Egypt in 2600 BC

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) by Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson. 

• Location: north-eastern Africa, the last 1,000 km of the Nile where ships can freely sail north of the rocky Cataracts. The north-eastern Delta, though, is not completely under government control.
• Population: about 1 million.
• Major cities: Memphis (capital)
• Language: Old Egyptian – in hieroglyphic writing, now in classic form and representing the spoken language. It is not just for government records anymore.
• Religion: idol worship in temples of Horus, Osiris, Seth, etc. Rise of the sun god Ra, solar religion, and pyramids.
• Government: Sneferu, first god-king of the 4th Dynasty.
• Economy: wheat, barley, cattle, sheep, goats. Gold from Nubia, copper from Sinai, wine and oil from Palestine, cedar wood from Byblos. Egypt has few trees.
• Currency: none.
• Transport: Nile River, sail boats, donkeys. Roads and wheel transport are rare, camels unknown.
• Technology: irrigation, mud bricks, copper (bronze not yet in common use), paper. New: stone buildings, pyramids.

The last 100 years: the -2600s:

• Kings:
  • 2nd Dynasty: Peribsen, Khasekhemwy.
  • 3rd Dynasty: Sanakht, Djoser, Sekhemkhet, Khaba, Huni.
  • 4th Dynasty: Sneferu.
• Djoser builds the first pyramid, the Step Pyramid (pictured at top). It is the first building built all in stone. At 60 metres, it is also the tallest building in the world – for the next 30 years or so. And this in a country that uses mud brick to build even the king’s palace.
• Imhotep was the genius behind the Step Pyramid. He was also renowned for his medical knowledge and book of wisdom. In 2,000 years he will be worshipped as a god, unusual for someone who was never king or queen. His tomb has yet to be found.

• 

  Third time’s a charm: the Meidum, Bent and Red Pyramids

• Sneferu tried to build the first pyramid with straight sides. It took him three tries: the Meidum Pyramid (height: 92 m), Bent Pyramid (105 m), and the Red Pyramid (105 m). His son Khufu will go on to build the Great Pyramid of Giza, the tallest of all (147 m).
• Writing: We do not have Imhotep’s book of wisdom, so we are not sure whether he actually wrote one – but he could have: hieroglypic writing is now at the stage where you can write books in it, not just government records.
• Religion: In the early -2600s there was an uprising of the north. Khasekemwy defeated it and married a princess from the north. And, unlike any other king of Egypt, puts both the falcon of Horus and the animal of Seth above his name, a name that means “the two lords/gods are at peace in him.”. Maybe there was some sort of religious struggle between the followers of Horus and Seth. In any case both gods were soon overshadowed by the sun god Ra of Heliopolis near Memphis. And kings are now no longer buried at Abydos, the holy city of Osiris, Horus’s father, but in the desert near Memphis/Heliopolis. Pyramids, stairways to heaven, are part of the new solar religion.

Meanwhile in Britain, brown-skinned people like the Whitehawk Woman are working on the third version of Stonehenge, replacing wood with stone!

– Abagond, 2023. 

See also:

• Egyptian century of the week
  • Egypt in 3100 BC
  • Egypt in 3000 BC
  • Egypt in 2900 BC
  • Egypt in 2800 BC
  • Egypt in 2700 BC
  • Egypt
  • Egypt: a brief history
  • Ancient Egypt
• Egyptian
  • Egyptian hieroglyphics
• Egyptian gods
  • Horus
  • Seth
  • Ra
  • Isis
  • Amun
• Imhotep
• Ancient Egypt and ancient astronauts
• The British
  • The British through time: the last 10,000 years
  • Whitehawk Woman
  • Stonehenge

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