How were the first cities in Egypt developed?
An Overview of the Cities and Towns of Ancient Egypt Cities in
ancient Egypt grew out of the development of agriculture and the
emergence of the state as the unifying and predominant form of
political organization. However, even as early as 3500 BC, towns
and cities (if they can be called such), consisted of regional
capitals linked to the population centers of smaller administrative
districts. The term we most frequently apply to these districts is
nome, which was actually not used to describe a province until the
Greek Period. During the New Kingdom, the Egyptian word for "city"
was niwt, a term which in the earliest texts of the 1st Dynasty
refers to "settlement". As early as the 5th Dynasty, the term for a
"town" or large village was dmi. The term for "village", which was
apparently linked to the word for "household", was whyt.
Unfortunately, our knowledge about Egyptian cities, and settlements
in general is limited. Every aspect of of ancient Egyptian cities
conspires to limit our understanding. Settlements and cities were
located on the floodplain, with a preference for proximity to the
Nile, in order to receive goods by boat and for its source of
water. Unlike temples and tombs, most housing and public buildings
in these cities and settlements were made of mudbrick throughout
pharaonic times and shifts in the course of the Nile, the build-up
of the floodplain by the annual deposition of silt and the impact
of high Nile floods have all led to their destruction, which has
sometimes been complete. Many cities, such as Thebes, have been
built over by modern settlements, and even when some remains have
survived, the mudbrick has been harvested by farmers to use as
fertilizer. Finally, archaeological investigations since the
nineteenth century have focused on temples and tombs, with their
rich and spectacular art, sculpture and architecture, rather than
the few less thrilling ancient Egyptian towns. Early prehistoric
settlement sites in the Nile Valley vary in size from as little as
about 16 meters. The largest sites probably represent repeated
occupations, with lateral displacement through time. By contrast,
the Predynastic villages were the result of permanent occupation
with a vertical build-up of deposits. Prior to about 5000 BC, the
inhabitants of the Nile Valley were mostly foragers who practiced
fishing, fowling, hunting and collecting wild plants. The first
known farming community then occupied a site at the edge of the
floodplain of the Nile Delta at Merimda Beni Salama, about
twenty-five kilometers to the northwest of Cairo. This was a large
village, consisting of about 180,000 square meters and it remained
populated for about 1,000 (one thousand) years, until about 4000
BC. At the end of this period, the dwellings consisted of clusters
of semi-subterranean huts made from mud with mud-plastered walls
and floors. The village had residential areas interspersed with
workshops and public areas. Even though the orientation of huts in
rows seems to suggest some organizational order, there is really no
indication of elite areas or any pronounced hierarchical
organization. Initial estimates of the village population were
around 16,000, but more recent investigations suggest that it more
likely had between 1,300 and 2,000 inhabitants, provided the whole
of the area was simultaneously occupied. Around 3500 BC, the
village of Maadi was established about fifteen kilometers south of
present day Cairo, probably as a trade center. The site shows
evidence of huts, storage magazines, silos and cellars. We believe
that Maadi was at the end of an overland trade route to Palestine,
and was probably inhabited by middlemen from the Levant at that
time, as evidenced by house and grave patterns. In fact, trade
items including copper and bitumen from southwest Asia have been
unearthed in this location. There were also artifacts discovered
that associate the site with Upper Egypt, suggesting that Maadi was
a trade link between the south and the Levant. Maadi seems to have
been about the same size as Merimda Beni Salama. At about the same
time in the Nile Valley, the two towns of Hierakonpolis and Naqada
became much more important, growing in relationship to neighboring
villages. Hierakonpolis was contained in an area of about 50,000 to
100,000 square meters, which is comparable in area to the area
known as South Town in the Naqada region. Excavations at
Hierakonpolis reveal that over time, the village shifted to the
northeast, suggesting that older areas were abandoned and used for
disposal. At any one time, there were probably between 1,500 and
2,000 inhabitants. Prior to the emergence of South town in the
Naqada region, the area was dotted with small villages and hamlets
between the edge of the floodplain and the desert margin. Dating to
around 3800 BC, these villages, often spaced about two kilometers
apart, consisted mostly of flimsy huts. However, by about 3600 BC,
one of those villages began to build up into a true town. No other
villages at the edge of the desert are known from that time. Of
course, as the town grew, some of the rural population was
incorporated into the emerging urban center, and a low Nile flood
level caused some shifting of village communities closer to the
river. South Town possibly developed into an urban settlement
because of its association with a religious cult and shrine, which
became a center for solidarity among the villages, which were
probably organized by kin-related lineages and clans. It probably
developed into an early administrative center, where food exchanges
and trade transactions among the villages and even nearby nomads of
the Eastern Desert were overseen. The villages of Naqada seem to
also have established trade with Hierakonpolis, where the
development of an urban center was possibly most related to its
trade with Nubia and the Near East by way of Maadi. A decline in
the Nile flood discharge and an increase in demands for trade goods
by expanding urban dwellers, beginning from around 3500 to 3300 BC,
led to the integration of neighboring communities into larger
political units, with territorial chiefdoms and petty kingdoms.
This also led to some sporadic warfare and therefore, fortified
walled cities. Each of these became associated with a territorial
standard representing the tribal or ethnic groups. In Mesopotamia,
this evolution led to the emergence of city states, but perhaps
because of the linear arrangement and limitations of the Nile
Valley, this did not happen in Egypt. Instead, the course of the
Nile Valley urbanization followed a political transformation that
we believe, around 3200 BC, led to the emergence of some
sub-national unity. Abydos, north of Naqada and Hierakonpolis,
existed as a locus of proto-national power that even controlled
parts of the Delta some two centuries before the emergence of the
1st Dynasty. The royal necropolis of Abydos continued as a
significant religious establishment well after the emergence of
Memphis. By 3000 BC, the unification of all the administrative
districts under a single theocratic dynasty was accomplished, we
are told, by Menes. Memphis was a result of this unification. The
fist kings of Egypt's 1st Dynasty, by consolidating their power at
Memphis, diminished the possibility of the rise of rival urban
centers. These early kings display considerable brilliance in their
consolidation of power at Memphis, developing a royal ideology that
bonded all the districts to the person of the ruler, rather than to
any given territory. Furthermore, some of the most powerful local
deities were included in a cosmogony at Memphis that removed them
from their local political districts. Unfortunately, we know very
little about ancient Memphis itself. Though it remained an
important population center throughout pharaonic history, Memphis
remains mostly a mystery, though recent investigations using new
technologies are beginning to provide some enlightenment. For
example we now know that the city, over its vast history of some
three millenniums, shifted eastward in response to the invasion of
sand dunes and a shift in the course of the Nile. Later, other
royal cities emerged to become royal capitals, though Memphis
always seems to have been an administrative center. Tell el-Dab'a,
located in the northeastern Nile Delta, was the residential site of
Egyptianized Canaanites and elite Delta administrators. This town
was possibly established on the site of an earlier estate,
established at the beginning of the 12th Dynasty, as a royal palace
of Amenemhet I. The town became the capital city of Egypt during
the Hyksos dynasty from about 1585 to 1532, probably because of its
favorable location for trade with the coastal Levant and the
administration of mining activities in the Sinai. Then, this city's
name was probably Avaris. Later, during the Ramessid era, the new
capital of Piramesses was located nearby. Obviously, during the New
Kingdom, Thebes became very important, certainly rivaling Memphis.
However, the city of Thebes is now completely covered by modern
Luxor, and remains almost completely unknown except for the
information derived from its temples and monuments, and from some
rare excavations. We do know that the Middle Kingdom town consisted
of an area of about 3,200 by 1,600 feet, made up on a grid plan and
surrounded by a wall measuring some twenty feet thick. That city
appears to have been almost completely leveled at the beginning of
the New Kingdom, to accommodate the creation of the Great Temple
complex of Karnak with a new residential area and suburbs that
perhaps spread as far as eight kilometers from the city center.
During the Third Intermediate Period, Tanis, which is located about
twenty kilometers north of Piramesses became an important royal
city, and during the Late Period, Sais, which is situated on one of
the western branches of the Nile and which is one of the earliest
prominent settlements of the Delta, became a powerful capital. Of
course, during the Ptolemaic (Greek) Period, Alexandria, located
northwest of Sais, became Egypt's capital until the Arab invasion.
However, the cities of ancient Egypt, including their locations,
functions and organization, were related to various dynamics that
shaped the course of Egyptian civilization based on both internal
and external forces. There were many specialized cities such as
those based on trade. Others, for example, were made up of
artisans, craftsmen and workers related to various royal projects.
Some of the best preserved of these are four different workers
villages have survived to some extent, all of which were situated
somewhat off of the Nile. The village at Deir el-Medina is perhaps
one of the best known, located on the western bank of the Nile
opposite Thebes. It does provide an idea of the organization of a
specialized village, as well as a somewhat distorted view of
village life. Another workers' village is located at Illahun, on
the eastern end of the 12th Dynasty pyramid complex of Senusret II.
That town was later occupied by officials of the king's mortuary
cult. A third workers' village was discovered at Tell el-Amarna,
the capital city built by the heretic king Akhenaten. It was build
on the edge of the desert to the east of the Nile, and because the
city was abandoned early on, provides one of the clearest
indications of village design and construction, though it may not
be completely reprehensive of other settlements. A final workers'
and surprisingly, one of the last to be excavated, is found at Giza
just outside Cairo The town of Illahun (Kahun) is also
representative of various settlements that existed where priests
and others were responsible for the rituals and observances related
to the mortuary cult of the king, as well as the foundation estate
created to finance such cults. Some of these also became
administrative centers, in addition to their responsibilities for
maintaining the cult. Another clear example of specialized Egyptian
towns were the fortress towns, of which some of the best known were
in Nubia and date to the Middle Kingdom. However, there were other
similar towns in the northeast and probably even the northwest,
particularly later, that protected the borders from Asian and other
invaders, as well as from massive immigration. The Egyptian state
had also assumed a strategy to control the exploitation and flow of
goods from Nubia, where these fortresses were built on either flat
land or hills. One of the largest was the fortress excavated at
Buhen, abut 250 kilometers south of Aswan. It consisted of a
fortress built on an Old Kingdom site that consisted of an inner
citadel, surrounded by a mud-brick enclosure wall some five meters
thick and eight to nine meters high, all overlooking the Nile.
These fortresses in Nubia were developed into towns, with temples
and residential areas. Residential areas surrounded the citadel and
were adjacent to a temple. As Egyptian civilization progressed,
there appears to have been some seventeen cities and twenty-four
towns in an administrative network that linked them to the national
capital. Though of course the population varied over time, it has
been estimated at between 100,000 and 200,000 people. The
populations of provincial capitals and towns were perhaps fairly
small, ranging from 1,400 to 3,000 inhabitants. We believe that
Illahun, Edfu, Hierakonpolis and Abydos would have been populated
by 2,200, 1,800, 1,400 and 900 people, respectively. Tell
el-Amarna, on the other hand, as a royal capital would have had a
population of between 20,000 and 30,000. Older capitals, such as
Memphis and Thebes, may have reached a level of between 30,000 and
40,000 inhabitants at the peaks of their occupation. The population
of these cities and towns were not urban in a modern sense, but
perhaps more similar to today's provincial Egyptian towns, which
have unmistakable rural aspects to them. The residents consisted
not only of urban dwellers, but also of rural people, such as
farmers and herdsmen who went out to the countryside each day.
Urban inhabitants included artisans, scribes, priests,
tax-collectors, servants, guards and soldiers, entertainers and
shopkeepers. The kings, nobles and the temples possessed estates
that employed a variety of personnel, many of whom were rural
workers on the agricultural land. These cities and towns certainly
had a hierarchical organization, which included not only palaces,
mansions and temples, but also the humble dwellings for the
functionaries and peasants, along with workshops, granaries,
storage magazines, shops and local markets, all the institutions of
residential urban life. Irregardless of their size, towns and
cities became centers of power. In these urban centers, both
priests and nobles provided the fabric of the state ideology, as
well as the administration of major economic and legal affairs. It
was the cities of ancient Egypt that allowed the country to grow
into an empire and assume the sophistications of a world power.