From Kin-Chiefs to God-Kings. Emergence and Consolidation of the State in Ancient Egypt

CAMPAGNO, MARCELO

Cahiers Caribéens d´Egyptologie

Université des Antilles et Guyane

Lugar: Schoelcher; Año: 2003 vol. 5 p. 23 - 34

1626-2913

State practice might have emerged in the Nile Valley about 3400 b.C., within the frame of warlike conflicts unleashed by a plurality of chiefdom societies, competing for the prestige goods useful for establishing the demarcatory criteria of social differentiation inside each community. Such might have been the conditions for the emergence of the State in Egypt. Now then, it is important to remark here that ?from our point of view? the emergence of that radically new practice does not take place as an inevitable corollary, given those conditions. As a matter of fact, such conflicts might have remained endemical, without necessarily producing State-like links. So, taking into account our theoretical proposition based on the concept of discontinuity, we will affirm here that the advent of a radically new practice does not obey to the logic of the situation in which it emerges, but to the interruption of that logic and the foundation of a new one.