Mutations of a practice
Warfare and State Origins in Ancient Egypt
Keywords:
Warfare, State Origins, Kinship logic, Ancient Egypt, IconographyAbstract
This article analyzes the mutations of warfare practice linked to the emergence of the state in the Nile Valley between the 4th and early-3rd millennia BC. It argues that war, defined as an act of force to impose one’s will on an adversary, can vary significantly and be reconfigured according to the dominant social logics of each historical context. In the pre-state setting, governed by the logic of kinship, different types of evidence suggest the recurrence of armed conflicts in which hostility toward non-kin served as a means of reinforcing the identity of village communities. In this context, a connection between leadership figures, ritual, and warfare is apparent—principally via the iconographic record.
The advent of the state logic introduced a qualitative mutation: warfare practices were confiscated from the communities and monopolized by a minority, transforming into an affair of State. This restructuring implied not only a notable leap in the scale of warfare but also the emergence of military hierarchies and chains of command, various structures with military purposes—such as fortifications and logistics and supply centers—and the orientation of military violence toward combat against non-Egyptian neighboring populations and the extraction of peripheral resources. While the connection between sacred leadership and warrior violence persisted, warfare ceased to be an instrument of communal autonomy and became a tool serving the demands, both material (prestige goods) and symbolic (the preservation of order over chaos), of the new state elite.
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