hrough the centuries.

Since the Egyptians had a few draft animals, and little if any
power-driven machinery, energy needed to build massive stone temples,
tombs and other public structures must have been supplied by the forced
labor of Egyptians, their serfs and slaves.

Egypt's history dawns on a well-organized society: The Old Kingdom,
based on the productivity of the narrow, lush Nile Valley. The products
of the Valley were sufficient to maintain a large population of
cultivators: some slave, some forced labor, about which we have little
knowledge; a bureaucracy, headed by a supreme ruler whose declared
divinity was one of the chief stabilizing forces of the society. Between
its agricultural base and its ruling monarch, the Old Kingdom had a
substantial middle class which procured the wood, stone, metals and
other materials needed in construction; a corps of engineers,
technicians and skilled workers, and a substantial mass of humanity
which provided the energy needed to erect the temples, monuments and
other remains which testify to the political, economic, and cultural
competence of the ruling elements and the technical skills present in
the Old Kingdom.

Foremost among the factors responsible for the success of the Old
Kingdom was the close partnership between the "lords temporal" and the
"lords spiritual"--the state and the church. The state consisted of a
highly centralized monarchy ruled by a Pharoah who personified temporal
authority. This authority was strengthened because it represented a
consensus of the many gods recognized and worshiped by the Egyptians of
the Old Kingdom. The monarch was also looked upon as an embodiment of
divinity. Some Egyptian pharoahs had been priests who became rulers.
Others had been rulers who became priests. The two aspects of public
life--political and religious--were closely interrelated.

In theory the land of Egypt was the property of the Pharoah. Foreign
trade was a state monopoly. In practice the ownership and use of land
were shared with the temples and with those members of the nobility
closest to the ruling monarch. Hence there were state lands and state
income and temple lands and temple income. The use of state lands was
alloted to favorites. Each temple had land which it used for its own
purposes.

Political power in the Old Kingdom was a tight monopoly held by the
ruling dynasty of the period. During preceding epochs it seems likely
that rival groups or facti