Egypt in 3000 BC

Egypt 3,000 years before Christ had just started to use paper, made from papyrus, and had a new capital: Memphis.

Note: This is so far back in time that dates can be off by up to 100 years or so. I follow the dates in “The Princeton Dictionary of Ancient Egypt” (2008). 

• Location: north-eastern corner of Africa, the land within a few miles of the Nile River from the Great Green sea (the Mediterranean) to the Tropic of Cancer – the last 1,000 km of the Nile where ships can freely sail (they already have sails) north of the rocky Cataracts.
• Population: just under 1 million
• Major cities: north to south: Sais, Memphis, Thinis, Abydos.
• Language: Archaic Egyptian – in archaic hieroglyphic writing.
• Religion: idol worship in temples of Horus, Neith, Osiris, etc. The king as Horus himself. Belief in the afterlife. Human sacrifice practised.
• Government: Djer, third god-king of the First Dynasty.
• Economy: wheat, cattle. Little rainfall – the Nile goes right through the Sahara – but every summer, starting the day after the star Sopdet (Sirius, Sothis) rises on the morning on July 17th, the Nile floods bringing water and soil, mainly from Ethiopia. Irrigation makes even better use of this gift of the Nile upon which Egypt is built.
• Transport: Nile River, sail boats, donkeys. Roads and wheel transport are rare, camels unknown.
• Technology: irrigation, mud bricks, copper (not yet bronze).
  • Newish: paper (papyrus), oven, flail, candle wick

The last 100 years:

• Memphis was founded by King Aha and made the capital of all Egypt. The Ancient Greeks said it was founded by King Menes – and, as it turns out, on the Naqada Label (pictured at top), one of his names was Men. But the Greeks also said Menes was the first king of Egypt, which we know as Narmer, who was probably Aha’s father. Both were from Hierakonpolis way to the south, but is much easier to rule Egypt from Memphis (or Cairo, just 24 km to the north) because it stands near the demographic centre of the country: about as many people live to the north in the Nile Delta as live to the south in the Nile Valley – the Two Lands of Egypt.
• hieroglyphic writing, like Egyptian art, has not yet achieved its standardized, classic form. And it is still making the jump from picture writing to writing sounds. Both these things make it hard to read. Hieratic, its simplified, cursive form, receives a huge boost from:
• the invention of paper – made from papyrus. It is much lighter, more portable and more compact than older writing media: stone, pottery, limestone flakes, etc.
• human sacrifice – a direct result of belief in the afterlife and the absolute power of the king. When King Djer, our present ruler in 3000 BC, dies he will have some 600 people strangled to join him in the afterlife: guards, officials, women, dwarfs, etc. Even his dogs, who are buried the same way as his concubines.
• Abydos: Most kings of the First and Second Dynasties were buried not near Memphis at Saqqara, but far upriver at Abydos, the holy city of Osiris, god of the afterlife.
• Nubia – Egypt begins its long-time policy of destablizing Nubia, the country just to the south.

Meanwhile in Britain, brown-skinned people like the Whitehawk Woman are working on the first version of Stonehenge.

– Abagond, 2023. 

See also:

• Egyptian century of the week
  • Egypt in 3100 BC
• Egypt
  • Egypt: a brief history
  • Ancient Egypt
• Egyptian
  • Egyptian hieroglyphics
• alphabet
  • Roman alphabet
• Nubia
• papyrus
• The British through time: the last 10,000 years

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