ABSTRACT
Egypt will provide a backdrop for discussing the role of society and social organization in the rise and fall of complex societies. Although every society, by definition, has some sort of organization, we know much more about the Egyptians because of the corpus of records available to us, as well as the centuries of archaeological research in the area. In this chapter, we will focus on the pivotal role of social organization and its links to the environment, agriculture, trade, and natural disasters in the boom-and-bust cycles of Egyptian history.
