Primary Sources of the Old Kingdom (1)

By Jaromir Malek

The Egyptian Old Kingdom ended over 4,000 years ago, but amazingly we still have access to a number of primary sources dating from the era. Jaromir Malek uncovers the evidence.

Preoccupation with death
The historical period that we call the Old Kingdom (2686-2160 BC) was immensely long, lasting as it did for over 500 years. When it began, the unified Egyptian state was only about 300 years old and when it came to an end, the state still had nearly 2,000 years left ahead of it. Remoteness in time is one of the main difficulties we encounter when we look for sources of information about the Old Kingdom. Many simply have not survived.
'We know infinitely more about the wealthy people of Egypt than we do about the ordinary people...'
We know infinitely more about the wealthy people of Egypt than we do about the ordinary people, as almost all the monuments were made for the rich and influential. Houses in which ordinary Egyptians lived have not been preserved, and when most people died they were buried in simple graves with few funerary goods.

The Old Kingdom pyramids at Giza
Most of our traditional sources of information about the Old Kingdom are those concerned with death and the rituals surrounding death: these include pyramids, tombs and graves, but also statues, reliefs and paintings. Even papyri come mainly from pyramid temples. But this does not mean that death was the Egyptians' only preoccupation.
There are other reasons why so much of our evidence is based on funeral rites. Egyptian towns and villages were situated in the Nile valley, where old houses were pulled down and new ones built on the same spot, because space was valuable - so little remains of the older buildings. Pyramids and tombs, by contrast, were built on desert margins, where the space was not needed for other buildings, so were left to tell their tale centuries after they were built. Also, while domestic housing was made of sun-dried bricks, pyramids and tombs were built of stone - so their chances of survival were infinitely better.