Power and the Study of Ancient Egyptian Society

Abstract

When people form shared bonds of identity and trust in a community, they are faced with numerous challenges that must be overcome to maintain social cohesion and order. To understand ancient Egyptian society, we must thus be able to explain how and why certain power structures gave rise to the places, communities, and practices that comprised what we refer to as ancient Egypt. Power has long formed a central component in studies on ancient Egyptian society given the tendency to write top-down narratives through the monolithic lens of the state and its elite-derived data. New approaches to Egyptian urbanism advocate for a flexible framework that allows us to better understand settlement systems in their local contexts while still permitting regional comparison. Place and knowledge of the environment also influenced the dynamics of power in ancient Egypt.