Kneeling Pepi I
Economic problems, drought and famine weakened the Old Kingdom. There was a severe 200-year drought in North and East Africa around 2200 B.C. Hieroglyphics record that the annual Nile flood failed for about 50 years and many people died in famine. This may have produced the collapse of the Old Kingdom and the period of chaos that followed.
At the beginning of the 5th dynasty the Pharaohs ceded some of their power to a rising class of nobles. Egypt fragmented into several rival principalities and the Old Kingdom collapsed into something resembling a police state. The decline is indicated today by the presence of noblemen tombs in the districts where they ruled instead of around the pyramids of the pharaohs. The pyramids built during this period were of inferior quality to those built before.
Professor Fekri Hassan wrote for the BBC: “Nothing prepared Egypt for the eclipse of royal power and poverty that came after Pepy II (Neferkare). He had ruled for more than 90 years (2246-2152 B.C.) as the fourth king of the 6th Dynasty of the Old Kingdom. Within the span of 20 years, fragmentary records indicate that no less than 18 kings and possibly one queen ascended the throne with nominal control over the country. This was the entire length of the 7th and 8th Dynasties (2150-2134 B.C.). In the last few years of the 6th Dynasty, the erosion of power of the centralized state was offset by that of provincial governors and officials who became hereditary holders of their posts and treated their regions as their own property. [Source: Professor Fekri Hassan, BBC, February 17, 2011, Professor Fekri Hassan is from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. His areas of interest include the cultural dynamics of state formation in Ancient Egypt, the role of gender in the early religious and political developments in rock art and the attributes of the earliest Egyptian goddesses]
Renate Mueller-Wollermann of the University of Tuebingen wrote: “In previous decades, Egyptologists explained the decline of the Old Kingdom by a growing decentralization of the administration and economy that led to the weakness, and eventually collapse, of the central state. More recently, climatic causes—specifically increasing desiccation— have been both proposed and denounced. An entirely new proposal was brought forward by Jansen-Winkeln, who claimed that an attack by foreigners from the northeast was feasible.” [Source: Renate, Mueller-Wollermann, University of Tuebingen, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2014, escholarship.org
Authors:
T he so-called Old Kingdom (about 2700-2200 BC) represents not only the first centralized territo-rial state in the history of Africa, but in fact in the history of mankind, lasting for about half a millennium. Yet after several centuries the Old Kingdom seemingly all of sudden vanished. This article attempts to identify causes that may have led to the demise of this once invincible state. The causes for the Old Kingdom's crisis and the eventual demise of its po-litical and economic structure may be found at its very beginning. The avail-able evidence shows that most of the late Old Kingdom critical factors were deeply rooted in the rise of the Third and the early Fourth dynasties around 2500 BC. The eventual disappearance of the Old Kingdom came about as a result of long-term and predominantly inter-Kmt 18 nal critical factors in the state organization and in society generally that were hastened by a ma-jor climatic event around 2200 BC. ACCUMULATING THE POTENTIAL I n about 3000 BC, Narmer, the most powerful chieftain in the southern part of Egypt, be-came the first ruler on the throne of a unified Egypt. He and his successors were considered descendants of the gods, especially of the sun god, Re, by whose commission they governed their world. Numerous ruling elite emerged rela-tively quickly, representing the connecting link between the king and the remainder of the popu-lation. As a consequence of deep social transfor-mation connected with the emergence of the nascent centralized state, the Egyptian society became more distinctly stratified. Especially after 2700 BC, the number of officials mastering writing and mathematics, who were essential for the exchange of information, its archiving and tax collection, grew rapidly. This enabled the administration of all areas of ancient Egypt, reaching from the Mediterranean coast up to today's Aswan. In the course of four centuries, the count of officials in the land mul-tiplied greatly. By this time the basic tools of governance and techniques of power and status display were established. The ruling elite wielded their strength with the help of a specifically created ideology, advocating the actual social alignment. To convey its special rank, the elite mainly uti-lized rare and imported commodities that were otherwise unavailable and which were acquired through controlled long-distance trade. Another important role was also gradually played by mon-umental architecture. The system of privileges that was granted by the ruler (as every loyalty always had and still has its price) distinctly help-ed to hold the whole system in check.