What Is an “Egyptian Empire”?

A historiographic tradition going back to the nineteenth century considers the history of pharaonic Egypt to be marked by a vivid qualitative contrast between two very different types of periods.

Those regarded as “bright,” when the state was “strong” and centralized, are referred to as “empires” or “kingdoms” (Reich in German, kingdom in English, and empire in French: e.g., Alten Reich, Middle Kingdom, Nouvel Empire would be the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms of Egypt in German, English, and French, respectively), whereas intervening periods are suggestively called “intermediate” and are alleged to have been dominated by political turmoil, state collapse, and cultural decadence. A paradoxical consequence of such historical periodization is that Egyptian “empires” were primarily defined on the basis of internal considerations (e.g., social stability, administrative centralization, and the production of abundant, high-quality, state-sponsored art), and not on grounds of external expansion and conquest. Given the relative scarcity of administrative and diplomatic documents for these periods, art history and monumental architecture have played a determinative role in contemporary perceptions of ancient Egyptian power and state capacity.

Old Kingdom Egypt (i.e., Ancien Empire, 2686-2125 bce), when no external conquests took place, presents an extreme example. The same is true of Middle Kingdom Egypt (2055-1650 bce), which until the 1990s was interpreted by many studies as a peaceful period—a cultural efflorescence that blossomed in isolation. Nevertheless, the massive pyramids built during the former period, and the “classic” art and literature produced in the latter, were thought to have fulfilled the criteria needed in order to conceptualize both as “empires.”

The New Kingdom (1550-1069 bce) stands in contrast to this, though somewhat puzzlingly.

It was an age of extensive Egyptian conquests in Northeast Africa and the Levant, involving armed conflicts and diplomatic contact with the main powers of the Near East. However, this pharaonic expansion is usually argued away as an exceptional and vigorous reaction against prior foreign threats (or even as a result of a sudden and quite unexplained appetite for tribute). In short, it is presented as a rather eccentric episode in an otherwise isolated, inward-looking, and peaceful history. Remarkably, the Kushite and Saite periods of the first millennium bce are usually dismissed as not being truly “Egyptian” because of foreign influences (both

Juan Carlos Moreno Garcia, Old to New Kingdom (2686-1069 bce) In: The Oxford World History of Empire. Edited by:

Peter Fibiger Bang, C.A. Bayly, Walter Scheidel, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press.

DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197532768.003.0001. are lumped into a decadent Basse Epoque). This is again in spite of Egyptian expansion under both dynasties into the Eastern Mediterranean, as well as an active foreign policy involving Cyrenaica, the Aegean, the Syro-Levantine area, and Nubia.^{^[26]}

What emerges is a naive, unarticulated, and, in the end, nearly incomprehensible interpretation of pharaonic foreign policy. It assumes that matters were determined by the supposed geographic isolation of Egypt. And this, in turn, assumes that Egypt had insignificant interests outside the borders of the country and a reluctance to get involved in external conflict, unless to counter foreign aggression. This limited perspective is the consequence of the traditional interpretation of ancient Egypt as a craddle of civilization and, accordingly, its “natural” central position as the primary source of diplomatic, economic, and cultural initiative in Northeast Africa and the southern Levant. Again, the very nature of the sources has greatly contributed to this unbalanced perception of Egyptian foreign policy, as historians have tried to compensate for the scarcity of administrative information (archives, diplomatic correspondence, official records) by giving inordinate attention to artistic and literary works.

In fact, the bulk of the evidence consists of laudatory inscriptions, monumental iconography, and literary compositions, whose value as historical sources is burdened by the unilateral and heavily ideological perspective they encode. Further problems emerge from the insufficient use of archaeology in the study of the geography of power, conquest, and administration, in both a diachronic and comparative perspective. Likewise, they emerge from the neglect of geopolitical considerations, particularly with respect to the control of international flows of wealth, trade routes, as well as raw and luxury items. As for the role ascribed to the state (and its centralized control over economic activities), it is conceived of as the sole promoter of contact with foreign countries, ignoring the interests and capabilities of other social actors (e.g., traders, craftsmen, herders, mercenaries, potentates).^[27] Even the mere possibility of the existence of divergent goals, interests, and strategies among competing factions within the ruling elite is dismissed in favor of an overwhelmingly monolithic state.

It nevertheless seems unrealistic that every commercial venture abroad should have passed exclusively through the infrequent expeditions organized by the state that were celebrated in monumental art and epigraphy (as though Egypt's economy was virtually autarchic). Relatively obscure episodes like the Amarna interlude, or the advent of the New Kingdom Ramesside pharaohs, were accompanied by the foundation of new capitals (Tell Amarna, Pi-Ramesses), cultic innovation, and by marked divergences in foreign policy. This indicates that significant changes occurred, which are still poorly understood, in the balance of power between different sectors of the ruling elite (e.g., the military, priesthood, high officials) and distinct regions within the kingdom (e.g., Thebes, the Northeastern Delta). More intriguing, vital bases created by the pharaohs to organize and promote foreign trade—like Tell el-Dab'a or the fortresses in Nubia at the end of the Middle Kingdom—not only survived the collapse of central authority, but flourished in its absence.

In fact, they became burgeoning multicultural centers engaged in trade, well-integrated into the international networks of exchange, and in some instances they developed into independent political centers. These examples illustrate, once more, how an uncritical reliance on the official pharaonic record has played a distorting role in our modern perceptions of ancient Egyptian foreign policy. They also show that trade and commercial interests have been largely neglected in the study of Egyptian imperialism.^[28] And this is most striking because while trade and the active integration of Egypt in international networks of exchange are well accepted for the Pre-Dynastic and Archaic periods,^[29] they are undervalued in historical times, as if state-sponsored expeditions and exchanges of diplomatic gifts, both infrequent, monopolized any foreign contact.

Nevertheless, recent archaeological discoveries suggest a rather more balanced interpretation of the nature, goals, and extent of the Egyptian intervention abroad. They also reveal the active role played by her neighbors, especially Nubia, as well as by mobile pastoral populations. Finally, they make it possible to set Egyptian geopolitical interests in a more comprehensive framework. Building an empire appears thus as only one option among several, following a particular historical logic that should be contrasted—in terms of costs, means, returns, and balance of power—with alternative “logics” that prevailed in other periods. In this light, Egyptian “empire” was quite limited in the period under consideration, being mostly restricted to the New Kingdom. Broadly speaking, Egyptian military intervention abroad was of two types. The first consisted of occasional expeditions into Nubia, Libyan territory, and into the Levant, accompanied—in the case of Lower Nubia—by the establishment of factories/fortresses. This seems to have been an effort to monopolize the traffic between inner Africa and the Mediterranean.

The Nubian powers proved nevertheless to be not only indispensable mediators when dealing with regions further to the south, but also tenacious rivals, able to get involved in Egypt herself. It was only in the New Kingdom period that a new kind of intervention appears, doubtless responding to new economic and commercial conditions that emerged in Northeast Africa and the Near East after the Middle Bronze Age collapse of the Middle Kingdom. Occasional expeditions were replaced by a durable occupation of more extensive areas, significantly situated both at the source (i.e., Nubia) and at the end (i.e., Syro-Levantine region) of commercial routes that conveyed luxury goods (incense, gold, ivory, ebony, etc.) that were in high demand among Eastern Mediterranean and Near Eastern powers. The virtual Egyptian monopoly over the main land and sea routes supplying such goods (including the Red Sea) probably explain the exceptional international position of Egypt during the Late Bronze Age. Several factors sealed off the possibility of recovering this position in later periods. The first was the development of new commercial routes at the end of the second millennium (for instance, the Incense Road). A second was the increasing involvement of mobile populations in exchange networks (for instance, Libyans, Sea Peoples, Chaldeans, Aramaeans). The final factor was the emergence of independent polities in some of the main areas of production (e.g., Kush, South-Arabia, Ethiopia), which escaped Egyptian control and its sustained logistic capacities.

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Source: Bang Peter F., Bayly C.A., Scheidel Walter (eds.). The Oxford World History of Empire. Volume Two: The History of Empires. Oxford University Press,2020. — 1352 p.. 2020

What Is an “Egyptian Empire”?

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