ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief history of ancient Egypt, focusing in particular on the dynastic eras, a challenging task given the duration, diversity, and richness of the subject matter as well as the limited space available (Figure 2.1 shows a map of ancient Egypt). The aim is to provide the reader with an historical background that would give some context to the analysis that follows in the remainder of the book. The approach taken in writing this book is to organize it around themes rather than to follow a linear, temporally ordered analysis of events. In dealing with a history as long and as remote from the present as that of ancient Egypt, some conventions, arbitrary as they may appear, are used to render accounts of such history possible. One such convention is the distinction drawn by historians between prehistory and history. In the case of ancient Egypt, prehistory refers to the period beginning with the first evidence of cultural activities, dating at least to the Lower Palaeolithic (Old Stone) Age before 18,000 BCE (Grimal, 1994), or even earlier (Midant-Reynes, 2000), stretching through the Neolithic and Chalcolithic Ages (Hayes, 1990) to about 3300 BCE. 1
