For this weeks discussion post, I will discuss The Third Intermediate Period as studied and interpreted in this week’s assigned reading. The Third Intermediate Period is symbolic of a transition from the traditional pharaonic rule of the Early Dynastic Period, and the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms in which the entire country of Egypt was controlled by a dynasty of Egyptian Kings. The leaders in Thebes recognized the 21st Dynasty kings located at Tanis in the northeastern Delta, but there was still a divided rule between the north and south. To accentuate this division, there was a Border constructed at el-Hiba in Middle Egypt which contained fortresses that were built by the Theban rulers who put their faith and allegiance in the oracles of the Theban gods. At this point in time, Egypt no longer had legitimate colonies in southwest Asia or in Nubia. This newly emerged political order become blatantly obvious in the “Tale of Wenamen”, a fictional book where an agent of the Temple of Amen at Karnak is dispatched to Byblos to get cedar for the god’s bark.
-The actual geographic location and importance of the Delta became visible in the 19th Dynasty when Rameses II built a new capital there named Piramesse. After the dawn of the Third Intermediate period, with the sole exception of the Kushite Dynasty, the bureaucratic power and central control in Egypt focused increasingly on the Delta. The 21st century kings were able to establish a new royal city at Tanis, and to gain the essential momentum needed to to get this construction off the ground and started, earlier monuments and architecture from Piramesse and other locations in the north were removed and re-erected at Tanis.
-At the end of the New Kingdom there were many Libyans living in northern Egypt, mostly former mercenaries in the western Delta, etc.
For this week’s post, I chose a topic that greatly interested me upon first glance, Royal Tombs in the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens. In my opinion, this topic was essentially interesting to me because from my prior experience and knowledge of the ancient Egyptian society, I have learned that the Egyptian ruling elite such as Pharaohs, Kings, Queens, etc. were treated with intense respect and waited on all day every day on hand and foot by servants and the lower classes. This leads me to believe that the burial tombs and arrangement for this elite ruling class must have been an extremely time-consuming and tediously intense process involving a large amount of forced labor among the masses of the poor in order to serve the purpose of constructing tombs for the Kings and Queens.
Because this ruling Egyptian class was such an essentially big deal, the royal tombs of the “New Kingdom” were hidden in locations to the west of the royal mortuary temples. In reality, the kings were buried in one of two valleys, most in the East Valley and a few in the West Valley, known collectively as “The Valley of the Kings”. A lot of new knowledge, artifacts, and assumed behavior deduced from these recovered artifacts has been discovered since the 1970’s when the Theban Mapping Project of the American University in Cairo started systematically mapping and investigating tombs there.
Unfortunately, the mummies of the New Kingdom Kings (with the exception of Tutankhamen’s mummy) have been robbed of their valuable jewelry and relocated to two new caches. The end of the 20th dynasty marked the period that the royal burials began to get systematically robbed, most likely by the Theban rulers in order to provide state funds. These mummies were later re-located and re-buried to their original caches.
The Theban hills is also home to the “Valley of the Queens” which also included the burial of many princes and princesses. The two main groups of tombs dated to the reigns of Ramses II on the northern slope and Ramses III on the southern slope.
For this week’s discussion post, I am going to examine and discuss the portion of the week 5 assigned reading that focuses on the content about tradition and innovation in the Middle Kingdom. In my opinion, the portion that contains the discussion about “re-formation”, referring to when state systems that have fallen victim to the decline and fall of empires regroup and rebuild themselves into new and improved systems of authority and class structures is extremely interesting because it highlights the tendency that the Ancient Egyptian society had in terms of sustaining their traditions and society through out the centuries undisturbed by the cultures, traditions, and threats of societies outside of their own in. By this, I mean to communicate that despite lots of internal dilemmas and additional constantly evolving global influences, the Ancient Egyptians managed to keep their civilization un-altered by intruding outside cultural forces. This is a great accomplishment that displays the great will-force and power of the ancient Egyptians in the field of conserving and persevering their great culture that is remembered and cherished by millions of people today and will continue to be featured as one of the greatest hallmarks of world history.
The task of remaining an un-influenced and un-changed culture from outside civilizations was centralized around the ancient Egyptian’s form of central bureaucratic control. This was referred to as the “great tradition”, a central political ideology that featured the respected and all powerful pharaoh who was considered the divinely sanctioned ruler of the ancient Egyptians. His role included the vitally important and key task of sustaining Egypt in a state of existence called “sema-tawy”(binding together of two lands), through maintenance of “maat” (divine order) against the chaos and threat of “isfet”. To me, this is symbolic of an ideology held by the ancient Egyptians that valued internal order and allegiance against outside threats and cultural forces that would alter or change the culture of the Egyptians. This demonstrates that the Egyptians loved and cherished their culture so much that they strongly desired to be defensive about their cultural lines and did not compromise or have an open head to outside foreign influences, which indicates that their spiritual order and culture was a strong one similar to that of Old World Asia that did not like to mix with other cultures and highly valued its own ways. Also, the Egyptians had a wonderfully functioning system/culture because they lasted and endured so many millennial periods in the times of B.C. without succumbing to persuasion or influence of outside cultural ways.
This week I am going to focus on explaining the Rise of Complex Egyptian society and early civilization(mostly the Predynastic section). The introduction of farming and herding in Egypt, in combination with the booming successful Neolithic economy in the lower Nile valley laid the foundation and groundwork for the bureacratic order and the rulers and Pharohs become dependent on the production of this Neolithic economy to function correctly and supply work to most of the non-ruling citizens. The 5th millenium B.C. was the time that the spread of the farming and herding lifestyle replaced the nomadic-style hunting and gathering that had previously been the prevalent way of life for Egyptian survival and everyday life. Also, surpluses of crops that were left with the farming families were used essentially as trading currency/utils that were converted from surplus crops into trading utils used to obtain goods, services, and materials that were highly valued in society such as jewelry, carved stone pallets and vessels and other sacred objects that were commonly found in tombs of pharohs and other places with similar significance.
There were two periods of the pre-dynastic culture: the Buto-Ma’ adi which was designated as the culture of lower Egypt and the Naqada culture of upper Egypt. The division between these two distinctly different ancient Egyptian cultures was based on different ceramic tradtions, and other cultural differences. For example, the Naqada were known for burying their dead in ways that represent increasing social complexity and difference in size and number of goods. Also the Buto-Ma’adi were extremely more simple and had far less socio-cultural significance.
At the excavations of the remains of the Buto-Ma’adi archaelogical dig site, there were many pottery remains of globular style bowls and jars which indicated the people were advanced in cermaic making and had evolved to the point were there circle style was symbolic of their culture.
This week there was a lot of interesting content to me. The section on “The Badarian” had a lot of cool information, including some facts describing it as the earliest predynastic culture in upper Egypt. It says it dates back to 5000 BC. Materials from both settlements and cemeteries reveal that in the past reveal emmer wheat and barley. Rough ware ceramics were also typical. In my personal opinion, the use of rough ware ceramics indicates that the ancient Egyptians were a civilization that were on the go and mobile during all of their behaviors. This also indicates that their way of life involved heavy usage and frequent utilization of materials and objects that were symbols for finishing tasks during everyday life. This means that in order to have their ceramics protected they were styled as rough ware in order to protect the features and objects. Also the ancient Egyptians were very interesting to me because of the extensive wealth and riches that the Emperors and ruling elite class had. The way that the pyramids were consturcted and the labor divided was interesting to me.
Hello, my name is Adam Longo and I am a 23 year-old Communication major from Grosse Pointe, MI here at MSU. I am currently in the process of completing my final semester comprised of this course, and two others before graduation from Michigan State University. I have been very busy this summer after just finishing up a 10 credit semester last summer semester while working the 40-hour a week job that I still hold doing maintenance for Cedar Village apartments. I am very interested in snowboarding and am a member of the Spartan Ski Club. I am also a brother at Theta Chi Fraternity and have been for the last five years of my life.
-Growing up I was a baseball and hockey player from the time I was around 8 all the way until the end of high school and even currently I am part of an 18 and over adult mens league. I also taught myself golf in high school and have been an avid golfer during my college years.
-In the near future (under one year) I would like to get a modest-sized fishing/ski boat that I have had my eye on for years now, the 2003 Boston Whaler Nantucket. This will be great for me because I will be able to do some amazing fishing on lake St. Clair, particularly getting away from the land fishing and getting out to the freighter channels where all of the big-time musky that I grew up fishing for with my cousins and Uncles on their boat are. This greatly excites me for next summer.
I have always been extremely interested in Archaeology and I’m excited to be in this class about Ancient Egypt as I have always been a fan of the Egyptians and their way of life.
-An interesting fact: I am a big fan of “the Mummy” movie.