ROLE OF THE EGYPTIAC 'OLD KINGDOM' 689
yields to it grudgingly and late in the day. Does the record of an Egyptiac
dominant minority conform to this pattern of behaviour in the Age of
'the Old Kingdom* ? If the first two dynasties in the history of an
Egyptiac United Kingdom had been followed immediately by the Fifth
and Sixth, we could have certified that, on the test of the dominant
minority's being destitute of creativity, 'the Old Kingdom' would have
qualified for classification as a universal state; hut the performance of
the Third and Fourth Dynasties—which has, of course, likewise to be
taken into account—does not fit into this picture.

At first sight, indeed, it might look as if the First and Second

, at
: an

_____the

problem of administering an oecumenical empire on the scale of the
Egyptiac United Kingdom might well have been insoluble, must have
been the fruit of a creative activity of a high potency at some time and
place, but the creative act will not be debited to the Thinites1 account.
While, in the absence of records from the Delta, it is no more possible
to prove than it is to disprove that the Egyptiac script was an indepen-
dent invention of the people of Lower Egypt in the predynastic days
before the political unification of the two lands, there is the alternative
possibility that the idea of a script consisting of phonemes derived from
pictograms may have come to the Egyptiac Society from the Sumeric
World; for in the first place the archaeological record, as it stood in
A.D. 1951, indicated that in Sumer the art of writing had appeared earlier
than in Egypt and had developed gradually from rudimentary begin-
nings, whereas in Egypt it seemed to have made a sudden epiphany at
an advanced stage,2 while in the second place there were certain other
elements of culture in Egypt in the Late Predynastic and the Early
Dynastic Age which were undisputedly Sumeric in origin: for example,
the cylinder seal; a panelled brick architecture; an antithetic composi-
tion of groups of figures; the portrayal of composite monsters and
animals with intertwined necks; and the use of boats of a distinctively
Sumeric build.3 These Sumeric influences, which had declared them-
selves in the Egyptiac World during the last two centuries of the Pre-
dynastic Age, continued to dominate the Egyptiac culture under the
first two dynasties;4 and, though they may not be so important as to
impugn the Egyptiac Civilization's claim to originality,5 they do absolve
the First and Second dynasties from any imputation of creativity,

On the other hand the Fourth Dynasty, if not the Third, is convicted
of creativity by an apparently sudden effacement of these Sumeric

i See p. 684, n. a, above. z See Wilson, op. cit, p. 38.

s See ibid., p. 37, and the present Study, DC. viiu 453, n. 2.

4. See Wilson, op. cit., pp. 39 and 50.

s Wilson contends that, for some 1,800 years out of the 2,000 years that nay have
elapsed between the genesis of the Merimdian predynastic culture and the establishment
of the United Kingdom, 'the development of Egyptian culture was internal' (op. cit.,
p. 37). Egypt's 'debt to the influence of Mesopotamia was very great, but tfae inner
spiritual urge to a new way of life was the essential factor—really the only motivating
factor—in the great change' in the E,gjrptiac way of life at the transition from the Pre-
dynastic Age to the Age of 'the Old Kingdom* (ibid., p. 40).