Ancient Egypt: History in an Hour. Anthony Holmes

Dynastic Period: c.4000 BC–3100 BC

      From c.4000 BC to c.3100 BC the Egyptian population was fragmented and comprised various tribes living in Lower and Upper Egypt. As the population increased and the desert encroached, so did the people’s need to expand their access to water and land. Tribal warfare would have been commonplace, although inter-tribal trading between the north and the south was also evident.

      Centres of power developed in small autonomous political entities in Lower Egypt and at two centres in Upper Egypt, specifically at Nubt (Naqada) and Nekhen (Hierakonpolis). This somewhat chaotic situation was about to change, with the establishment of what is called Dynasty 0 (zero).

      The consolidation of Upper and Lower Egypt under a single centre of rule took place in c.3100 BC. This time of unification is generally recognized as the beginning of ancient Egyptian civilization. The actual dynamics are uncertain, but the name of King Narmer is preeminent. He is generally recognized as the first king of a unified Upper and Lower Egypt.

      An immensely important artefact in the Cairo Museum called the ‘Palette of King Narmer’ shows Narmer wearing the crowns of both Upper and Lower Egypt. The palette also contains some of the earliest known hieroglyphs. Little is known about Narmer. His base of power was Nekhen, where the ‘lords of Nekhen’ banded together to secure domination of the entire land under a single king.

       The Palette of King Narmer

      The Old Kingdom: 2649 BC–2152 BC

      The Old Kingdom covered a period of approximately 500 years that spanned the 3rd to the 6th Dynasties, during which time Egypt experienced its great age of pyramid building in a 45-mile span of desert.

       The Pyramids of Giza

      The major contributors to the construction of pyramids were:

       King Djoser ‘The Holy’ ( c. 2667 BC–2648 BC)

      The second king of the 3rd Dynasty was named Djoser. Up to the time of his reign, burials took place in the ground. An underground chamber was excavated to house the deceased’s remains and a mud-brick structure with a rectangular base, sloping sides and a flat roof was built over the burial site as an offertory chapel. The Arabic word mastaba, meaning bench, which was used to describe to shape of the structure has been adopted by archaeologists to refer to the entire tomb.

      The Stepped Pyramid of Djoser Photograph by Gary Ku

      Djoser’s architect, Imhotep, was tasked with excavating and lining a complex underground structure for the king’s burial at Saqqara. It was covered with a mastaba built of stone. A second, smaller mastaba was built in stone on the first and so on until Djoser’s ‘six-step pyramid’ was completed. It was the first stone structure of significance in ancient Egypt, and indeed the world, and remains impressive today.

       King Sneferu ( c. 2613 BC–2589 BC)

      The first king of the 4th Dynasty, Sneferu used the design of Djoser’s stepped pyramid to build his own memorials. Sneferu is credited with three, possibly four, pyramids, although the first, now called the Meidum Pyramid, may have been built by Sneferu’s father, Huni.

      Sneferu preferred a smooth-sided structure. The builders filled the steps with mud bricks, and clad the resulting structure with limestone slabs. The limestone casing is thought to have collapsed about 1,000 years later. The limestone cladding was removed for other purposes and the underlying mud bricks slumped into an untidy heap around the stone core.

       The ‘Bent’ Pyramid of Sneferu

      Sneferu’s second pyramid is called the ‘Bent Pyramid’ because the angle of its sides was changed midway through construction from 55° to 43°. It has been suggested that it was possibly a pyramid built on top of a mastaba, or perhaps the structure was not strong enough and the builders changed the design to lighten the load.

      Sneferu’s third pyramid is called the ‘North’ or ‘Red Pyramid’. It has a more gentle (43°) slope and internal chambers built from red granite. It is not known whether Sneferu was buried in one of his pyramids as his sarcophagus and corpse were not found, but the three practice runs at pyramid construction brought Khufu, Sneferu’s son, on to the scene. King Khufu was the builder of the Great Pyramid at Giza.

       King Khufu ( c. 2589 BC–2566 BC)

      The colossal structure of the Great Pyramid of Khufu was the world’s tallest man-made structure for 3,800 years, until the construction of Lincoln Cathedral in the 1300s. It is the largest and only surviving example of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It took about 20 years to build, is 146.5 metres high, and comprises 2.3 million limestone blocks with a total mass estimated at 5.9 million tonnes.

       Khufu

      Modern builders would be hard-pressed to equal the accuracy of the construction which is remarkable, taking into account the simple tools and instruments available at the time. Chambers were built inside the pyramids during the construction phase. The two main chambers within the Great Pyramid are called (by convention) the King’s Chamber and the Queen’s Chamber and they are interconnected by a corbelled grand gallery.

       The Great Pyramid of Khufu

      A major misconception, first promulgated by the Jewish historian Josephus in the first century AD and subsequently fuelled by Hollywood movies, is that the Great Pyramid was built by Hebrew slaves who were subjected to inhumane conditions as they were forced to drag huge blocks of stone. The story goes that slave overseers cracked whips and beat the workers unmercifully. This myth persists regardless that when the pyramids of Giza were built the hard labour suffered by the Hebrews in the brick-making pits of the early Rameside Period was still 1,000 years in the future. The truth behind the construction of the pyramids would not be sufficiently dramatic for the silver screen.

      The pyramids of the 4th Dynasty were built by Egyptians. A core of full-time construction personnel was augmented annually during the period of the Nile flood by farmers and other men who could not work during the inundation. At the peak there may have been 20–25,000 men working on the Great Pyramid. They were housed and well fed in a workers’ village close to the construction site. Archaeologists have discovered the remains of their dormitories and eating halls.

      Their diet comprised highly nutritious bread and beer and even fish and meat. They had access to medical care as has been demonstrated by the examination of skeletal remains showing set and healed broken limbs. They also received ‘tax rebates’ for working on the project. Crews working on the site adopted names such as ‘Friends of Khufu’ and ‘The Drunken Gang’ and they were very competitive in terms of achieving their daily quotas. It was indeed considered a privilege to contribute to the memorial of the divine pharaoh and their work added to their credit for the afterlife.

      The fundamental reason for pyramid building remains a contentious issue. Conventional wisdom suggests that pyramids were the tombs of the pharaohs. Other theories range from those based on mystic symbolism to the incorporation of prophetic measurements into the structure or even extra-terrestrial intervention.

      It cannot be stated for certain that the Great Pyramid was the final resting place of