Egypt - Dynasty I

  General Description   The First Dynasty of Egypt (c. 3100‒2900 BCE) was a relatively geographically constricted ancient state located near the Nile delta of Egypt, which was first unified under a ruler called Menes. ^[1]
Population and political organization
Kings of the First Dynasty were buried in the royal cemetery in the Umm el-Qa’ab area at Abydos in Upper Egypt, where funerary enclosures and a mortuary cult supported an ideology of divine kingship. ^[2] However, it is believed that Memphis, downriver at the neck of the delta, was the main administrative centre because tombs of administrative officials have been discovered nearby. ^[3] Also known as the White Walls, ^[4] apparently after the colour of the palace enclosure walls, ^[5] Memphis probably had at least 6,000 residents at a population density of 193 per hectare. ^[6] The government of the Early Dynasties is thought to have developed significant divisions of labour and a more hierarchical structure under King Djer, who introduced permanent institutions, ^[7] although Egyptologist Hratch Papazian stresses that a true hierarchical bureaucracy emerged ’only during the latter parts of the Old Kingdom’. ^[8] Writing had been in use since the Protodynastic period (’Dynasty 0’, or the later Naqada periods), ^[9] when hieroglyphs were used for labels such as those found in the tomb of U-j at Abydos, dating to around 3150 BCE. ^[10]
Regional centres of the First Dynasty included Hierakonpolis, Abydos, and minor centres further south at Naga-el-Deir and Aswan. First-Dynasty Egypt was likely not yet divided into the clearly demarcated provinces, controlled by local governors, that we find in later periods. ^[11] There is no clear evidence for professional priests or large-scale religious organization, but there may have been temple compounds within settlements, serving different ritual functions from the funerary complexes located outside the towns. ^[12]
The Egyptian population during the Early Dynastic period is difficult to determine, but the archaeologist Bruce Trigger estimated that there could have been over 2 million people living in the Nile Valley at this time. ^[13]

[1]: (David and David 2002, 86) R. David and A. E. David. 2002. Biographical Dictionary of Ancient Egypt. London: Routledge.

[2]: (Bard 2000, 41) Kathryn A. Bard. 2000. ’The Emergence of the Egyptian State (c. 3200-2686 BC)’, in The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, edited by Ian Shaw, 57-82. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[3]: (Bard 2000, 64-65) Kathryn A. Bard. 2000. ’The Emergence of the Egyptian State (c. 3200-2686 BC)’, in The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, edited by Ian Shaw, 57-82. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[4]: (Malek 2000, 104) Jaromir Malek. 2000. ’The Old Kingdom (c. 2686-2160 BC)’, in The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, edited by Ian Shaw, 83-107. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[5]: (Thompson 2012, 1) Dorothy J. Thompson. 2012. Memphis under the Ptolemies. 2nd ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

[6]: (Mumford 2010, 331) Gregory D. Mumford. 2010. ’Settlements - Distribution, Structure, Architecture: Pharaonic’, in A Companion to Ancient Egypt, Volume 1, edited by Alan B Lloyd, 326-49. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

[7]: (Engel 2013, 20-38) Eva-Maria Engel. 2013. ’The Organisation of a Nascent State: Egypt until the Beginning of the 4th Dynasty’, in Ancient Egyptian Adminstration, edited by Juan Carlos Moreno García, 19-40. Leiden: Brill.

[8]: (Papazian 2013, 67-68) Hratch Papazian. 2013. ’Departments, Treasuries, Granaries and Work Centers’, in Ancient Egyptian Adminstration, edited by Juan Carlos Moreno García, 41-83. Leiden: Brill.

[9]: (Bard 2000, 75) Kathryn A. Bard. 2000. ’The Emergence of the Egyptian State (c. 3200-2686 BC)’, in The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, edited by Ian Shaw, 57-82. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[10]: (Bard 2000, 60) Kathryn A. Bard. 2000. ’The Emergence of the Egyptian State (c. 3200-2686 BC)’, in The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, edited by Ian Shaw, 57-82. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[11]: (Moreno García 2013) Juan Carlos Moreno García. 2013. ’Building the Pharaonic State: Territory, Elite, and Power in Ancient Egypt during the 3rd Millennium BCE’, in Experiencing Power - Generating Authority: Cosmos and Politics in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, edited by J. A. Hill, Ph. H. Jones, A. J. Morales, 185-217. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

[12]: (Bard 2000, 78) Kathryn A Bard. 2000. ’The Emergence of the Egyptian State (c.3200-2686 BC)’ in The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt edited by Ian Shaw. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[13]: (Trigger 1983, 51) Bruce G. Trigger. 1983. ’The Rise of Egyptian Civilization’, in Ancient Egypt: A Social History edited by Bruce G. Trigger, Barry J. Kemp, David O’Connor and Alan B Lloyd, 1-70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.