They have been
parallelled by social factors as men took advantage of natural
opportunities to concentrate, feed and house ever larger human
aggregates.
Empires and civilizations have been built up by comparatively large
numbers of human beings concentrated in relatively small spaces.
Wandering food gatherers and herdsmen ranged widely in search of game
and grass. Cultivators settled in villages from which they could work
the land. If crops were scanty, population was sparse. Only abundant
crops, dependable, season after season, provided the basis for large
settled populations.
Large, settled populations, adequately supplied with the essentials of
life, enabled human beings to organize social centers in which a
comparatively few people, tending their animals and working the land,
could release a comparatively large part of the population to devote its
time and energy to trade and commerce, to industry and transport, to the
arts and sciences and to the organization, direction and administration
of large scale enterprises such as government, the military,
construction and the mobilization of sufficient labor power to carry on
and enlarge their enterprises. In its simplest essence this was
politics.
Egyptian government, in its broad sense, rested on a class structured
society: the aristocracy, the priesthood, officialdom, businessmen,
highly trained scientists and engineers, skilled craftsmen and an
immense proletariat consisting of tenant farmers, peons, slaves and war
captives.
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