Ancient Egyptian Civilization

The Ancient Egyptian civilization is one of the earliest, most glorious and influential civilizations the world has ever seen. It lasted for thousands of years starting from the nomadic farmers in the Nile Valley in 5000 BC all the way to the end of the Ptolemaic period, which marked the onset of Roman occupation in 30 BC. In order to make better sense of these 5000 long years, historians divided Egyptian history into alternating eras of unity and stability, called Kingdoms, which were in turn divided into the successions of rulers called dynasties and the durations of fragmentation in between, called Intermediate periods. While each of the three Kingdoms namely, the Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom were consolidated in the presence of a strong, single power, each of the Intermediate periods that followed were instable and fragmented. Therefore, Ancient Egypt witnessed cycles of what historians refer to as the ‘rise and fall’ or ‘formation and reformation’ of the State. The First Intermediate Period is “characterized as a period of chaos, decline, misery, and social and political dissolution: a ‘dark age’ separating two epochs of glory and power” (Seidlmayer 145). By using terms such as ‘fall’, ‘decline’ or ‘collapse’ of the State, modern Egyptologists largely present a negative image of the First Intermediate Period.

According to Christiana Kohler, the Egyptians’ idea of a State was “a unified territorial state under one king with a God-given law to maintain