I found Christiana Köhler’s Theories of State Formation compelling and very well put on explaining the theories and the wide range of archaeological data in explaining how the formation of ancient Egypt came to be. Köhler justifies how there have been numerous amounts of effort in attempting to complete the history of Egyptology and the attempt to reveal the underlying details of the transition from the Paleolithic Age to the Old Kingdom in order to establish the answer as to how this came to be.
Köhler affirmed the importances of the social, political, and economic influences in the social evolutionary theory and how valuable it is to grasp those records and data in order to have insights on the Egyptian civilization. Köhler mentions how early archaeological scholars relied on the accounts of ancient Egyptians from different time periods especially in the south, including the history of the pharaohs, kings lists, religious and mythological texts, as well as the representation of art which could connect to the uprising of kingship in Egypt. Kohler emphasizes how the basic historical narrative from Manetho of the first king of Egypt is an important historical research during the twentieth century because it is believed that the first King from the south before Menes, conquered the north which in doing so, united the divided kingdoms of Egypt into one.
More archaeological evidence and sources were brought forth from North of Egypt which led into more discussion leading into the anthropological and modern archaeological theory that resulted into the answer of how the unification of Egyptian society came to be. Köhler revealed how complex the emergence of the Egyptian society and how it came to be. There are a numerous amount of theoretical approaches that came to be with a much more extensive social, political, and economic basis (Köhler 37). Köhler made a significant point that our own perception has to be brought into consideration and into context especially when trying to interpret the development of ancient history where there could be an unlimited amount of misconceptions in deciphering archaeological records and data found.
I found it fascinating how the representation of history is created through the interpretation of our own society, and how much our biases analyses and interpretations plays a tremendous factor in deciphering history.
Köhler mentions that the archaeological studies and theories are very complex, and there are still missing pieces in uncovering the answer of how the civilization of Ancient Egypt came to be. But these theories play a tremendous factor in contributing into filling in the puzzle, from the development of the Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, to a more complex Neolithic, social, economic, political society and how the unification of Egypt created and began the development of the complex society.
I also found Köhler’s theories on Egypt’s state formation to be interesting. Most of what we know of Egypt comes from their administration activities. As you stated the kings list, art work, and other records are the key pieces that give evidence that Egypt had kings even though they had no palaces. I agree with Köhler in that we must be careful in deciphering past Egypt. It is very easy to include our own perspectives about how another culture lived. Even though, archaeologists try to eliminate bias there will always be a little be a bias. Writing was only for the privileged or religious and not only was this true in Egypt, but in most past countries this was found. Most of what we know about the past is dependent on the high status people of that country. We do not know anything about the lower status peoples’ perspectives about their own country. In addition, much of what we know can be twisted in order to help achieve high social rank. Much of Egypt’s history is the same to other cultures in that it has always been about gaining control and power. To no surprise this is what is still seen today. Archaeologists and others have found a lot of evidence that points in certain directions, but we will never have the whole history because we do not have all the perspectives and we include our in own when analyzing. Analyzing history is easier said than done because humans are very complex.