New origin date for Egypt

[Mark G]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23947820

yet another attempt at updating the chronology - anyone would think they didn't have atomic clocks and archive libraries back then

"Using radiocarbon dating and computer models, they believe the civilisation's first ruler - King Aha - came to power in about 3100BC"

[Patrick Waterson]

The article.

A new timeline for the origin of ancient Egypt has been established by scientists.

A team from the UK found that the transformation from a land of disparate farmers into a state ruled by a king was more rapid than previously thought.

Using radiocarbon dating and computer models, they believe the civilisation's first ruler - King Aha - came to power in about 3100BC.

The research is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

Lead researcher Dr Michael Dee, from the Research Laboratory for Archaeology at the University of Oxford, said: "The formation of Egypt was unique in the ancient world. It was a territorial state; a state from which the moment it formed had established borders over a territory in much the same way we think of nations today.

"Trying to understand what happened in human history to lead people to establish this sort of polity we felt was a gap in understanding that needed to be filled."

First dynasty

Until now, the chronology of the earliest days of Egypt has been based on rough estimates.

With no written records from this very early period, a timeline has been based on the evolving styles of ceramics unearthed from human burial sites.

Now though, scientists have used radiocarbon dating of excavated hair, bones and plants, with established archaeological evidence and computer models to pinpoint when the ancient state came into existence.

Previous records suggested the pre-Dynastic period, a time when early groups began to settle along the Nile and farm the land, began in 4000BC. But the new analysis revealed this process started later, between 3700 or 3600BC.

The team found that just a few hundred years later, by about 3100BC, society had transformed to one ruled by a king.

Dr Dee told the BBC World Service programme Science in Action: "The time period is shorter than was previously thought - about 300 or 400 years shorter. Egypt was a state that emerged quickly - over that time one has immense social change.

"This is interesting when one compares it with other places. In Mesopotamia, for example, you have agriculture for several thousand years before you have anything like a state."

Archaeologists believe Egypt's first king, Aha, came to power after another prominent leader, Narmer, unified the land.

The team was also able to date the reigns of the next seven kings and queens - Djer, Djet, Queen Merneith, Den, Anedjib, Semerkhet and Qa'a - who with Aha formed Egypt's first dynasty.

The model suggests that King Djer may have ruled for more than 50 years. This is such a long period, it raises the possibility that there may have been other kings or queens of Egypt that we do not know about or that the state may have collapsed and reformed.

Actually this reconstruction of the dynasty is slightly scrambled.  It began with Meniss XV, then Zaa Atet ('Djet'), then Zaa ('Djer') and Meryt-neith (she ruled on alone after his death), then Den (actually a queen) and her husband Horem-ka ('Aha') and then Enezib/Anedjib followed by Semerkhet, in whose reign there was a massive planetary catastrophe noted in Manetho and whose effects can be seen in the incineration of the interiors of earlier tombs by combustion of a light and volatile material and more significantly the approximately 30 degrees difference in orientation of buildings erected towards the end of the dynasty (e.g. the tombs of Semerkhet and Ka'a).

[Justin Swanton]

Previous records suggested the pre-Dynastic period, a time when early groups began to settle along the Nile and farm the land, began in 4000BC. But the new analysis revealed this process started later, between 3700 or 3600BC.

The team found that just a few hundred years later, by about 3100BC, society had transformed to one ruled by a king.

Dr Dee told the BBC World Service programme Science in Action: "The time period is shorter than was previously thought - about 300 or 400 years shorter. Egypt was a state that emerged quickly - over that time one has immense social change.

"This is interesting when one compares it with other places. In Mesopotamia, for example, you have agriculture for several thousand years before you have anything like a state."

Interesting. What is the evidence that agriculture lasted thousands of years in Mesopotamia before the emergence of states?

[Patrick Waterson]

Is the esteemed Alastair McBeath still reading this forum?  Perhaps he could oblige ...

[Sharur]

Interesting. What is the evidence that agriculture lasted thousands of years in Mesopotamia before the emergence of states?

Is the esteemed Alastair McBeath still reading this forum?  Perhaps he could oblige ...

Cheers, Patrick...

Justin: If you're wanting to hunt up references, you might start with those from my Mesopotamian articles in Slingshots 256, 261 and 262 on the "agriculture" and "state" aspects.

However, as so often, the problem comes down to definitions, such as exactly what one considers to have been "Mesopotamia", "agriculture" and "state", and when. For example, agricultural practices and settlements can be identified archaeologically in southern Mesopotamia (i.e. Sumer-Akkad) from about the sixth millennium BC (artifacts, buildings and things like domesticated animal bones and cereal grains, for instance), but these things already existed outside the near-Gulf Tigris-Euphrates valleys from about the twelfth millennium BC elsewhere around the Fertile Crescent region, including other parts of said valleys away from the Gulf's headwaters (chiefly towards modern Syria/the Levant).

If by "state" one thinks of some kind of identifiable central control and administration mechanism identified by written documents, that might be Sargon's Akkad, in the later third millennium BC, or the preceding later Early Dynastic (ED) period, when it's clear some rulers claimed control over areas larger than the previous city-states, but it could equally apply to the earlier ED times of the city-states, or the "colonial state(s)" (if it was/were) of the late Uruk period back into the late fourth millennium. However, the archaeological evidence for trade between settlements and regions around the Fertile Crescent and beyond - to which we might arguably add agricultural practices apparently being shared across parts of the same area - could carry a notion of statehood, if meaning "a recognisable culture", back very much further.

My guess would be Dr Dee (thankfully not "John", perhaps...) was intending the comparison to be between the earlier what-would-become-Sumerian-writing-area agriculture of the fifth-sixth millennia and the ED-Akkad states of the mid-late third. Not sure that's really long enough to be counted as "several thousand years", but when quoted from a spur-of-the-monent soundbite, it'd be an easy slip to make. I've had to go away and check the dates before typing this, and I wouldn't dare comment on Egypt at all similarly, as it's well outside the times I'm more familiar with from there, for instance.

Of course, it's at least as likely to have been an intended "contribution" to the endless archaeologists' rivalry concerning the primacy of "Egypt" or "Mesopotamia" for various cultural matters, such as the development of the first writing. Or if you prefer, "Nya, nya! Our state's older than yours!"

[Patrick Waterson]

Of course, it's at least as likely to have been an intended "contribution" to the endless archaeologists' rivalry concerning the primacy of "Egypt" or "Mesopotamia" for various cultural matters, such as the development of the first writing. Or if you prefer, "Nya, nya! Our state's older than yours!"

And this habit was not even started by archaeologists: the Seleucids and Ptolemies were hard at it from quite early in their respective kingdoms, with Manetho apparently commissioned to expatiate on the antiquity of Egypt and Berosus on that of Babylonia.  Each seems to have gathered whatever records they could and then strung them all together in sequence - even when they were parallel accounts.  We are still living with the consequences today ...

But Alastair has described the Mesopotamian situation, or at least the archaeologists' perception of it, far better than I could have done.  And as Alastair points out, whether these archaeologists' conclusions are entirely credible - how far could one have had agriculture without state-type social organisation - is a matter for our own judgement.