Abstract
The beginning and the end of the first period of political unification in Egypt (roughly, from 3100 to 2150 BCE) has been traditionally related to climatic events. In the first case, increasing arid conditions in NE Africa and the Eastern Sahara would have made permanent occupation impossible in former steppe areas, thus forcing populations to concentrate and settle in the Nile Valley and inducing sedentary lifestyles centred in agriculture, incipient urbanism, specialization of labour and the emergence of the state. As for the second case, climatic change around 2200 BCE would have had catastrophic effects on irrigation and agricultural production, leading to the collapse of the tax system and the ruin of the monarchy itself. However, recent archaeological research as well as more sophisticated analysis of written sources reveal situations much more nuanced that question climatic change as a driver of change in Egypt in the third millennium BC.
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