This topic comes from “Theories of State Formation”.
This week, one idea that struck me as interesting was the idea of a large urban center spreading out and assimilating smaller polities. The first thing this made me think of was some of the boroughs in New York City that used to be their own city before being consolidated with New York City (Brooklyn). I find it interesting that the same process that happens today (large urban center sprouts up, starts to grow, and eventually “swallows” smaller, surrounding cities) was also happening thousands of years ago. And just like today, where the major city is near a strategically important area (in the case of New York or Los Angeles, a major harbor), so the important points in Ancient Egypt started around important areas (the chapter lists (on page 47) the apex of The Nile Delta, near the Mediterranean coast, near the Fayum, etc.)
Mention is also made of the Abydene polity slowly emerging as the dominant polity during the Predynastic period, first in the south, then in the north. This would seem to suggest that this polity was now absorbing and influencing other polities that might have, until that time, functioned as their own separate polity/city. It is also mentioned that, it was the more elite, non-farmer people who lived in the urban center. This also seems to hearken to our modern day, when so many important and influential people (who aren’t farmers) live in major cities (New York City, Los Angeles, Washington D.C.), and major metropolitan areas.
I guess that this is just one interesting example of how something that we may consider to be a result of our more modern time (or perhaps not) actually had it’s origin in another society, in another time, thousands of years before ours.
You made some interesting points about how cities had developed in ancient Egypt and parallel the formation of our nation’s large cities. I think that the the reason why the power lays in the elite in more urban areas than the rural areas is because of the amount of time it takes to attain resources and reach other people. In rural areas, it could take days to weeks to get somewhere on camel to a trade depot or other city, whereas people in large and more densely populated areas have thing more conveniently close. When you have more people in close proximity, it sets up the more fast pace lifestyle, as we see it in the larger cities. It also makes sense that the most important and influential people live in the big cities because with political leaders, it’s essential for them to be heard and known. So with close proximity to a lot of people in a large city, they have many resources nearby and the means to get their word out, instead of in a slower paced rural area. What I find fascinating is as you go through different towns, they all have different paces, and it mostly is affected by just the population.