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Chapter 3
River Valley Civilizations
Egypt
Egypt: Gift of the Nile
 The Nile River spans the length of Egypt from south to
north.
 Provides natural irrigation along with man-made
irrigation systems and has predictable, annual flooding
 The land outside the Nile Valley is desert, which helped
Egypt from invasion
 These factors meant rule from indigenous governments
Organization of Egyptian
History
 Predynastic Period (Pleistocene-c. 3050 BCE)
 Early Dynastic Period (c. 3050-2686 BCE)
 Old Kingdom (2686-2181 BCE)
 First Intermediate Period (2181-1991 BCE)
 Middle Kingdom (2134-1690 BCE)
 Second Intermediate Period (1674-1549 BCE)
 New Kingdom (1549-1069 BCE)
 Third Intermediate Period (1069-653 BCE)
 Late Period (672-332 BCE)
Earliest Egypt: Before the
Kings
 Agriculture sustained life

12000 B.C.E. grasses ground into foods; 6000 B.C.E.
seeds ground into flour
 Drought in the Sahara led to more Nile settlement
 Strings of villages along Nile by 3600 BCE (Nagada I Period)

Cities dependent on cereal agriculture

Linked by trade along the river but trade was not central to their economy

Little evidence of social stratification
 Walled towns emerged by 3300 BCE in Upper Egypt
The Written Record
 Writing began early in Egypt (3500-3000 BCE)
 Almost simultaneously with Sumerians
 May have learned cuneiform from Sumerians and adopted
their owns trop of hieroglyphics
 Writing based on system of hieroglyphics written on
stone, pottery, or papyrus
 Writing used for business and government to
2400 BCE
 Provide lists of the earliest kings of Egypt
recorded by the nomes (administrative units)

Manetho wrote the first Kings List
Unification and the
Rule of Kings
 Early Dynastic Period (3100-2686 BCE)
 3100 BCE- unification established unified Egypt from peoples
who came to the Nile and melded into a single ethnicity
 Menes is often noted by historians as being the first king, but
there is support for earlier kings
 Kings grew in power with unification and were seen a gods
 Responsible for keeping the forces of nature balanced and
annual flooding of the Nile
 National religious ideology, centralized control of political
administration, and artistic productivity during this period
The Gods and Unification
 Osiris = order (ma’at) and virtue
 Seth = disorder and evil
 Isis = sister/wife of Osiris, defeated Seth’s plot to destroy Osiris

Seth cut Osiris into fourteen pieces and scattered him across Egypt

Isis collected the pieces of Osiris (symbolizes unification of Egypt)
 Isis conceived Horus

Horus defeated Seth in battle and made Osiris in charge of the
underworld
 Horus was the first Egyptian god to be worshipped nationally

Often depicted as a falcon

Kings believed that if they lived order lives, they would be united
with Osiris after death
The Afterlife
 Belief in afterlife led to practice of mummification of the
dead
 The pyramids were created for the burial places of the
kings
 As early as 3100 BCE, kings and members of the court
were buried in tombs (mastabas)
 Suggests social stratification
From Villages to Cities
 Egypt has no record of independent city-states
 Walled towns that emerged around 3300 BCE suggest new
stratification
 In early Dynastic Egypt, selected villages held administrative
headquarters
 Egypt’s cities had a religious base as well as an administrative
one
 Population in Egypt increased to 2.5 million by 1550-1200
BCE
 The largest towns were the political capitals (Thebes
administrative capital)

Shaduf irrigation (bucket and wheel) carried water further out
from the Nile
Architecture: The
Pyramids
 In the third dynasty (2649-2575 BCE) the king’s architect
elaborated the mastaba into the monumental pyramids
 As power grew, the Old Kingdom rulers spent fortunes
constructing pyramid tombs and mummification
 The greatest pyramids were built during the fourth dynasty
(2575-2465 BCE)
Disintegration of Old
Kingdom
 Central authority weakened and provincial officials
(nomarchs) asserted their power
 Collected taxes and built private armies
 Death rates increased with famine and drought
 In 2181 BCE, the Old Kingdom fell
 Period of disunity, called First Intermediate Period, lasted a
century
 Nomarchs held local power

Over time, two separate centers came to content for power;
Herakleopolis and Thebes
The Middle Kingdom
 About 2050 BCE, King Mentuhotpe of Thebes defeated the
north and reunited the kingdom (The Middle Kingdom)
 Fine arts and literature flourished
 Autobiography of Si-nuhe”,
 More organization and power than before
 Efficient administration spread power south to Nubia and into
the Middle East
 Egypt became an empire, ruling over distant, foreign people
 Middle Kingdom ended in part because the Nubians drove
out the Egyptians and the Hykos (Semitic-people form Sinai)
invasion
Akhenaten
 Modern excavations unearthed the ruins of the ancient
capital, Akhetaten, created by King Amenhotep IV,
known as Akhenaten (r. 1353-1335 BCE)
 Challenged social order of Egypt
 Adopted monotheistic religion devoted to Aten, god of
the sun
 Akhenaten moved his capital 200 miles north of Thebes
to the desert
 City was destroyed by later kings and the capital was
moved back to Thebes
 Former religious traditions restored
Indus Valley
Roots of Indus Valley
Civilization
 Not discovered until 19th century
 The first city discovered was the 4500-year-old city of
Harappa
 Two years later, a second city 200 miles southwest was
discovered at Mohenjo-Daro
 Cities were both about 3 miles around,
large enough to hold populations of 40,000
Roots of Indus Valley
Civilization
 The region of the Bolan Pass yielded artifacts back to
7000 BCE
 What was the relationship between this civilization and
Mesopotamia??
 Innovation; grown independently from
Mesopotamia
 Written records scarce in Indus Valley
Mysteries of the Indus
Valley
 Urban settlements date to 7000 BCE
 Goods traded by boat along Indus and
into the Persian Gulf and Mesopotamia
 Crafts include pottery making, dying, bronze, and bead
making
 First known use of cotton for textiles occurred in the
Indus Valley
Mysteries of the Indus
Valley
 By about 2500 BCE, a civilization of 1000 sites reached
its apex
 Extensive public baths and sewage systems
 Regular plan suggests organization and bureaucracy
 No monumental buildings
 No evidence of social stratification
Legacy of Indus Valley
 Artifacts suggest equality, efficiency and public
conveniences that changed little over time
 Sign of successful or stagnant civilization
 No apparent central city
 Cannot decipher language to answer historical questions
 Was succeeded by and blended with the Aryan
civilization
 Some Harappan practices adopted by Aryans
 Aryans learned farming from Harappans
 Image of god similar to Aryan god Shiva
Review Questions
 What kinds of information are available in the written
records of Egypt and Mesopotamia, but not the Indus
Valley? Why?
 In light of the discovery and likely origins of the Indus
Valley civilization in the foothills of the west, and its
extension north and south, is it appropriate to call it the
“Indus Valley civilization”? Why or why not? What
other name might you give it?
 What is the evidence that scholars use to argue that the
Indus Valley civilization was more egalitarian than the
civilizations of the Nile and Mesopotamia?
Compare/Contrast
 Create a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting any
two of these early civilizations:
 Mesopotamia
 Egypt
 Indus Valley