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ancient Egypt
Table of Contents
Introduction & Top Questions
Introduction to ancient Egyptian civilization
The Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods
The Old Kingdom (c. 2575–c. 2130 BCE) and the First Intermediate period
(c. 2130–1938 BCE)
The Middle Kingdom (1938–c. 1630 BCE) and the Second Intermediate period
(c. 1630–1540 BCE)
The New Kingdom (c. 1539–1075 BCE)
Egypt from 1075 BCE to the Macedonian invasion
Macedonian and Ptolemaic Egypt (332–30 BCE)
Roman and Byzantine Egypt (30 BCE– 642 CE)
References & Edit HistoryQuick Facts & Related Topics
Images & Videos
For Students
Pop Quiz: 18 Things to Know About Ancient Egypt
Quizzes
History Buff Quiz
Walk Like an Egyptian
Ancient Civilizations
Egypt Since the Pharaohs
Hatshepsut
Related Questions
By what other term are the kings of Egypt called?
How did Tutankhamun die?
Why is Tutankhamun significant?
How old was Tutankhamun when he ascended to the throne?
What did Tutankhamun accomplish during his reign?
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ancient Egypt
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Written by
Edward F. Wente,
Peter F. Dorman,
Alan K. BowmanSee All
Fact-checked by
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated: Jan 14, 2024 • Article History
Sphinx and the Great Pyramid of Khufu
See all media
Category: Geography & Travel
Date:
3000 BCE - 332
Major Events:
Battle of Kadesh
Key People:
Moses
Akhenaten
Plotinus
Ramses II
Thutmose III
Related Topics:
Egyptian art
ancient Egyptian religion
hieroglyphic writing
Library of Alexandria
Egyptology
(Show more)
Related Places:
Egypt
Byzantine Empire
ancient Rome
Canaan
lighthouse of Alexandria
See all related content →
Recent News
Jan. 12, 2024, 12:52 AM ET (MSN)
Archaeologists unearth 4500-year-old Ancient Egyptian tomb ...
Jan. 8, 2024, 9:46 PM ET (MSN)
Archaeologists uncover 4,500-year-old Ancient Egyptian tomb ...
Top Questions
By what other term are the kings of Egypt called?
What were the two types of writing in ancient Egypt?
Which pharaoh probably built the first true pyramid?
Who was the first king to unify Upper and Lower Egypt?
Who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun?
Travel down the Nile to discover important ancient Egyptian cultural sites such as the
Pyramids of Giza
A discussion of some of the most important sites associated with ancient Egypt.(more)
See all videos for this article
Ancient Egypt, civilization in northeastern Africa that dates from the
4th millennium BCE. Its many achievements, preserved in its art and monuments,
hold a fascination that continues to grow as archaeological finds expose its secrets.
This article focuses on Egypt from its prehistory through its unification
under Menes (Narmer) in the 3rd millennium BCE—sometimes used as a reference
point for Egypt’s origin—and up to the Islamic conquest in the 7th century CE. For
subsequent history through the contemporary period, see Egypt.
Introduction to ancient Egyptian civilization
Life in ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt can be thought of as an oasis in the desert of northeastern Africa,
dependent on the annual inundation of the Nile River to support
its agricultural population. The country’s chief wealth came from the fertile
floodplain of the Nile valley, where the river flows between bands of limestone hills,
and the Nile delta, in which it fans into several branches north of present-day Cairo.
Between the floodplain and the hills is a variable band of low desert that supported a
certain amount of game. The Nile was Egypt’s sole transportation artery.
The First Cataract at Aswān, where the riverbed is turned into rapids by a belt of
granite, was the country’s only well-defined boundary within a populated area. To
the south lay the far less hospitable area of Nubia, in which the river flowed through
low sandstone hills that in most regions left only a very narrow strip of cultivable
land. Nubia was significant for Egypt’s periodic southward expansion and for access
to products from farther south. West of the Nile was the arid Sahara, broken by a
chain of oases some 125 to 185 miles (200 to 300 km) from the river and lacking in
all other resources except for a few minerals. The eastern desert, between the Nile
and the Red Sea, was more important, for it supported a small nomadic population
and desert game, contained numerous mineral deposits, including gold, and was the
route to the Red Sea.
To the northeast was the Isthmus of Suez. It offered the principal route for contact
with Sinai, from which came turquoise and possibly copper, and with southwestern
Asia, Egypt’s most important area of cultural interaction, from which were received
stimuli for technical development and cultivars for crops. Immigrants and ultimately
invaders crossed the isthmus into Egypt, attracted by the country’s stability and
prosperity. From the late 2nd millennium BCE onward, numerous attacks were made
by land and sea along the eastern Mediterranean coast.
Britannica Quiz
Pop Quiz: 18 Things to Know About Ancient Egypt
At first, relatively little cultural contact came by way of the Mediterranean Sea, but
from an early date Egypt maintained trading relations with the Lebanese port
of Byblos (present-day Jbail). Egypt needed few imports to maintain basic standards
of living, but good timber was essential and not available within the country, so it
usually was obtained from Lebanon. Minerals such as obsidian and lapis lazuli were
imported from as far afield as Anatolia and Afghanistan.
Agriculture centred on the cultivation of cereal crops, chiefly emmer wheat (Triticum
dicoccum) and barley (Hordeum vulgare). The fertility of the land and general
predictability of the inundation ensured very high productivity from a single annual
crop. This productivity made it possible to store large surpluses against crop failures
and also formed the chief basis of Egyptian wealth, which was, until the creation of
the large empires of the 1st millennium BCE, the greatest of any state in the ancient
Middle East.
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Basin irrigation was achieved by simple means, and multiple cropping was
not feasible until much later times, except perhaps in the lakeside area of Al-Fayyūm.
As the river deposited alluvial silt, raising the level of the floodplain, and land was
reclaimed from marsh, the area available for cultivation in the Nile valley and delta
increased, while pastoralism declined slowly. In addition to grain crops, fruit and
vegetables were important, the latter being irrigated year-round in small plots. Fish
was also vital to the diet. Papyrus, which grew abundantly in marshes, was gathered
wild and in later times was cultivated. It may have been used as a food crop, and it
certainly was used to make rope, matting, and sandals. Above all, it provided the
characteristic Egyptian writing material, which, with cereals, was the country’s chief
export in Late period Egyptian and then Greco-Roman times.
Cattle may have been domesticated in northeastern Africa. The Egyptians kept many
as draft animals and for their various products, showing some of the interest in
breeds and individuals that is found to this day in the Sudan and eastern Africa. The
donkey, which was the principal transport animal (the camel did not become
common until Roman times), was probably domesticated in the region. The native
Egyptian breed of sheep became extinct in the 2nd millennium BCE and was replaced
by an Asiatic breed. Sheep were primarily a source of meat; their wool was rarely
used. Goats were more numerous than sheep. Pigs were also raised and eaten. Ducks
and geese were kept for food, and many of the vast numbers of wild and migratory
birds found in Egypt were hunted and trapped. Desert game, principally various
species of antelope and ibex, were hunted by the elite; it was a royal privilege to hunt
lions and wild cattle. Pets included dogs, which were also used for hunting, cats, and
monkeys. In addition, the Egyptians had a great interest in, and knowledge of, most
species of mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish in their environment.
Most Egyptians were probably descended from settlers who moved to the Nile valley
in prehistoric times, with population increase coming through natural fertility. In
various periods there were immigrants from Nubia, Libya, and especially the Middle
East. They were historically significant and also may have contributed to population
growth, but their numbers are unknown. Most people lived in villages and towns in
the Nile valley and delta. Dwellings were normally built of mud brick and have long
since disappeared beneath the rising water table or beneath modern town sites,
thereby obliterating evidence for settlement patterns. In antiquity, as now, the most
favoured location of settlements was on slightly raised ground near the riverbank,
where transport and water were easily available and flooding was unlikely. Until the
1st millennium BCE, Egypt was not urbanized to the same extent as Mesopotamia.
Instead, a few centres, notably Memphis and Thebes, attracted population and
particularly the elite, while the rest of the people were relatively evenly spread over
the land. The size of the population has been estimated as having risen from 1 to 1.5
million in the 3rd millennium BCE to perhaps twice that number in the late 2nd
millennium and 1st millennium BCE. (Much higher levels of population were reached
in Greco-Roman times.)
Nearly all of the people were engaged in agriculture and were probably tied to the
land. In theory all the land belonged to the king, although in practice those living on
it could not easily be removed and some categories of land could be bought and sold.
Land was assigned to high officials to provide them with an income, and most tracts
required payment of substantial dues to the state, which had a strong interest in
keeping the land in agricultural use. Abandoned land was taken back into state
ownership and reassigned for cultivation. The people who lived on and worked the
land were not free to leave and were obliged to work it, but they were not slaves;
most paid a proportion of their produce to major officials. Free citizens who worked
the land on their own behalf did emerge; terms applied to them tended originally to
refer to poor people, but these agriculturalists were probably not poor. Slavery was
never common, being restricted to captives and foreigners or to people who were
forced by poverty or debt to sell themselves into service. Slaves sometimes even
married members of their owners’ families, so that in the long term those belonging
to households tended to be assimilated into free society. In the New Kingdom (from
about 1539 to 1075 BCE), large numbers of captive slaves were acquired by major
state institutions or incorporated into the army. Punitive treatment of foreign slaves
or of native fugitives from their obligations included forced labour, exile (in, for
example, the oases of the western desert), or compulsory enlistment in dangerous
mining expeditions. Even nonpunitive employment such as quarrying in the desert
was hazardous. The official record of one expedition shows a mortality rate of more
than 10 percent.
Just as the Egyptians optimized agricultural production with simple means, their
crafts and techniques, many of which originally came from Asia, were raised to
extraordinary levels of perfection. The Egyptians’ most striking technical
achievement, massive stone building, also exploited the potential of a centralized
state to mobilize a huge labour force, which was made available by efficient
agricultural practices. Some of the technical and organizational skills involved were
remarkable. The construction of the great pyramids of the 4th dynasty (c. 2575–
c. 2465 BCE) has yet to be fully explained and would be a major challenge to this day.
This expenditure of skill contrasts with sparse evidence of an essentially neolithic
way of living for the rural population of the time, while the use of flint tools persisted
even in urban environments at least until the late 2nd millennium BCE. Metal was
correspondingly scarce, much of it being used for prestige rather than everyday
purposes.
In urban and elite contexts, the Egyptian ideal was the nuclear family, but, on the
land and even within the central ruling group, there is evidence for extended
families. Egyptians were monogamous, and the choice of partners in marriage, for
which no formal ceremony or legal sanction is known, did not follow a set pattern.
Consanguineous marriage was not practiced during the Dynastic period, except for
the occasional marriage of a brother and sister within the royal family, and that
practice may have been open only to kings or heirs to the throne. Divorce was in
theory easy, but it was costly. Women had a legal status only marginally inferior to
that of men. They could own and dispose of property in their own right, and they
could initiate divorce and other legal proceedings. They hardly ever held
administrative office but increasingly were involved in religious cults as priestesses
or “chantresses.” Married women held the title “mistress of the house,” the precise
significance of which is unknown. Lower down the social scale, they probably worked
on the land as well as in the house.
The uneven distribution of wealth, labour, and technology was related to the only
partly urban character of society, especially in the 3rd millennium BCE. The country’s
resources were not fed into numerous provincial towns but instead were
concentrated to great effect around the capital—itself a dispersed string of
settlements rather than a city—and focused on the central figure in society, the king.
In the 3rd and early 2nd millennia, the elite ideal, expressed in the decoration of
private tombs, was manorial and rural. Not until much later did Egyptians develop a
more pronouncedly urban character.
