Free Early Dynastic Egypt by Toby A. H. Wilkinson Page B

Delta to support a growing population (F.A.Hassan 1988:165–6); the influence of irrigation in the concentration of power (Wittfogel 1957); trade (Bard 1987); and ideology (Bard 1992; cf. Kemp 1989:32 and 35). Although all these factors are likely to have played a part in the
concentration of political and economic power, some can be rejected decisively as ‘prime movers’.
For example, given the carrying capacity of agricultural land in Upper Egypt and the probable size of the ancient population, it seems unlikely that population pressure was a significant factor in the formation of the Egyptian state (F.A.Hassan 1988:165; Kemp 1989:31; contra Hoffman 1980:309). Even though the strip of cultivable land is often very narrow in Upper Egypt, it seems always to have been sufficient to support the ancient population. None the less, the end of the Neolithic subpluvial and the accompanying desiccation of the savannahs probably caused an influx of desert pastoralists into the Nile valley in the late Predynastic period. Such a phenomenon seems to be attested at Hierakonpolis (Hoffman et al. 1986), and it may have played a part in the social processes which led to the formation of the state. The Scorpion macehead is an exception amongst early royal iconography which generally makes no reference to irrigation works. It is also unlikely that water management in the Nile valley was organised on a national scale in Early Dynastic times. The evidence from later periods of Egyptian history indicates that irrigation was not centrally controlled, nor would central control have been practicable: basin irrigation was the most efficient way of harnessing the floodwaters of the Nile, and this would have been most effectively managed at the local or regional level by communities, perhaps overseen by local governors. Hence, the control of irrigation on a nation-wide basis can probably be discounted as a major factor in Egyptian state formation (Janssen 1978:217; Lamberg-Karlovsky and Sabloff 1979:129; F.A. Hassan 1988:165; cf. Hoffman 1980:315–16). It has been argued that the need for ever more complex information processing was a key factor in Mesopotamian state formation (Wright and Johnson 1975). In Egypt, too, there is little doubt that the increasing centralisation of political and economic authority required sophisticated forms of administration – notably record-keeping and the invention of writing (Postgate et al. 1995). However, this seems to be a correlate or effect of state formation rather than a primary cause.
It is now generally accepted that a combination of factors was responsible in the Egyptian case (Lamberg-Karlovsky and Sabloff 1979:207–11, 329–30; F.A.Hassan 1988:164–6; Wilkinson 1996b: 90). The archaeological and iconographic record emphasises two factors, trade and ideology. In discussing them, an obvious danger arises: because these two factors were clearly at work in late Predynastic Egypt (more clearly, perhaps, than other factors mentioned above), it is all too easy to overstate their influence on the process of state formation as a whole. The emergence of the Egyptian state is best understood as having a ‘multiplicity of causes’ (F.A.Hassan 1988:165).
Recent excavations at Abydos and in the Delta—at sites such as Buto and Minshat Abu Omar—have highlighted the important part played by foreign trade in the dynamics of state formation (contra Kemp 1989:31). Of course, the increasing demand for prestige goods acquired by trade was a consequence, not a cause, of social inequality (F.A.Hassan 1988:165). None the less, a strategic location for trade seems to have been the common factor in the rise of particular Predynastic centres. From Buto and Minshat Abu Omar in the Delta to This, Naqada and Hierakonpolis in Upper Egypt, and Qustul in Lower Nubia: all seem to have gained importance and power through access to, or control of, trade routes. The vast numbers of imported vessels buried in tomb U-j at Abydos