Reevaluating the Collapse of Egypt's Old Kingdom

National Geographic magazine published a recent article entitled ‘Did Egypt’s Old Kingdom Die – or Simply Fade Away’ which considers how reassessing evidence in the archaeological record leads to doubt over the conventional view that the Old Kingdom in Egypt was subject to a dramatic collapse around 2150BC. A series of factors are evaluated as to how far they may have contributed to relatively extreme societal breakdown, the most highlighted being the prospect of a severe drought due to climate change. Other factors are considered to have amplified these environmental problems, notably economic decline, the breakdown of centralised government, civil war and famine. Each is evaluated against the available and often limited archaeological evidence

In terms of historical written evidence, Lawler (2015) references that in a text called the “Admonitions of Ipuwer” it is suggested Egypt during the Old Kingdom was a ‘society in turmoil’, supporting the traditional view of societal breakdown. However, it is later highlighted that the text originates no earlier than the twelfth Dynasty, making the interpretation less useful to compare to known physical evidence (Lawler 2015). Ipuwer claims that a lack of strong leadership from the Pharaoh led to famine and chaos, which may refer to the gradual devolving of power from the pharaoh to the wider bureaucracy. Whilst there is evidence to support a breakdown of centralised government that this led to chaos is less clear. The Egyptian view of history was guided by the successive reign of previous kings, which highlighted a pharaoh who reigned during periods of stability, as well as those who reigned in less prosperous times. Therefore, later histories make an example of such Pharaohs as Khufu and Pepy II in order to consolidate the need for the strong centralised power exercised by later Pharaohs. This fascination with Chaos is demonstrated in the Pharaohs title as kings of Upper and Lower Egypt which demonstrates an expression for the need for unity to promote order (Kemp 1991). This demonstrates that revised knowledge of the Old Kingdom should put a greater emphasis on analysis of physical evidence opposed to questionable written sources. Furthermore, the article utilises this concept to demonstrate a key flaw in the generalisation that all of Egypt suffered the same form and extent of collapse. Particularly in the case of evidence of a