CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

From a theoretical point of view, one of the most attractive issues regarding the emergence of the Egyptian state is indeed one of its immediate consequences: the process of expansion and consolidation of the state logic. Unlike the situation in contemporary Mesopotamia, where the state logic was for long centuries selfcontained in the context of urban centres and their immediate peripheries, in the Nile Valley a relatively quick process of state expansion took place, which led, during the second half of 4th millennium BC, to the political unification of the region between the First Cataract and the mediterranean Sea. There are reasons to think that such a process, little known in detail, was twofold: on the one hand, a direct mode associated with the exercise of coercion; and on the other hand, a more indirect and consensual mode, that involved, in different ways, the logics of kinship and patronage. On the threshold of 3rd millennium BC, once this expansive process stopped,these two modes seem to have still provided the axes for the process of state consolidation. In this sense, it can be noticed that, far from repelling each other, the logics of the state, kinship and patronage were connected in multiple ways in the structuring of a sociopolitical order in the Nile Valley. In order to consider some of these connections, this paper focuses on different funerary texts, in a time span that goes from the First to the Sixth Dynasties, i.e., the era of political unity that encompasses the Early Dynastic Period and the Old Kingdom (3000-2200 BC). The analysis of some ?autobiographical? inscriptions of high state officials and the Pyramid Texts allows us to consider the place of the state, kinship, and patronage in the articulation of the social contexts in which these officials intervene, as well as the king and the gods.