Urban Versus Village Society in Ancient Egypt

Abstract

This article offers a new take on the debate about whether Egypt can be considered an early urban society or whether it remained limited to a ‘village horizon’ for most of its existence. These two opinions have to some extent polarized the current scholarship when dealing with ancient Egyptian settlements. They are also a reflection and result of changes within the discipline that has turned increasingly towards a bottom-up perspective when investigating ancient Egyptian culture, a perspective that had been clouded by a strong traditional focus on elites and kings. I am trying to argue that in fact there was no rural-urban dichotomy in our modern sense in ancient Egypt, a concept alien to the ancient Egyptians, and having to choose one or the other (urban versus rural society) is mainly based on modern concepts which are unnecessarily restrictive with regard to the archaeological evidence. Therefore, a more flexible definition is needed. By adopting a theoretical approach based on urban attributes as proposed by Michael E. Smith, it allows us to combine functional and sociological attributes that not only reveal that this early complex society was clearly an urban one but also facilitates cross-cultural comparisons.