Why were Upper and Lower Egypt consolidated into a single kingdom?
Upvote:7
Why? Because successful ruling elites try to increase their wealth and power. Ancient Egypt was mainly arranged along the Nile with inhospitable desert to both East and West. This leaves only two directions for expansion. Egyptian polities expanded along both of them with the following results:
- Political unification of Egypt.
- Expulsion of inhabitants from the Nubian border regions.
- Fortification of not just border regions but many places in Egypt and frequent conflicts before unification.
- Eventual expansion of influence if not political suzerainty towards the Levante.
Of course, we may go deeper and ask why this happened, why this happened when it happened, and who was responsible.
Sources
There are three instructive articles in the Journal of Archaeological Research on the matter in the last 20 years:
- Savage (2001): Some Recent Trends in the Archaeology of Predynastic Egypt
- Stevenson (2016): The Egyptian Predynastic and State Formation
- Bard (2017): Political Economies of Predynastic Egypt and the Formation of the Early State
Reasons
The literature discusses various causes:
- Scarce resources (and consequently expansion to gain control of additional resources). This theory has been discredited according to Savage (2001).
- External conquest and oppression by a warrior culture. This theory has been discredited according to Savage (2001) and was almost certainly an artifact of early modern European concepts of how history works.
- Increased political affluence of certain groups (Cluster 3 burials at Naga-ed-Dêr, according to Savage 2001). This yields more resources to support an army to conquer other polities.
- Development of advanced tools of control and government, such as sophisticated writing in Abydos according to Bard (2017).
- An increased militarization of Egyptian culture in general (see Stevenson 2016).
- Rise in inter-regional trade leading to more sophisticated technology, greater wealth and freeing up of resources for conquest.
- Gradual consolidation of political power over centuries ceasing only with the unification of Egypt (i.e. the question should not be why Egypt was unified, but why Egypt was not unified with other places - the answer probably has to do with technology and geographical distance).
... and many other causes of various importance.
The Narmer palate
...should not be overestimated. Although an important historical document because of the lack of other such documents from the same time (besides Pharaoh Scorpion's mace head), this was a relatively insignificant object at the time. It shows various things (the use of sophisticated writing, the existence of the institution of the Pharaoh, the importance of some ideology involving the unification of what later became known as upper and lower Egypt since Narmer is shown wearing the crowns of upper and lower Egypt respectively in different scenes), but there are many things that it does not show beyond reasonable doubt: Did the crowns Narmer was shown wearing actually stand for the whole of upper and lower Egypt at the time? Was Narmer the one responsible for their unification? Etc. etc.
There are many things about the process of the unification of Ancient Egypt that we do not understand. We should be very careful when interpreting the sources ...
More post
- 📝 Why did not US use solely (more) aviation and artillery when taking Okinawa during ww2?
- 📝 What was the name of the region, Somalia, British Somalia or British Somaliland?
- 📝 What are the immediate legal effects of rendering a royal branch illegitimate?
- 📝 When has the Tory party split over trade issues?
- 📝 Why is president Nixon considered worst president in the history of US?
- 📝 Was the Zimmerman Telegram a ruse on the US or a way of Germany to incite Mexico to declare war on the US?
- 📝 Did Mithridates VI ever lead 500,000 soldiers?
- 📝 WWII - documents on turn around point in German Foreign strategy - "stop we are not going to pass Finland to USSR"
- 📝 What was the commandant of Okhotsk's involvement in Russian-American Company hiring?
- 📝 Why is there a difference in ordinal numbers of UK General Elections and Parliaments? Was a UK Parliament ever formed without an election?
- 📝 What uniform is this?
- 📝 What factors explain Indian territorial restraint towards Pakistani occupied Kashmir despite military success against Pakistan?
- 📝 In what year was the conquest of the Incas completed?
- 📝 Were there any drunk driving laws before the automobile?
- 📝 Was there a Stick-Grenade prior to the Stielhandgranate?
- 📝 Comparison of naval fleet strengths during the Napoleonic wars
- 📝 How historically accurate is Les Miserables?
- 📝 When did the Ecclesiastical courts in England lose the authority to mete out punishments such as imprisonment and execution?
- 📝 Did airports have security checks before the 1970s?
- 📝 Who were the Hermotybians and Calascirians mentioned as making up the warrior caste of Egypt by Herodotus
- 📝 How did the different regions' cultures in colonial America eventually begin to unify?
- 📝 Who was the Irish interpreter in Monterey in 1822?
- 📝 Why was there no concerted effort to end the Barbary pirate raids until the 1800's?
- 📝 What was the early understanding of static electricity shocks?
- 📝 Why did army in Napoleon era never use hand-grenades to temporarily disrupt the square formation?
- 📝 What are the best resources for studying oracle bone inscriptions?
- 📝 What were the dimensions of the Lahitolle 95 mm cannon?
- 📝 Names of articles worn by men of ~11th century European nobility
- 📝 Transatlantic Zeppelin Flight Time
- 📝 Why didn't Hitler invade Middle East for resources first before invading Soviet Union?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Why were Upper and Lower Egypt consolidated into a single kingdom?
- 📝 Why were old fortifications shaped like stars and not like circles?
- 📝 Why Were Madagascar and New Zealand Discovered So Late?
- 📝 Why were Spain and Portugal neutral / not invaded in WWII?
- 📝 Why were helmets and other body armour not commonplace in the 1800s?
- 📝 Why were the drawings of Colossus burnt after WW2 and why was its very existence "of course" kept secret?
- 📝 Why were British ships not of the same quality as French and Spanish ships until the latter part of the 18th century?
- 📝 Why did Roosevelt and Churchill use voice-based telecommunication, instead of simpler text-based options which were easier to encrypt?
- 📝 Why were the Germans and Russians so fixated on an unlikely "separate peace" in 1945?
- 📝 Why were La Réunion and Mauritius uninhabited?
- 📝 Why were there civil wars in Croatia and Bosnia, but not in Slovenia or Macedonia?
- 📝 Why were Morocco and Tunisia made a French protectorate, but Algeria annexed as part of France?
- 📝 How were the British and French armies invited into Belgium in 1914?
- 📝 Why did the states that were born out of the Louisiana purchase adopt a common law system, and not a civil law system?
- 📝 Why and how were east Brandenburg, Pomerania and Silesia taken away from Germany after WW2?
- 📝 Why were schoolchildren in the USA taught virtually nothing about the Holocaust during the fifties and sixties?
- 📝 Why were the Prague Spring leaders treated more leniently than Nagy and his colleagues?
- 📝 Why were gravediggers, actors and former gladiators (but not slaves) banned from the Colosseum?
- 📝 Did anyone warn about the potential for stock market crashes in 1929, and if so why were their warnings ignored?
- 📝 Why are Vikings singled out for raids in Britain and Ireland when records may indicate most raids were by local rulers?
- 📝 Why didn't invaders of India ever cross into Myanmar and beyond (east)?
- 📝 Why did Germany take so long to consolidate into a single nation?
- 📝 Why were China and India able to peacefully co-exist for so long?
- 📝 Millions of pictures and countless hours of video were taken during World War II. Why is it so hard to find archives online?
- 📝 Why were Muslims in Western Thrace and Christians in Constantinople excluded from the population exchange?
- 📝 What were the Government Press Prosecutions of 1858 and why did they occur?
- 📝 Why were the ship names "Scharnhorst" and "Gneisenau" used together?
- 📝 Why did the Nazis guillotine criminals but mostly hang political enemies, and why were the White Rose group an exception?
- 📝 Why were Austria-Hungary's Slavic minorities put into multinational states?
- 📝 Why was Italy unified under the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia and not under a stronger state?