The People of the Cobra Province in Egypt

The book delivers a history from below for the first half of Egyptian history covering the earliest settlements, state formation and the pyramid age. The focus is on the Wadjet province, about 350 km south of modern Cairo in Upper Egypt. Here archaeological records provide an especially rich dataset for the material culture of farmers. Histories of Ancient Egypt have focussed heavily on the kings, monuments and inscriptions, while the working population is hardly mentioned. The book investigates the life of people far from the centres of power. One main aim of the book is the interaction between farmers and the ruling classes at the centres of power and locally. How did decisions at the royal centre affect the life of ordinary people? The Introduction offers a critical survey of Egyptologists and their attitudes towards the working class. The social and cultural background of these researchers is analysed to assess how heavily they are influenced by time and their political and cultural background.

The First chapter then describes the location and gives a history of previous research and excavations. The archaeological sites and the recorded ancient place names of the province are presented to provide a geographical framework for the book. The following chapters are arranged in chronological order, mainly according to the archaeological phases visible in the province. It appears that in phases of a weak central government, people in the provinces were much better off, while in phases of a strong central government burials of poorer people are almost absent. The reasons for this are discussed.

A substantial part of the book comprises descriptions of single burials and the material culture in the province. The archaeology of the poorer people is the main focus. Burial customs and questions of production are discussed. For a fuller picture, evidence from other parts of Egypt is also taken into account. Thus settlement sites in other regions are presented to provide contemporary evidence for living conditions in particular periods.

As the book will focus on the lower classes, the Tributary Mode of Production will be used as the main theoretical framework. The Tributary Mode of Production (previously known as the Asiatic Mode of Production) is a term that goes back to Karl Marx, but...