Egypt in 2100 BC

Harpoon fishing like it’s circa 2100 BC. From the tomb of Ankhtify.

Note: This is so far back in time that dates can be off by up to 70 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.
• Population: on the low side of 1 million.
• Major cities: north to south: Memphis, Herakleopolis, Asyut, Thinis, Abydos, Dendera, Coptos, Thebes, Elephantine.
  • capital: none
• Language: Middle Egyptian – the classic form of the language.
• Religion: idol worship in the temples of Ptah, Ra, Hathor, Osiris, Isis, Horus, Min, Seth, Nut, etc; magic spells; morally judged by the gods after death.
• Government: warlordism.
• Economy: A string of provincial economies. Wheat, barley, flax, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, honey, figs, beer. No pyramid is being built.
  • imports: Nubian archers.
• Currency: none.
• Transport: Nile River, sail boats, barges, donkeys. Rare: roads, horses, and wheeled transport, camels unknown.
• Technology: irrigation, mud bricks, stone blocks, paper, glass, bee-keeping, linen (not cotton or silk). Not bronze but copper hardened with arsenic.

The last 100 years: the -2100s:

• Kings:
  • 6th Dynasty: Pepy II, Nitiqret (Nitocris).
  • After -2181, only local dynasties:
    • 7th/8th Dynasty (Memphis) : “70 kings in 70 days” and then 17 kings in 20 years.
    • 9th/10th Dynasty (Herakleopolis): Khety I, Khety II.
    • 11th Dynasty (Thebes): Mentuhotep I, Intef I, Intef II.
• Famine strikes Egypt repeatedly, part of the megadrought of the 4.2-kiloyear event. One tomb autobiography says parents even ate their children. Egypt stored grain for the bad years, but not enough for a megadrought. The national government collapses in -2181 leading to:
• Warlordism: The power of the kings of the 7th and 8th Dynasties barely extend beyond Memphis. Beyond Memphis life goes on much the same – power and wealth in Egypt had been decentralizing for the past 200 years. But with no national capital to keep the peace, city begins fighting city. By century’s end Egypt has settled into 110-year civil war between Herakleopolis and Thebes.
• Memphis, the now-former capital, fills with sand, pyramids are robbed, the nearby Step Pyramid becomes the haunt of herdsmen. By -2125 there is not even a king anymore.
• Thebes, a one-donkey town, becomes the top city in the south by century’s end thanks to its core fighting force of Nubian archers and control of important desert routes.
• The First Intermediate Period (-2181 to -2055) is the name scholars give to this time of troubles. It comes between the Old Kingdom period (-2686 to -2181), aka the Pyramid Age, and the Middle Kingdom (-2055 to -1650). Writers in the Middle Kingdom, like Ipuwer, will make it seem like a period when morals broke down, but in fact morals were taken more seriously:
• Democratization of the afterlife: The magical spells of the Pyramid Texts that only appeared in the pyramids of kings and queens to protect them in the afterlife, now begin to appear in Coffin Texts of non-royals. Religion is no longer so much a matter of performing the right sacrifices but of right acting: after death your good and bad deeds will be weighed against each other. In about 2,100 years Egypt will become a formative influence on Christianity.

Meanwhile in Britain, brown-skinned people like the Whitehawk Woman are moving the bluestones of Stonehenge, but they keep falling over thanks to poor construction.

– Abagond, +2023. 

See also:

• Ankhtify
• 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 in 2600 BC
  • Egypt in 2500 BC
  • Egypt in 2400 BC
  • Egypt in 2300 BC
  • Egypt in 2200 BC
  • Egypt
  • Egypt: a brief history
  • Ancient Egypt
• Egyptian
  • Egyptian hieroglyphics
• Pyramid Text
• Coffin Text
• Nubia
• The British
  • The British through time: the last 10,000 years
  • Whitehawk Woman
  • Stonehenge

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