X.B(ii)(a), ANNEX III
THE ROLE OF THE OLD KINGDOM1 IN
EGYPTIAC HISTORY
what is 'the Old Kingdom's' role in Egyptiac history? In this Study
up to this point we have assumed that 'the Old Kingdom' was the
political expression of the growth stage of the Egyptiac Civilization; but
this assumption cannot be endorsed without verification, considering
that, in the growth stage of other civilizations, the constellation of
political forces that usually presents itself to the historian's eye is, not
an oecumenical empire, but a litter of parochial states, while, in the few
cases in which we do find an oecumenical empire on the scene at this
stage, it can be accounted for as the product of a renaissance. The
oecumenical and at the same time ineffectively ramshackle structure of
the Carolingian, the Ch6u, and the Khatti Empire, for example, is what
we should expect, a priori, to find in an oecumenical polity which had
been brought into being through the evocation of a ghost at a stage in
the necromantic society's history at which it would have been incapable
of achieving, or indeed of conceiving, so ambitious a programme of
political construction by an independent exercise of its own creative
powers without the aid of the Black Art. The ineffectiveness of the three
empires above mentioned is thus self-explanatory. We have then still to
explain the establishment of an efficient oecumenical polity such as, for
example, the T'ang Empire or the East Roman Empire at an early stage
in a civilization's growth; and, where an explanation that accounts for
the facts on the hypothesis of a renaissance is not forthcoming, as it is in
these two cases,1 when we are thus confronted with the emergence of an
efficient oecumenical polity at what would appear to be an early stage of
a civilization's growth, we must look elsewhere for the solution of an his-
torical problem that cannot be either ignored or evaded. A so-far un-
solved problem of the kind is presented by the effective political union
of Lower with Upper Egypt, to constitute 'the Old Kingdom', at a stage
of Egyptiac history which is an early one according to the provisional
analysis of the structure of Egyptiac history which we have been using
as our working hypothesis in this Study up to the present point; for on
this hypothesis 'the Old Kingdom* cannot be accounted for, like the
East Roman Empire and the T'ang Empire, as a ghost of the universal
state of an antecedent civilization effectively re-embodied in a recon-
stituted imperial civil service, since no such antecedent civilization or
oecumenical empire figures either in the Egyptiac tradition or in the
dossier of our Modern Western Egyptologists.
Does the enigma thus presented by 'the Old Kingdom' in our present
vista of Egyptiac history require us to view Egyptiac history in a new
perspective ? And might a fresh avenue of interpretation be opened up
* See pp. 15 and 20, above.