The Old Kingdom

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Ancient Egypt Pyramid Builders
The Nomes - The First Historic Individual - Cheops - Chephren

Already, by 4000 B.C., these Pyramid Builders of the Nile had forged a form of government.The fourth dynasty of Ancient Egypt is characterized as a golden age of the Old Kingdom. The fourth dynasty lasted from from 2575 to 2467 B.C. It was a time of peace and prosperity as well as one during which trade with other countries is documented.





The Pyramid Builders


The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth dynasties are often combined under the group title, the Old Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, which often is described as the age of the pyramid builders.The capital at that time was Memphis.

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The Nomes

Ancient Egypt History



Already, by 4000 B.C., these Pyramid Builders of the Nile had forged a form of government.




The Nomes of Ancient Egypt

The population along the river was divided into "nomes," in each of which the inhabitants were essentially of one stock, acknowledged the same totem, obeyed the same chief, and worshiped the same gods by the same rites.Throughout the history of ancient Egypt these nomes persisted, their "nomarchs" or rulers having more or less power and autonomy according to the weakness or strength of the reigning Pharaoh.
As all developing structures tend toward an increasing interdependence of the parts, so in this case the growth of trade and the rising
costliness of war forced the nomes to organize themselves into two kingdoms one in the south, one in the north;
A division into nomes probably reflecting the conflict between African natives and Asiatic immigrants.
This dangerous accentuation of geographic and ethnic differences was resolved for a time when Menes, a half legendary figure, brought the "Two Lands" under his united power, promulgated a body of laws given him by the god Thoth.
He established the first historic dynasty, built a new capital at Memphis, "taught the people" (in the words of an ancient Greek historian) "to use tables and couches, and . . . introduced luxury and an extravagant manner of life.

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Imhotep

The Builder of The Step-Pyramid of Sakkara

The first real person in known history is not a conqueror or a king but an artist and a scientist — Imhotep, physician, architect, Pyramid Builder and chief adviser of King Zoser (ca. 3150 B.C.).


He did so much for Egyptian medicine that later generations worshiped him as a god of knowledge, author of their sciences and their arts; and at the same time he appears to have founded the school of architecture which provided the next dynasty with the first great Pyramid builders in history.It was under Imhotep administration, according to Egyptian tradition, that the first stone house was built.
It was he who planned the oldest Egyptian structure extant the Step-Pyramid of Sakkara, a terraced structure of stone which for centuries set the style in tombs;
Apparently it was Imhotep who designed the funerary temple of Zoser, with its lovely lotus columns and its limestone paneled walls.
In these old remains at Sakkarah, at what is almost the beginning of historic Egyptian art, we find fluted shafts as fair as any that Greece would build, reliefs full of realism and vitality, green faience richly colored glazed earthenware rivaling the products of medieval Italy, and a powerful stone figure of King Zoser himself, obscured in its details by the blows of time, but still revealing an astonishingly subtle and sophisticated face.
We do not know what concourse of circumstance made the Fourth Dynasty the most important in Egyptian history before the Eighteenth.

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Khufu, "Cheops" The Great Pyramid Builder Fourth Dynasty was the most important in Egyptian history

We do not know what concourse of circumstance made the Fourth Dynasty the most important in Egyptian history before the Eighteenth.







Perhaps it was the lucrative mining operations in the last reign of the Third, perhaps the ascendancy of Egyptian merchants in Mediterranean trade, perhaps the brutal energy of Khufu, first Pharaoh of the new house.Herodotus has passed on to us the traditions of the Egyptian priests concerning this Pyramid builder of the first of Gizeh's pyramids:"Now they tell me that to the reign of Rhampsinitus there was a perfect distribution of justice and that all Egypt was in a high state of prosperity; but that after him Khufu, coming to reign over them, plunged into every kind of wickedness, for that, having shut up all the temples, ... he ordered all the Egyptians to work for himself.

• Some, accordingly, were appointed to draw stones from the quarries in the Arabian mountains down to the Nile, others he ordered to receive the stones when transported in vessels across the river. . . . And they worked to the number of a hundred thousand men at a time, each party during three months.
  The time during which the people were thus harassed by toil lasted ten years on the road which they constructed, and along which they drew the stones; a work, in my opinion, not much less than the Pyramid."

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Khafre, "Chephren" Second Pyramid Builder"It is evident that nature had long since learned how to make men"

Of his successor and rival Pyramid builder, Khafre, we know something almost at first hand; For the diorite portrait which is among the treasures of the Cairo Museum pictures him, if not as he looked, certainly as we might conceive this Pharaoh of the second pyramid







He ruled Egypt for fifty six years.On his head is the falcon, symbol of the royal power; but even without that sign we should know that he was every inch a king.Proud, direct, fearless, piercing eyes; a powerful nose and a frame of reserved and quiet strength;It is evident that nature had long since learned how to make men, and art had long since learned how to represent them.However, the pyramid of Khufu has lost twenty feet of its height, and all its ancient marble casing is gone; perhaps Time is only leisurely with it. Beside it stands Khafre's pyramid, a trifle smaller, but still capped with the granite casing that once covered it all.Humbly beyond this squats the pyramid of Khafre's successor Menkaure, covered not with granite but with shamefaced brick, as if to announce that when men raised it the zenith of the Old Kingdom had passed.The statues of Menkaure that have come down to us show him as a man more refined and less forceful than Khafre.Civilization, like life, destroys what it has perfected.Already, it may be, the growth of comforts and luxuries, the progress of manners and morals, had made men lovers of peace and haters of war.Suddenly a new figure appeared, usurped Menkaure's throne, and put an end to the pyramid builder dynasty.