ABSTRACT
Egyptian society did not spring fully ordered and organized instantly into being: the point must still be made, for both the appearance and the reality are so extraordinary. In a matter of a few short centuries the Egyptian kingdom was devised and formulated, to endure in all its essential characteristics for three thousand years, the longest lasting of all complex human societies. Egypt’s social sophistication was profound at a time when all the world, except for Sumer, was locked in a benighted barbarism which in all its essentials had been unchanged for thousands of generations, since indeed, Palaeolithic times; if Egyptian society did not in fact emerge fully developed, an observer might be forgiven for thinking that it did, so far removed was it from any sort of human experience up to that time.
