Talk:Early Dynastic Period (Egypt)

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I have moved this article from Early Dynastic Period to Early Dynastic Period of Egypt for the simple reason that the terms is not exclusive to Egypt and is also used in (e.g.) Mesopotamia —Nefertum17 13:17, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Distinction between Old Kingdom and Early Dynastic

Shouldn't this article include the reasons why egyptologists draw a distinction between the Early Dynastic period and the Old Kingdom? I'm unclear on those reasons myself. There was a rise in prosperity and in the scale of constructions (pyramids), but that alone doesn't seem enough to divide the two periods. If anyone has this information, please add it. A. Parrot (talk) 04:41, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

you did great but, give a lot more writing but, I will give you credit for trying 174.24.72.14 (talk) 16:08, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't know the origin of the divide between the Old kingdom and the early dynastic period. On top of that, certain Egyptologists include the 3rd dynasty in the early dynastic period when others put the 3rd dynasty in the Old kingdom. I think the division is a purely modern thing and egyptians of the time would surely not have recognized it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iry-Hor (talk • contribs) 11:47, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Potential copyright violation?

Several wordings in this article are highly identical with the passage "The Emergence of the Egyptian State" in The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (edited by Ian Shaw, first published in 2000, ISBN 0198150342).

From The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt	Article's latest version
With the 1st Dynasty, the focus of development shifted from south to north, and the early Egyptian state was a centrally controlled polity ruled by a (god-)king from the Memphis region. (p.64)	With the First Dynasty, the capital moved from Abydos to Memphis where an Egyptian god-king ruled a now unified polity that extended from the Nile Delta to the first cataract at Aswan.
...the Early Dynasty state that emerged in Egypt was unique and indigenous in character. It is likely that a common language, or dialects of that language, facilitated political unification, but nothing is really known about the spoken language... (p.64)	State formation in Egypt was primarily indigenous in character, and it is likely that a common language, namely Egyptian, was spoken in Upper and Lower Egypt in variant dialects, which facilitated the unification.

At this stage, I will just list out the book in the reference section. Anyone is welcome to rewrite those lines.--Onlim (talk) 06:32, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

for this you get no credit they are the same thing but typed differently 174.24.72.14 (talk) 16:10, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Is Southern Levant less political than Canaan?

I changed Palestine to Canaan, and User:AnnekeBart changed to to Southern Levant. The problem with this term is that it's quite vague and, according to the map in its article, covers a much larger area. Now, Canaan is a rather NPOV term that is used by Arabs as well (Kanaan is an Arabic surname) and also by mainstream archeologists. TFighterPilot (talk) 13:27, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

First King of the first dynasty

The article contains the sentence: "The earliest recorded king of the First Dynasty was Hor-Aha". I think this is in blatant disregard for the king lists found on sealings dating from the reigns of Den and Qaa. See the list of Den here : http://egyptology.blog.com/files/2011/07/merneithlist.jpg and that of Qa'a here: http://xoomer.virgilio.it/francescoraf/hesyra/qaalist.jpg It seems that the kings of this period recognized Narmer as the founder of their dynasty, which is also a strong argument in favor of its identification with Menes. In both Den and Qaa seals, Hor Aha is second on the list.

I thus suggest that we change the article to clearly state that "The earliest recorded king of the First Dynasty was Narmer" and that "he was recognized by the kings of this period as the founder of their dynasty".

Remark that this does not mean that the predecessors of Narmer where not kings or that Narmer took the throne illegally thus breaking a previous local dynasty. Indeed, one should look at the example of Mentuhotep II, who, even though he is not the founding father of the 11th dynasty, was recognized as the founding father of the Middle kingdom by the kings of this period, as can be seen from the many references and honors given by 12th and 13th dynasty kings to Mentuhotep, the restorer of Maat.

In short the seals of Den and Qaa identify explicitely Narmer as predecessing Hor-Aha and as the founder of their dynasty, i.e. at least in the sense that he achieved something sufficiently momentous to be considered as the founding event of the following period by the people of this time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.1.246.64 (talk) 13:24, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I updated the article. Iry-Hor (talk) 19:03, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Surprising statement

The article says : "It seems certain that Egypt became unified as a cultural and economic domain long before its first king ascended to the throne in the lower Egyptian city of Memphis where the dynastic period did originate" This goes against the cultural differences between Upper and Lower Egypt during the Early Dynastic period as discussed in Toby Wilkinson's book and I believe we should be more cautious and not "certain that Egypt became unified as a cultural and economic domain" and even less "long before its first king ascended the to the throne". Also the statement "in the lower Egyptian city of Memphis where the dynastic period did originate" is somewhat misleading or plain false since the first capital was Thinis and Memphis was founded during the early first dynasty, that is after or concurrently with unification. It seems thus more plausible that the throne of the Upper Egyptian kingdom at the time was in Thinis while the capital of the Northern kingdom would certainly not have been in an inexistent city (Memphis) but rather maybe in Buto. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.1.246.64 (talk) 17:57, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I stand by my above comment. I shall update the article with the views reported in Wilkinson's and Wengrow's books. Iry-Hor (talk) 19:02, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

The Palermo stone indicates in its first row Predynastic rulers before the unification of Egypt as A46 with flagelum, consistently using two glyph names as rulers of lower Egypt. In the second row Aha is seen as ruling briefly with no record of the nilometer and then is replaced by Djer with nilometer which practice continues thereafter. In the third row Den uses the title "n-sw-bit, those who belongs to the sedge and the bee." "the titles king of upper and lower Egypt together in register three but only that of the king of lower Egypt in register 12." In the fourth row king Nynetjer uses the title of king of upper Egypt in the first register and king of upper and lower Egypt in the third after which he uses king of lower Egypt in registers 5, 9, 11, and 13. In the fifth Row king Khaskhemwy uses king of Upper and Lower in registers 2, 7, 8 and 10. In the 6th row we have king Sneferu of the 4th Dynasty. It would appear that in the time of king Khaskhemwy Egypt is united but the transition between dynasties I, II and III remains unclear from this evidence.

in the nomes along the Nile the early dynastic period of Egypt required a transformation from a primarily agricultural society into an urban manufacturing hub through an industrial revolution, with growing international trade both by sea and land c. 3100 BC. To its west Egypt expanded from the Nile into the al Kharg oasis and the Faiyum. In the delta it made connections to Libya. To the East it very early developed connections to Byblos, Canaan, the Negev and the Sinai, with boat building and copper mining. Still in the Neolithic and Chalcolithic Egypt began the acquisition of wealth as a result of its careful irrigation and animal husbandry. With wealth came status symbols, pottery and alabaster bowls, furniture, wigs and perfumes, necklaces and pectorals of semi precious stones from the Red Sea and Arabia as well as points beyond. Before even the first dynasties were established traders began importing ebony and ivory from its southern borders for inlays and carvings. The kings of Egypts making brought Cedar from Byblos to use in the Mastaba tombs at Saqarra. For the tombs the developing state brought from across the Red Sea Frankincense and Myhr, Linen cloth, bitument, natron and other staples of the mummification industry, paid for by gold mining in Nubia. Along with all this predynastic trade it began to learn and to teach the development of the necessary skills in reading, writing and arithmetic to administer its unification as a state. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.187.94.111 (talk) 16:54, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Note on name change

J just changed the name of the article; if I am not mistaken the period is usually (in scientific papers) named just Early Dynastic, without the "of Egypt". Since there's an ED period in Mesopotamia as well (which is also usually called just "Early Dynastic period"), which finally got it's own page on WP, I thought it might be best to bring the names of both pages in line as Early Dynastic Period (Egypt) and Early Dynastic Period (Mesopotamia).--Zoeperkoe (talk) 10:16, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Flag?

Sorry, but why is the (low-resolution image of the) hieroglyph for 'two lands' being described as the 'flag' for the period? Can't we just remove the 'flag' section of the country template, or possibly change the caption to read 'tȝwy "Two Lands" in hieroglyphs'?--Poimenlaon (talk) 01:08, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Poimenlaon you are totally right, these flags are just fancy inventions by some editor who absolutely wanted to put something here. "Two Lands" does not sound like a correct description of Unified Egypt either in that there it is not clear that Egyptian thought of their realm as a "country" called "Two Lands". We should only replace "Two Lands" by "Old Kingdom" (in English), the correct modern description for the following period (why this wasn't done is beyond me). The flag should be an empty white square since anything else wouldn't be accurate (Egyptian had no flag for their realm or if they did it is not known to us). Same for the preceding periods, which should only be called "Predynastic Upper Egypt" and "Predynastic Lower Egypt" with no flags either. If we insist on having something instead of a flag, like the crowns, then why not use the combined crown for the Old Kingdom. Nephiliskos I would like you opinion on this. Iry-Hor (talk) 07:30, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Poimenlaon and Iry-Hor: I'm really, really sorry, but I just can't figure out what you are talking about. "Flag"? What do you mean?? And besides, Iry-Hor, "Two Lands" was indeed a term the Ancient Egyptians used to describe Egypt. At the beginning of the Old Kingdom, a royal title was introduced: Neb-tȝwy ("Lord of the Two Lands"). Other terms the Egyptians used included: Sepȝtjw ("the two nomes"), Khȝstjw ("the two deserts") and Qen-qen ("the two gardens"). King Hor-Den, for example, used Khȝstjw as his throne- and birthname two describe his power over his double realm. Regards;--Nephiliskos (talk) 12:26, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Nephiliskos look at the infobox, it has the caption "flag". Doug Weller talk 14:23, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Nephiliskos why not Kemet then? The Egyptian also used this term to designate Egypt. While we can debate what term to use to designate the country, what matters here is the time period, for which the term "Old Kingdom" is well established. For the flag, I still think these should be removed since there are not historically accurate. Iry-Hor (talk) 15:15, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Aaaaahhhh!^^ Now the bells are ringin'! ;)) Well, delete the "flag" out of the box. The early Egyptians never had any heraldic flag. All they had were standarts, bandaroles and unlabeled flags made of white or golden fabrics. White for administration buildings, gold for temples, shrines and the king's palace. Iry-Hor: hey, why not write an article about that? All we had to do was finding a fitting label for the article. Regards;--Nephiliskos (talk) 08:46, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Nephiliskos I did not get it, you want to do an article on what? Otherwise do we all agree that the flags should be removed, and replace the name "Tawy" with "Old Kingdom"? Iry-Hor (talk) 07:25, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Article Eval.

Notes on relevancy:

The subheadings within the article correlated with the information underneath them well; I did not see any issues with relevancy.

Notes on neutrality: For the most part the writers of this article did a good job of keeping opinions and biases away from the facts. However, in the third paragraph under the Cultural Evolution header, it states that "funeral practices for the peasants would have been the same as in predynastic times, but the rich demanded something more" and there is no citation in that entire paragraph to make this seem like a fact instead of an assumption.

In the following paragraph it states that "it seems certain that Egypt became unified as a cultural and economic domain long before its first king ascended to the throne in the lower Egyptian city of Memphis where the dynastic period did originate" There is no citation present for this either and it does seem like an assumption. The writer attempts to link this later in the paragraph with a statement about the prevalence of Gods having the power to unify people, which had a citation, however I do not feel like the previous statement belonged in the article since it was not based on anything other than their own reasoning. They are claiming that since the Gods existed before the unifying King, that they were already essentially unified, and I do not feel like this was the case; and even if that were true they did not provide evidence to support that original claim. All that they can prove with evidence is that there were common Gods during that time period.

Notes on credibility: There seemed to be some slightly conflicting information, or perhaps it just needed to be expanded further. In the introduction paragraph it states that Egyptian hieroglyphs had been pioneered however at the end of the "cultural evolution" paragraph it only mentions symbols with phonograms and ideograms without it being stated whether or not that was the same thing as a hieroglyph. This is slightly confusing also because the first mentioning of the hieroglyph states that "little is known of the language they represent."

After taking a look at some of the references listed, I found that there seemed to be a good variety of sources even though a couple did use the same source. Some of the sources came from 1966; however I do not think this damages the credibility since it is not a topic that is likely to have any more recent advancements.

Jennawoolley1 (talk) 23:34, 7 October 2017 (UTC)jennawoolley1

Capital(s)

I may be wrong but i think there are some ancient sources (Manetho) stating the capital was Thinis and others (Herodotus) stating it was Memphis. Some modern scholars argue that both were capitals, old Thinis located in upper Egypt and new Memphis located in lower Egypt; Early Dynastic Egypt is more of a personal union of these two entities and less of a centralized state such as the Ancient kingdom, hence it's possible it needed to have a capital in both realms.

From the "short history of Egypt" published by Standford University:

 The home of the kings of the first two dynasties was Thinis in Upper Egypt, near Abydos, the site of tombs of First Dynasty Pharaohs. From Thinis comes the name Thinite, applied by Manetho to the first two dynasties. The first two kings of the First Dynasty are usually accepted to have been Narmur and Aha, and it was probably Aha who founded the new capital of all Egypt at Memphis. There were eight or nine kings of the First Dynasty. Their tombs have been found at both Abydos and Sakkara, the necropolis of Memphis. An explanation which has been advanced for this apparent duplication is that, as Kings of Upper and Lower Egypt, they required tombs in each.

Barjimoa (talk) 12:35, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Is there someone more knowledgeable on Egyptian history who could clarify this? Barjimoa (talk) 04:47, 14 January 2024 (UTC)