ABSTRACT
The story of Egypt begins sometime during the fourth millennium b.c., when separate village settlements appeared in the Nile Delta, and continues steadily for the best part of three thousand years to the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses in 525 b.c. and its incorporation in the Persian Empire. Egyptian history is derived from archaeological evidence mainly connected with tombs, and from literary survivals usually also associated with burials, often indeed in the form of inscriptions on the outsides or inner walls of tomb structures. Egyptian society was shaped both by the religious power pattern on which government was based, and by the technical needs of the agricultural system and of the state building programme, the latter itself being determined by basic religious requirements. An important and, in many respects, unique branch of Egypt’s public administration developed and had its finest phase during Dynasties III and IV with the building of the monumental pyramid tombs.
