Expanding Logics: Another View on the Political Unification Process in the Nile Valley

CAMPAGNO, MARCELO

Egypt at its Origins 6. Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt, Vienna, 10th-15th September 2017, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 260

Peeters

Lugar: Leuven; Año: 2021; p. 95 - 109

In the beginning of 4th millennium BCE, the socio-political landscape of the Nile Valley can be described in terms of a multitude of autonomous village communities. A millennium later, a single political entity would rule between the Nile´s First Cataract and the Mediterranean Sea. Despite its magnitude, the process of change is poorly known. Here I will try to consider this process as the unfolding of three social logics, which had to coexist at least from mid-4th millennium on: the logics of kinship, the state, and patronage. In this sense, the state logic, expansive in nature and based on the monopoly of coercion, is fundamental to understand the process that generates new political ties at the supra-local scale. But at the same time, the logics of kinship and patronage may have been significant in making stable bonds of subordination, through practices related to consensus, at least at the level of elites. I will suggest that theoretical research should be less focused on the elaboration of a sequence of hypothetical events, and more directed towards the formulation of a model that takes into account the complementary articulation between these three logics in the shaping of a new socio-political order.