Kinship and the Emergence of the State in Egypt

CAMPAGNO, MARCELO

Bulletin of the Australian Centre for Egyptology

Australian centre for Egyptology, University of Sidney

Lugar: Sidney; Año: 2000 vol. 11 p. 35 - 47

1035-7254

From our point of view, if we are to establish the very ambit for the State emergence, we must necessarily look away from the inside of non-State communities : kinship there impedes the appearance of the State practice. And we propose accordingly to focus our research on the outside, on the intersticial spaces between communities where kinship does not impose its scheme of relations. We dare suggest, then, that a necessary condition for the emergence of the State practice is the formalization of a new link between communities. But, of course, not all new relationships between communities will generate a State. And, in any case, what kind of relationships between village communities are usually established? Typically, the two kinds of links between non-State communities are of a pacific or of a conflictive type. In the first case, the usual modality is that of exchanges; in the second, the basic pattern is war. From the Nile Valley, during the crucial phase of Nagada II, we have at our disposal a certain number of testimonies for both kinds of relations between communities.