex of Raneferef.
32 Pardey, Untersuchungen zur ägyptischen Provinzialverwaltung.
33 Kanawati, Governmental reforms, 130.

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10 Bárta

to increase in order to make the king’s favourites seem extremely powerful and
important.34 Virtually all kings following Nyuserra again paid signifijicant atten-
tion to their symbolic presence in the provinces, as is demonstrated by the
intensifijied building of temples.35 Another measure taken by the kings was to
marry some of their daughters to high offfijicials of the state, in the hopes of
securing their permanent loyalty. This policy is attested at least from the time
of Userkaf, yet it gains in “popularity” from the reign of Nyuserra onwards.36
The very beginning of the Sixth Dynasty may indeed have been troubled by
a successful murder of king Teti, at least according to the Manethonian tradi-
tion. It is possible that the archaeological evidence in the cemeteries of Unas
and Teti (collected by Naguib Kanawati) indicating that a signifijicant number
of high offfijicials sufffered punishment for unspecifijied wrong-doing is connected
to this event. One indicator for this punishment may be found in the state of
their unfijinished or (on occasion) “usurped” tombs.37
Not long after this, Pepy I managed to survive a conspiracy plotted in his
own royal establishment. The plot was uncovered and investigated by his loyal
offfijicial Weni.38 This again shows that the person of the king was no longer
considered by all his subjects to be of a divine nature and thus untouchable. At
the same time, powerful families from the provinces begin to trespass on the
once unrestricted power of the ruling king, and one of the governing princi-
ples in all levels of state administration became “nepotism,” which increasingly
limited the former dominance and superiority of the king himself. Individual
biographical inscriptions of the period attest clearly to the fact that high offfiji-
cials were becoming more and more powerful.39 Typical of this nepotism is
the Abydene family of the same offfijicial Weni (the Elder) who acted on behalf
of king Pepy I.
Based on the latest excavation results, it emerges that Weni the Elder origi-
nated from a powerful family and that already his father, Iuu, held the offfijice
of the vizier. Moreover, the children of Weni the Elder: two sons—Weni the
Younger and Iuu—and daughter Mezenet apparently also reached an ele-
vated status in the society.40 Another powerful family of Abydene origin was
Khui and his wife, Nebet. This pair had a handful of children, among them

34 Piacentini, Les scribes.

35 Bussmann, Die Provinztempel Ägyptens von der 0. bis zur 11. Dynastie.
36 Bárta, “ ‘Abusir paradigm’ and the beginning of the Fifth Dynasty.”
37 Kanawati, Conspiracies in the Egyptian Palace.
38 Piacentini, L’autobiografijia di Uni.
39 Kloth, Die (auto-) biographischen Inschriften des ägyptischen Alten Reiches.
40 Richards, “Text and Context in late Old Kingdom Egypt,” 90–94.

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Ancient Egyptian History 11

two daughters known later as Ankhenesmeryra/Ankhenespepy I and II, both

of whom married king Pepy I. Undoubtedly, these ladies became very impor-
tant persons as the fijirst one gave birth to king Merenra and the second one to
Pepy II.41 Thus the reigning family of the late Old Kingdom became highly, and
unusually, intertwined with prominent Abydene families.
Yannis Gourdon also draws attention to another unusual feature, namely
that the new forms of these two queens’ names: Ankhenespepy—“May Pepy
live for her”—is a feature that seems to be quite indicative of the troubled
times of the declining Sixth Dynasty. The form of the name suggests that the
king venerated these queens by an oath sworn by Pepy himself. This fact dem-
onstrates an unparalleled (compared to previous historical periods) high social
standing and importance of these two sisters from the provinces.42 Within this
historical framework it is certainly not without interest that most of the queens
buried in Pepy’s complex had burial chambers decorated with Pyramid Texts.
Again, this shows clearly that these women were raised to a similar burial sta-
tus as the king.43
Typically, when a complex society is in decline, the critical factors tend
to “chain,” i.e. to follow one after another with virtually no signifijicant peri-
ods of stasis/equilibrium. Thus, we can say that one of the few indications
of an approaching collapse is that critical moments appear more frequently,
whereas periods of stasis which under normal circumstances occur in between
them and last for a noticeable period of time, are virtually absent.
The troubled times between the reigns of Djedkara and Pepy II can be used
as an excellent example of a deteriorating state showing explicit signs of slow
yet continuous decline. Virtually every single king reigning during this “tail”
period introduced substantial modifijications to the current state model that
was steadily becoming less and less efffijicient and capable of handling matters
of an originally robust and elaborate centralized state.
Nonetheless, the attempts by the kings and their advisors to upgrade the sys-
tem proved to have had only short term efffects at best. Thus the Old Kingdom
“tail” stage, the decades of the late Fifth and the Sixth Dynasty, can be viewed as
an increasing process of attempts on the part of the king to restore stability to
a more and more unstable system that was steadily degrading. The whole pro-
cess eventually led to a political disintegration of the entire centralized system.

41 For details on the queens and the Abydos family see Baud, Famille royale, 426–29 and
629–31; Callender, In Hathor’s Image, 249–71.
42 Gourdon, “Le nom des épouses abydéniennes de Pépy Ier,” 103.
43 Jéquier, Fouilles à Saqqarah.

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12 Bárta

This declining stage, in turn, led to regionalisation and the reappearance of a

governing system in the hands of local chiefdoms.44

4 Conclusions

The emerging concept of historical development outlined above can be, in

my view, successfully applied towards a description of some of the irregulari-
ties which once governed the development of ancient Egyptian society dur-
ing the Od Kingdom. Stephen Jay Gould and Nils Eldridge in the early 1970s
formulated a new theory, describing the nature of processes encountered in
evolutionary biology.45 It was a theory that explained some formerly incom-
prehensible patterns in the distribution of fossil remains over a long period
of time. They concluded, due to a lack of other evidence, that instead of an
evolutionary linear concept, one may well apply a theory of punctuated equi-
libria. This appeared to be a much more suitable explanation for the observed
phenomena.
In simplifijied terms, the original concept of “punctuated equilibria” means
that species (following the original studies of Eldridge and Gould) continue to
exist in an apparently balanced way, punctuated by major individual events
introducing crucial changes within that basic species, or group evolution.
These major developmental changes tend to happen in certain discrete peri-
ods of time divided by rather uneventful periods of stasis when no signifijicant
development takes place.
If we look now at the data which we have analyzed for the Old Kingdom, we
can see that a similar “punctuated” pattern emerges. The explanatory potential
of the punctuated equilibrium concept seems to work quite well when applied
to Old Kingdom history. There is every reason to believe that it can be applied
to other periods as well. The results given above have proven to have had a
signifijicant bearing on how we can now view Old Kingdom history. With regard
to the Old Kingdom, it seems to be appropriate to assume that the evidence at
our disposal is rich enough and sufffijiciently heterogenous to allow for such a
theory, thus avoiding the risk of coming to speculative conclusions.

44 Seidlmayer, Gräberfelder aus dem Übergang vom Alten zum Mittleren Reich and “The First
Intermediate Period (c. 2160–2055 BC).”
45 Eldredge and Gould, “Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism”
and Gould and Eldredge, “Punctuated equilibria: the tempo and mode of evolution
reconsidered.”

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Ancient Egyptian History 13

In my opinion, Old Kingdom history should no longer be considered as

a rather homogenous continuum represented by individual pharaohs and
monuments arranged into a regular evolutionary scheme. On the contrary,
it emerges as an intricate open system in which several historical individu-
als embedded in specifijic historical contexts managed considerably greater
achievements than others. It would certainly deserve a detailed study if the
“events” must always be connected to a historical personage. For the time
being, this seems to be the most probable context.
Equally powerful can be the concept of punctuated equilibrium when
applied to an analysis of the development, rise, and fall of any given complex
society—as it has done in the case of the history of Old Kingdom Egypt. The
fact that we can bind specifijic innovations to specifijic historical circumstances
and embed them in a particular historical context lets us detect more satisfac-
torily the decisive turns in the development of any given society.
In this particular case we can see without any signifijicant bias that factors
that formerly initiated dramatic success of the ancient Egyptian state gradu-
ally transmuted into negative ones that contributed to the decline and even-
tual collapse of the Old Kingdom. Thus the roots of principal internal factors
contributing to a system’s ultimate demise can be detected already in the for-
mative stage of the system. Their former positive feedback eventually turns
them into factors that usher in a crisis of the system.46 At the same time, it is
the shortening and eventually total disappearance of the equilibrium periods
which is indicative of the approaching collapse of the current state of afffairs.
The multiplier efffect, coupled with the concept of punctuated equilibrium,
represent tools with which it is possible to better understand the nature of
some traditional phenomena in history. Moreover, this concept provides a
rather diffferent perspective from the former notion of history as a continuous
uninterrupted current of more or less isolated events.

Abbreviations

All abbreviations not included in this list follow those used in the Lexikon der
Ägyptologie.

46 Compare, for instance, factors such as divine kingship and the ultimate demise of this
institution at the end of the Sixth Dynasty; increasing numbers of offfijicials necessary to
efffijiciently run the country and eventual burden of the mandatory expenses; or wealthy
and loyal offfijicials who at the end usurped more and more power and made many of their
offfijices hereditary.

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14 Bárta

ArOr Archiv Orientální

ArOr Supp Archiv Orientální Supplementa
CAJ Cambridge Archaeological Journal
ÉMÉ Études et Mémoires d’Égyptologie
KAW Kulturgeschichte der antiken Welt
OINN Oriental Institute News and Notes
WA Writings from the Ancient World

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