Surgimiento del Estado en Egipto. Cambios y continuidades en lo ideológico

CAMPAGNO, MARCELO

Instituto de Historia Antigua Oriental "Dr. A. Rosenvasser" (FFyL-UBA)

Lugar: Buenos Aires; Año: 1998 p. 168

0-0000-0000-0

In the Nile Valley, the emergence of the State practice ? the practice that imposes a subordination relationship based on the monopoly of coercion and legality ? has taken place in a social space with a conception of an ordered world governed by gods in which a wide-ranging series of ritual practices (hunting ceremonies, dances, burial rites) had to be performed. At the same time, and alongside the inequality inherent to the relationship between gods and men, that pre-State world does not seem to have been envisaged in terms of rigid levels of subordination among human beings. Rather, the relative uniformity of the burials (compared with those of the State era) and the plurality of existent iconographic motifs, without any particular one blatantly predominating over the others, compel us to consider the conception of a world that was not organized around vertical and immovable hierarchies. As a matter of fact, a society unfamiliar with marked social inequality is incapable of reproducing this theme on the plane of its symbolic representations. This situation will radically change with the advent of the State practice. The introduction of a social pole equipped with the monopoly of coercion and legality will upset all spheres of society. In the ideological sphere, the symbolic transposition of the State practice will produce a radical reconfiguration of the current conception of the world. As such, this will not be a matter merely of the State?s incorporation as a privileged participant in the religious practices, but rather a matter of the penetration of the State practice in the very way in which the world lived in is to be conceived. In the State-centered situation, the gods will be seen as kings of the Universe and the pharaoh, the absolute apex of Egypt?s nascent society, will be worshiped as a divinity that has established his temporary place of residence on Earth. It is, therefore, in this new State-driven signification of the ideological sphere that we can clearly detect the impact of the State practice on symbolic representations; it is here that we can take note of the disrupting effect of the emergence of the State practice. And, yet, this is not the only way in which such effect can be noted. On the more profound level dealing with the principles that articulate and organize the practices of society, it is possible to notice a homologous situation. The same practices that allow us for the reconstruction of the representations of the world belonging to the early Egyptians also allow us to take note of a radical change as a result of the advent of the State: the displacement of kinship practices ? as the preeminent articulator of social relations in the pre-State situation ? by the effect of the emergence of the new State practice. Actually, these same practices that shed light on the ancient dominance of kinship appear, in the new society, unified by the new practice that both establish the monopoly of coercion and legality and subordinate kinship, constituting a new dominant social practice. A notable parallelism is therefore taking place before our very eyes: on the level of world representations, a society governed by divinities has given way to a society governed by the king-god; and on the level of articulating principles, a society governed by kinship has given way to a society governed by the State practice. The mark that the emerging State leaves on the ideological sphere ? the specific transformations taking place there ?, thus refer to that profound change in the organizing principles of the Nile Valley society as a consequence of the irruption of a radically new practice ? the State practice.