internal confl ict and long periods of foreign domination.
Competing claims over the Egyptian throne at the begin-
ning of the Twentieth Dynasty (ca. 1196–ca. 1070 b.c.e.)
undermined the royal authority, and toward the end of the
dynasty a series of weak kings ruled, oft en only briefl y. In-
evitably, weakened royal authority led to a drastic rise in the
infl uence and power of prominent fi gures of the priesthood,
who added military titles with civic duties to their priestly
roles. One such fi gure was Herihor, a high priest of the god
Amun who assumed royal titles and enclosed his name in
the royal cartouche even while Ramses XI, the last pharaoh
of the Twentieth Dynasty, still ruled.
With the death of Ramses XI the New Kingdom ended,
and an era of “foreign” dominion began. Because of its rulers’
foreign names, the Twenty-fi rst Dynasty (ca. 1070–ca. 945
b.c.e.) is oft en characterized as Libyan. Although Libyan by
origin, these rulers had been assimilated into Egyptian soci-
ety. Some had been members of the Egyptian court or army
and had used their positions to gain power. Th e Twenty-sec-
ond through Twenty-fourth Dynasties (945–712 b.c.e.) were
also Libyan in origin and oft en contentious, with various dy-
nasts claiming royal titles even though they controlled only
small areas. Th e resulting competition divided Egypt into
warring fi efdoms. It may be that the Libyans’ decentralized
approach to rule was their cultural heritage as people who
had led a tribal, nomadic existence. Texts from earlier peri-
ods of Egyptian history oft en mention wars with the “Libyan
tribes” along Egypt’s western border.
Th e Libyan period ended in the second half of the eighth
century b.c.e. when invaders from Nubia to the south of
Egypt took power in Memphis. Th e Nubians claimed to be
restorers of order who wanted to reunify Egypt and purify
it of sacrilegious Libyans. In 664 b.c.e. Necho, a ruler from
the western delta city of Sais, formed a military alliance with
the Assyrians and with their help drove the Nubians out of
Egypt. Necho’s son Psamtik I (r. 664–610 b.c.e.) became thefi rst ruler of the Egyptian Twenty-sixth Dynasty, which lasted
until the Persian invasion of Egypt in 525 b.c.e.
During the Twenty-sixth Dynasty contacts with other
Mediterranean and Near Eastern countries strengthened,
and Egypt became increasingly involved in the politics of the
region. Egypt was invaded twice by the Persians, in 525 b.c.e.
and 343 b.c.e., and then by Alexander the Great’s Mace-
donian troops in 332 b.c.e. Aft er Alexander’s death in 323
b.c.e. one of his generals, Ptolemy, declared himself ruler of
Egypt. His descendants reigned for almost 300 years, during
which Egyptian culture became increasingly Hellenized. Af-
ter Cleopatra VII’s defeat at the battle of Actium in 30 b.c.e.,
Egypt was annexed to the Roman Empire, and its distinctive
pharaonic culture gradually disappeared.THE MIDDLE EAST
BY FRANS VAN KOPPEN
Th e ancient Near East off ers a historical record of unparal-
leled length, continuity, and complexity for the development
of human society over time. From the beginning of urban
culture in late prehistory up to the Middle Ages, this record
is replete with evidence for episodes of social collapse aft er
periods of relative stability. Th ese episodes typically involved
settlement desertion on a regional scale, changes of subsis-
tence strategies, and political fragmentation. Evidence for
these events comes primarily from archaeological surveys
using landscape investigation to determine the growth and
decline of regional settlement systems. Excavations, climatic
data, and ancient texts shed further light on social collapse
and help reveal the complex interplay of socioeconomic and
environmental factors that lay at the root of it.
Diff erences in landscape, rainfall, and temperature divide
t he Ne a r E a st i nto d i st i nc t env i ron ment a l z one s , e ach of wh ich
accommodated specifi c forms of human subsistence: sheep
and goat herding in the semiarid and mountainous regions,
trade and craft s along the interregional routes, dry farming
and small-scale cattle herding in the low-rainfall zones, and
intensive cereal cultivation in the fl oodplains, again in com-
bination with herding away from the rivers and fi elds. Maxi-
mum population density occurred near the rivers, and the
Mesopotamian fl oodplains, in particular, exhibited the great-
est size and number of settlements throughout the millennia.
Ancient agriculture was, however, always a dangerously
fragile system operating under critical social and environ-
mental constraints and therefore susceptible to abrupt fl uc-
tuations. Strong central control coincided with agricultural
expansion and an increase in settlement, while disruptions
of the political order were typically characterized by a rever-
sion to local self-suffi ciency and the abandonment of villages
and smaller rural towns. In the face of such fl uctuations the
rural population maintained a spectrum of subsistence op-
tions and moved back and forth between village-based farm-
ing and other economic strategies such as herding, relocating
if necessary to neighboring environmental zones.Sarcophagus of Nectanebo II, the last native ruler of Egypt, from
Alexandria, Th irtieth Dynasty, around 343 b.c.e.; Nectanebo’s reign
was ended by the second Persian occupation of Egypt, and it is said
that he fl ed to Ethiopia. (© Th e Trustees of the British Museum)social collapse and abandonment: The Middle East 10010895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i1001 1001 10/10/07 2:30:43 PM