ons had gone through a period of
power-survival struggle which eliminated one rival after another until
economic ownership and political authority were both vested in the same
ruling oligarchs. This struggle for consolidation apparently reached its
climax when Menes, a pharoah who began his rule about 3,400 B.C., in the
south of Egypt, invaded and conquered the Delta and merged the two
kingdoms, South and North, into one nation which preserved its identity
and its sovereignty until the Persian Conquest of 525 B.C.

The unification of the northern kingdom with the South seems to have
been a slow process, interrupted by insurrections and rebellions in the
Delta and in Lybia. Inscriptions report the suppression of these
insurrections and give the number of war-captives brought to the south
as slaves. In one instance the captives numbered 120,000 in addition to
1,420 small cattle and 400,000 large cattle.

Using these war captives to supplement the home supply of forced and
free labor, successive dynasties built temples, palaces and tombs;
constructed new cities; drained and irrigated land; sent expeditions to
the Sinai peninsula to mine copper. Such enterprises indicate a
considerable economic surplus above that required to take care of a
growing population: the high degree of organization required to plan and
assemble such enterprises, and the considerable engineering and
technological capacity necessary for their execution.

Chief among the binding forces holding together the extensive apparatus
known as the Old Kingdom was religion, with its gods, its temples and
their generous endowments. Each locality consolidated into the Old
Kingdom had its gods and their places for worship. In addition to these
local religious centers there was an hierarchy of national deities,
their temples, temple lands and endowments. The ruling monarch, who was
official servitor of the national gods, interpreting their will and
adding to the endowments of the temples, was the embodiment of secular
and of religious authority.

Egyptians of the period believed that death was not an end, but a
transition. They also believed that those who passed through the death
process would have many of the needs and wants associated with life on
the Earth. Furthermore they believed that in the course of their future
existence those who had died would again inhabit the bodies that they
had during their previous existences on Earth. Following out these
belie