Early Dynastic Egypt.

SHAW, IAN

TOBY A.H. WILKINSON. Early Dynastic Egypt. xxi2+414 pages, 44 figures, 13 b&w plates. 1999. London & New York (NY): Routledge; 0-415-18633-1; hardback; 50 [pounds sterling].

When the British Egyptologist Bryan Emery made the first real attempt to summarize the nature of Early Dynastic Egypt with the publication of his Archaic Egypt in 1961, a great deal of the primary evidence was freshly excavated, much of it by himself and his contemporaries or immediate predecessors. There was also, however, a fair amount of evidence that had not yet been excavated, particularly with regard to the thousands of years preceding the emergence of the early Egyptian state. When Emery was writing, Egyptian prehistory, like many other aspects of the modern discipline, was very much in its infancy, so it is not surprising to find that he constantly looks forwards into the pharaonic period for comparisons and analogies that can anchor his subject as a specific stage of the Egyptians' cultural development. In stark contrast, Wilkinson's Early-Dynastic Egypt is firmly rooted in the late Predynastic, containing many illuminating references to the prehistoric context of the emergence of complex society in the Nile Valley.

Another major difference between Emery and Wilkinson is the fact that the former was writing at a time when the `culture history' approach was still the main paradigm in archaeology and change was attributed to migration and diffusion. Wilkinson, on the other hand, is able to benefit considerably from the more anthropological approaches to state formation that have come to dominate our views of early complex societies. Emery was keen to promote the idea that the emergence of Egyptian civilisation at the end of the 4th millennium was the result of the invasion or immigration of the so-called Dynastic Race from Mesopotamia. Now, however, the massive advances in our knowledge of prehistory and the recent excavations of the early royal necropolis at Abydos and the city and cemetery at Hierakonpolis have demonstrated extremely convincingly that the development and inauguration of the pharaonic age was largely an indigenous Egyptian phenomenon, arising steadily, and almost inevitably, out of processes of late Predynastic social, economic and political change within the Nile Valley. Wilkinson makes this point clearly in his Introduction (p. 44): `the various trends which led to the formation of the Egyptian state were gradual processes which began in the early Predynastic period'.

The book is divided into three parts, the first of which comprises

1 discussion of earlier Egyptological approaches to the Early Dynastic,

2 assessment of the evidence for the emergence of the Egyptian state in the late 4th millennium, and

3 a very useful historical outline, setting out the basic chronological evidence for the known Early Dynastic rulers.

The second part deals with the nature of the early state (administration, foreign relations and kingship) and the surviving funerary and religious architecture. The third part deals with the diversification of the different regions of Egypt, as the increasingly urbanized centres of population in the Nile Valley and Delta developed their own distinctive characteristics. Whereas the second part, with its discussion of kingship, tombs and cults, is basically dealing with the same kind of information as Emery's Archaic Egypt (although in considerably more detail, and with many useful references), the first and third parts show the considerable amount of progress that has been made in recent years. Thus, the section on `Birth of a nation state' reflects recent cross-cultural work on the emergence of complex societies, while the concluding section on `The regions of Egypt' is based on recent archaeological information suggesting that the Early Dynastic state, although politically unified, was nevertheless still, to some extent, a conglomerate of local cultural traditions.

Before Wilkinson's book, Jean Vercoutter's L'Egypte et la vallee du Nil: 1, Des origines a la fin de l'Ancien Empire and Helck's Untersuchungen zur Thinitenzeit were probably the best sources for Early Dynastic chronology and history, but these are now superseded, as are the three English-language books published on the topic since Emery: Cyril Aldred's Egypt to the end of the Old Kingdom (1965; heavily dependent on Emery), Michael Rice's Egypt's making (1990), and Jeffrey Spencer's Early Egypt (1993). Early Dynastic Egypt is a reliable and essential book which Egyptologists will consult regularly and rewardingly; it neatly fills the gap between Midant-Reynes' Prehistory of Egypt and Kemp's Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a civilisation.

On a purely stylistic note, I could see little point in putting words with glossary entries in bold, which simply has the effect of interrupting the flow of the text. Some of the elements included in the glossary itself also seemed unnecessary: surely anyone who needed to look up such terms as `social stratification', `mummiform' or `obsidian' would struggle to understand the rest of the book.

IAN SHAW University of Liverpool ishaw@liv.ac.uk

References

ALDRED, C. 1965. Egypt to the end of the Old Kingdom. London: Thames & Hudson.

EMERY, W.B. 1961. Archaic Egypt. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

HELCK, W. 1987. Untersuchungen zur Thinitenzeit. Wiesbaden: Agyptische Abhandlungen.

KEMP, B.J. 1989. Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a civilisation. London & New York: Routledge.

MIDANT-REYNES, B. 2000. The prehistory of Egypt. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

RICE, M. 1990. Egypt's making. London & New York (NY): Routledge.

SPENCER, A.J. 1993. Early Egypt. London: British Museum Press.

VERCOUTTER, J. 1992. L'Egypte et la vallee du Nil: 1, Des origines a la fin de l'Ancien Empire. Paris: Nouvelle Clio.