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Askut in Nubia: the Economics and Ideology of Egyptian Imperialism in

the Second Millennium bc
Stuart Tyson Smith
Cambridge Archaeological Journal / Volume 7 / Issue 01 / April 1997, pp 123 - 137
DOI: 10.1017/S0959774300001505, Published online: 22 December 2008

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0959774300001505

How to cite this article:
Stuart Tyson Smith (1997). Askut in Nubia: the Economics and Ideology of Egyptian Imperialism in the Second Millennium
bc. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 7, pp 123-137 doi:10.1017/S0959774300001505
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Cambridge Archaeological Journal 7:1 (1997), 123-37

Review Feature
Askut in Nubia: the Economics and Ideology of
Egyptian Imperialism in the Second Millennium BC
by Stuart Tyson Smith
London & New York (NY): Kegan Paul International, 1995;
ISBN 0-7103-0500-1, xviii + 242 pp.
The ideology of imperialism is a broad theme, replete with the deeds of powerful historical
figures glorying in their heroic achievements. There are also the conquered peoples to
consider, often less centralized or less powerful than their oppressors. Yet we may well ask
what it is_ that drives states to conquer their neighbours? For alongside the rhetoric of
power and military success there is the daily reality of economic need or economic greed.
Empires exploit their subject provinces for gain as well as glory. Empire-builders are not
only seeking a place in the annals of history; they are also lookingfor the massive material
rewards which successful territorial expansion can deliver.
The theme of this Review Feature is the ideology of Egyptian expansionism in Nubia
during the 2nd millennium BC. This was the 'golden age' of ancient Egypt, associated with
the names of rulers Tuthmosis III, Akhenaten and Ramesses II. For much of the New
Kingdom (1550-1000 BC) the Egyptians were at war in the Levant, founding and then
losing an empire which stretched almost to the Euphrates. At the same time they expanded
their control southwards into Nubia, a land poor in agricultural produce but rich in
minerals, above all gold. In Egyptian imperial ideology Nubia was represented as a
conquered province, a subjugated set of inferior peoples. This ideology sought to justify
Egyptian expansionism in terms of the righteous government of Egyptian kings, seeking
to impose order in place of chaos. The king was presented as universal conqueror, and it
was only natural that he should win control of neighbouring lands beyond the borders of
Egypt itself.
Against this is the argument that imperial Egypt did not conquer Nubia for
conquest's sake nor merely to bolster royal power and fulfil the grandiose expectations
of royal propaganda but as a calculated action with an economic objective. It was
Nubian resources rather than military glory which were the goal.
Such is the theory propounded by Stuart Tyson Smith in the volume considered
here. Egyptian rule in Nubia was reinforced by the construction of a series of forts along
the course of the Nile. These were first built during the Middle Kingdom, in an early phase
of Egyptian southward expansion, but were reconquered in the Nubian campaigns waged

123

Review Feature

by the first few rulers of the New Kingdom period. One of these forts was Askut,just above
the Second Cataract, and now flooded by the waters behind the Aswan Dam. It is
excavations at Askut in 1962-64 that Smith takes as the basis for his study of Egyptian
imperialism in Nubia, charting the history of the site from its construction as a garrison
fort in the Middle Kingdom, the arrival of Egyptian colonists in around 1800 BC, its varied
fortunes during the Second Intermediate Period (1650-1550 BC) when local rulers seized
control, and its recapture by Egyptian armies at the start of the New Kingdom (c. 1550 BC).
Smith's thesis is that despite royal rhetoric, Egyptian imperialism in Nubia was
driven largely by economic objectives. The purpose was to exploit the conquered territory
for maximum profit. In the process, Egyptian cultural influence spread deep into Nubia.
But it was economics, Smith maintains, which were the key:
Nubia in the New Kingdom was made over into an image of Egypt itself, not to serve some
ideological need to replicate Egypt abroad, but rather as the most efficient means of exploiting the dramatic changes in the infrastructure which occurred during the Second Intermediate Period, documented for the first time in detail archaeologically at Askut. They could,
with relative ease, co-opt the already extant Egyptian colonists, along with the fast acculturating native rulers. They naturally chose the best system available, that of Egypt itself,
in order to make a self-sufficient colony. The extraction of wealth and trade in valuable
staple and wealth goods fueled unprecedented economic prosperity in Egypt and led to the
rapid expansion of the elite scribal class, culminating in the elaborate bureaucracy of the
New Kingdom. Royal control over the exotic wealth produced by Nubia served as a powerful
marker of royal status and as political currency to ensure elite loyalty and to reward
participation by elites and commoners in the centralized state. Using ideology on the one
hand and socio-economic systems on the other, they created one of the world's earliest and
most successful expressions of Imperialism, using their Nubian colony to create prosperity
at home, and reinforce the position of the state both at home and abroad.

To what extent, then, was Egyptian involvement in Nubia driven by hard-headed profit
motives? Was royal propaganda merely the ideological icing on the economic cake? And
how do these factors compare in empires elsewhere in the ancient world? To address these
questions, we have invited four commentators to give their own assessment of Smith's
analysis. The first two (Kemp and Trigger) are specialists in Egypt or Nubia; the others
(Postgate and Sinopoli) write from a comparative perspective. Smith himself was in the
field at the time ofgoing to press, but we hope to publish his response to these comments in
the next issue of CA].

124

Askut in Nubia

Why Empires Rise

conquest of foreign lands by Pharaoh. Most of the

sources derive from the New Kingdom but the images and phrases are rooted in earlier periods. Conquest was simply fulfilment of a duty towards the
gods 'to enlarge the boundaries of Egypt' which were
ideally 'all that the sun's disc encircles'. Although
this ideology permeated official records and even
modes of letter-writing, Smith allows it little value
in the shaping of ancient policies.
He appeals instead to a number of neat and
very broad categorizations of imperialism drawn up
by people predisposed to theory. One set provides a
typology in the form of a little matrix that is, indeed,
useful at an introductory stage of study, where we
can, for example, ask of our chosen area: do we have
Acculturation Imperialism ('Indigenous culture
change to colonial culture') or do we have Acculturation Colonialism ('Change in indigenous economic system to imperial system')? For the processes
at work he highlights a study by Alcock: 'Her approach is explicitly economic, as it relies on a costminimization strategy by the dominant state as the
prime mover... [Her] system of interaction between
the needs of the imperial power and structure of
indigenous systems in a cost-minimization system
provides a good overall framework for understanding changes in Egyptian imperialism.' From here he
develops an argument which is consistent with his
findings from Askut and turns several centuries of
Egyptian rule into a clever piece of economic manipulation by Egyptian kings and their servants. "The
critical point for this study is that Egypt's relations
with Nubia were ultimately driven by economic (and
not ideological) considerations which spanned the
entire system and connected with external systems.'

Barry Kemp
McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research,
University of Cambridge, Downing Street,
Cambridge, CB2 3ER
Imperialism is mostly the preserve of historians of
more recent periods, but the subject does, from time
to time, attract the attention of archaeologists and
anthropologists. Theirs tends to be an Olympian perspective, one less influenced by the terms of the
debate of the imperialists themselves as they are
preserved in written records. The ancient Near East
fits uncomfortably here. It is sufficiently remote in
time and rich in archaeology to attract attention of
this kind; yet the abundance of written and artistic
sources provides a ready-made platform from which
to write history from the viewpoint of the participants. Stuart Tyson Smith's Askut is an attempt at
integration, which puts Egyptological sources
through the mill of theory.
Much of his book is a straightforward and very
valuable account and analysis of an archaeological
site in Sudanese Nubia, which was excavated in the
1960s ahead of the creation of the lake behind the
High Dam at Aswan. On an island in the Nile a brick
fortress had been built as part of the military occupation of Nubia by the Egyptians in the Middle Kingdom (beginning around 1850 BC) (Figs. 1 & 2). Three
centuries later it was modified in a way that reflected the very different style of domination of the
New Kingdom when, at many sites, temples and
Egyptian-style towns and civil administrations replaced the garrisons (Fig. 3). Although Askut is not
exactly a microcosm of what happened it was bypassed by the large-scale temple building of the New
Kingdom Smith uses his presentation of excavation results to address questions asked many times
before: what were the Egyptians up to in Nubia?
Does it count as imperialism? And why did their
policy change so greatly between the Middle and New
Kingdoms? For an answer he looks less towards the
minutiae of Egyptological sources, primarily textual,
than to certain discussions on the nature of empires
drawn from the field of archaeology and anthropology. The result is a stark evaluation of ancient motives, very much in tune with the times we live in.
Basically, it was all to do with how to become richer.

The key to Smith's explanation lies in the nature and pliability (or otherwise) of the local population. In the Middle Kingdom this comprised local
indigenous communities who clung to their own cultural identity as a means of asserting their independence. Eventually Egyptian garrisons were replaced by
a settled Egyptian population which stayed behind
following the withdrawal of Egyptian military and
administrative support at the end of the Middle Kingdom. It was they who provided the necessary sympathetic channel for the extension of the Egyptian
way of life into Nubia which followed the reconquest
at the end of the Second Intermediate Period. They
were the useful instruments of acculturation which
enabled the Egyptians to exploit the economic resources of Nubia. Smith relegates ideology to the
periphery of explanation. It 'legitimizes' calculated
political acts by which economic goals are seized.

From numerous reliefs and inscriptions it is

quite easy to compile an outline of a theology of
125

Review Feature

SECOND CATARACT

WadiAllaqi

Gold fields

D Egyptian fort
Kerma and C-group
settlement

Semna
Q p (D Kumma
Semna
South

10 km
dak del

Figure 1. Location map shoiving the second cataract forts. (After Smith 1995, fig. 1.6.)
126

Askut in Nubia

Treasury ?
'Upper Fort'
(= "Commandant"?)

I-

\Aj

ran Abandoned in the

> Middle Kingdom /
p*l Second Intermediate
,
W Period
/
r r i Stratified New Kingdom/^
^ J Second Intermediate Period

>rCi\'Labor Prison'?

New Kingdom

10

20

Scale
'Storehou

10

20

Figure 3. Askut in the New Kingdom. (From Smith

1995, fig. 6.2.)

30

Scale

Figure 2. Askut's institutions during the Middle

Kingdom. (From Smith 1995, fig. 2.8.)

There is a set of questions to ask here, which

can at first sound rather naive. If this really was the
case, why did those concerned not say so? Why was
the economic rationale not made explicit instead of
being concealed beneath layers of theology? For
whose benefit was the legitimization intended, given
that those who mattered subscribed to the same values as the kings themselves? The answer, I believe, is
that ideology did and still does matter very much,
and amounts to far more than a cosmetic form of words.
Let us take an admittedly extreme example from
another time and place. In the heyday of the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, every year saw the
marshalling of a huge army outside Istanbul. Following grandiose ceremonies it would then, in some
years, head westwards towards Christendom, in others eastwards against the heretic Shia empire of Iran.
The stated motive, to which all subscribed, was to
extend Islam (or at least its true form) into lands where
it did not hold sway. The campaigns also brought
opportunities for individual valour and for booty,
and in their wake a huge administrative empire was
created which enriched the Ottomans and their cen127

tre, Istanbul. This is imperialism, yet who would

dare propose that the Islamic call was only legitimizing a careful assessment of future balance sheets?
For ancient Egyptian kings theology likewise
provided the principal framework of reference which
gave meaning to mundane acts, and it is idle to see it
as only a peripheral consideration. The inner dialogues and outward rationalizations which accompanied the making of decisions will have appealed
to more than one kind of justification, combining
inextricably pragmatic assessments with a sense of
natural preordained mission, and we are hardly in a
position to judge whether an economic case outweighed
others in particular instances. All that we can legitimately do is to explore the range of factors that were or
might have been involved, and be very cautious in
promoting those that our sources do not make explicit
and that we have, of necessity, to reconstruct. Our
own rationality encourages us to view sceptically lofty
justifications for the intimidation of others, but it
should not be used to diminish the power which such
notions exerted in their time; although, at the root of
all the deliberations that were made, there is likely to
have been the attitude coldly summed up by one of
Thucydides' speakers: 'It has always been a rule that
the weak should be subject to the strong' (1.76.2).

Review Feature

I find it entirely reasonable to think that a sense

of mission which was, after all, stated clearly in
the texts of the day burnt within Egyptian kings
and their advisers, or at least a warm feeling of approval at the prospect of fulfilling an ancient duty.
Righteousness is a powerful element in the human
personality. Moreover, the reason given for repeated
acts of aggression in the New Kingdom 'enlarging the boundaries of Egypt' was not just a territorial claim. There is evidence to show both that it
was Egyptian policy to encourage adoption of Egyptian culture and that it worked very successfully. It
sprang from the Egyptians' own view that their way
of life was superior and also and this is crucial
imitable by all. Here (in an ironic context) are words
put into the mouth of the Prince of Byblos in the
Egyptian tale of Wenamun's voyage, dating from
the immediate post-imperial age: 'Indeed, Amun has
founded all the lands. He founded them after having
first founded the land of Egypt from which you have
come. Thus craftsmanship came thence so as to reach
the place where I am. Thus learning came thence so
as to reach the place where I am. What are these
foolish travels that they made you do?' (i.e. it is too
late to come with lofty demands; we have all learnt
from Egypt to be as good as the Egyptians now; cf.
Lichtheim 1976, 227, and note 13).
In practice, the taming of the unruly foreigner
was done in a variety of ways. By one, representatives of the elite were brought up at the Egyptian
court. Some stayed to become part of an increasingly
cosmopolitan society. Others returned or were sent
to resume their place in their home societies. A successful case in Lower Nubia is likely to have been
that of the Princes of Miam, one of whom, Hekanefer, bore the title 'child of the nursery', almost
certainly bestowed on those who had been brought
up at the Egyptian court.
Another and numerically far more important
way was through the colonies and other settlements
of foreigners established within Egypt itself. Here is
part of a hymn in an obscure rock chapel attached to
the workmen's village of Deir el-Medina which
praises king Ramesses III and his treatment of captured Libyans: 'He made them cross the Nile, carried
off into Egypt. They are settled into strongholds of
the victorious king. They hear the language of the
(Egyptian) people, serving the King. He makes their
language disappear, he changes (?) their tongues.
They go on a way that they have not ventured on
before' (Kitchen 1990, 21). Egyptianness was not a
matter of birth but of outward appearance. The
barbarous foreigners so contemptuously defined in
128

official texts became Egyptians themselves by easy

steps. Acculturation was a process of taming, and
has a parallel in religion. Egyptians in Syria-Palestine patronized foreign cults and brought them back
to Egypt, at the same time converting them into
comfortable Egyptian forms.
It is thus very natural to see the New Kingdom
policy in Nubia of building towns and large temples, developed once the country had been by and
large pacified, as a further manifestation of this view,
a great experiment in turning into reality that claim
of enlarging the boundaries of Egypt. Yet Smith has
no time for the idea that Egyptian policy could aspire to ideals: 'We have already rejected Kemp's
idea of a proselytizing bureacracy. The Egyptians
simply were not that interested in foreigners.' This
view underestimates the imaginative ambition of the
New Kingdom elite, a breed of person probably
rather different in outlook from their more parochially minded predecessors of the periods mat had
gone before.
So successful did the assimilation of foreigners
prove to be that, from the end of the New Kingdom
onwards, one has to consider carefully the question
of Egyptian ethnicity and what one means by the
term 'ancient Egyptians'. They had become, especially at the level of the elite, an ethnic mix bound
together by acceptance of the norms of Egyptian
culture. It is linked to one of the remarkable features
of the archaeology of ancient Egypt. Over the entire
Pharaonic Period (with the exception of the Second
Intermediate Period), the many known foreign
groups in the Nile Valley and Delta do not show up
in the archaeological record. It is as if all those Asiatics, Libyans, Nubians and 'Peoples of the Sea' left
their identifying marks at Egypt's threshold before
they crossed over, with the exception sometimes of
their indigenous names which could be handed on
through several generations. The most dramatic example concerns the Sudanese Kingdom of Napata.
Three centuries after the Egyptians had abandoned
Nubia, a line of Sudanese princes resurrected the old
cultural ideal and seemingly found in it a justification for ruling Egypt as well as their own territory,
as if they were one of the Egyptian dynasties of old,
presiding over a revitalizing of art which drew some
of its inspiration from far earlier periods.
It is also a mistake to think that Egypt's imperial strategy was played out against a background of
a static society at home. Smith takes Egypt itself as a
constant so that the answers to changes in imperial
strategy can conveniently be sought within Nubia
itself. This was not, however, the case. The Theban

Askut in Nubia

kings of the early New Kingdom presided over an

important phase of state re-formation. To what extent this was deliberate and to what extent something that arose from the particular configuration of
circumstances left by the Second Intermediate Period is something that historians have scarcely started
to examine, although the effects are very obvious.
New Kingdom Egypt was a very different place from
the Egypt of the Middle Kingdom.
One sign was a great extension of temple building and of the associated pious foundations within
Egypt and on into Nubia in the wake of the armies. If
we are to understand the motives of conquest and
imperial organization we need also to consider the
rationale of temple building and of pious foundations wherever they were made. They display the
same mix of fulsome pious language and political
utility, in this case a system that partially integrated
the whole country (and Nubia as well) through the
ownership of productive resources and all that this
implied in terms of administration and employment.
But the logic was not that of cold economic calculation such as might dictate a minimization of the
costs and risks involved in transportation. For example, a temple which stood on the frontier of Nubia
was that dedicated to the god Khnum at Elephantine. Whether it benefited from its proximity to Nubia
through land donations there we do not know. But
by the reign of Ramesses IV it owned lands somewhere in the north of Egypt, and part of the harvest
was being shipped a long, long way upstream to
Elephantine itself. We know this because substantial
thefts by those responsible for the shipping are included in a papyrus indictment. Elephantine exemplifies a common practice of distant institutional
land-ownership. The Wilbour Papyrus of the reign
of Ramesses V is a detailed land assessment for a
region in Middle Egypt in which were located lands
belonging to a number of temples, some the great
temples of Thebes lying more than 500 km distant. Part of the yield of these lands would have
been sent to the storerooms situated beside the temples themselves.

institutions, the palace as well as temples, and was

probably compiled for an official called the 'Chief
taxing-master'. This external supervision matches the
known cases of major temple revisions carried out
by kings. There were also other and secular bodies
with the powers which seem sometimes to have
been arbitrary to collect resources.
A fascinating and ultimately unanswerable
question is whether the most senior of the officials,
overseeing these huge accounting exercises, gained,
even if intuitively, an overall sense of how the country's economy was performing, and what shape the
accounts were in when they considered imperial activity. Only if they did, and were able to calculate
the relative merits of different kinds of ownership,
and were prepared if necessary to persuade kings to
forego temple building and pious donation (and perhaps organizing more military campaigns) in favour
of another economic strategy, would the term costminimization be applicable. I find this implausible,
and Smith himself does not really explain how he
thinks the necessary decisions were made.
The temple system was, indeed, used to exploit
conquered territories directly. The temple of AmunRa at Karnak was made the owner of towns and
lands in Syria-Palestine, and the Nauri Decree shows
that Seti I's magnificent temple at Abydos was endowed with resources of various kinds in Upper
Nubia. But more typical for Nubia was the actual
building there of new temples which were not necessarily provincial reductions of a grander Egyptian
model. Amenhotep Ill's temple at Soleb was one of
the major monuments of his reign, and features as
such in his Kom el-Hetan stela alongside the temple
of Luxor, his mortuary temple at western Thebes,
and his great addition at Karnak, the Third Pylon.
Furthermore, the remains of a great building that we
see now were only part of this astonishing investment. We have to allow for the costly equipment
that no major temple was without, and the lands and
livestock that gave it status (also hinted at in the
Kom el-Hetan stela). Soleb makes sense only if we
see it as the product of a policy of treating Nubia, in
the most serious way the Egyptians knew, as a fully
incorporated part of their homeland. It was a giant
experiment. We see this again at Gebel Barkal
(Napata) where, in a step of remarkable confidence,
they established a cult of Amun-Ra as a southern
counterpart to his cult at Karnak, with the far-reaching consequences for later centuries.

We ourselves can see temple economies as an

effective instrument of integration. I think that it is
true to the ancient sources to say that, within the
confines of a single foundation, an instinctive feeling
for good housekeeping, manifested in careful record
keeping, would have urged that expenditures did
not exceed income. Economic man was at work here.
There was also a degree of centralized supervision
and control. One interesting aspect of the Wilbour
Papyrus is that it covers land owned by a range of

This pattern of activity challenges the assumption that New Kingdom Egypt possessed a single
centre which exploited its peripheries. The royal court
129

Review Feature

The danger with models of the past of the kind

that underpins Askut is that they create a static view
of long periods of time. Simple flow-chart systems
dominate. History is not like mis. Events run through
the systems in surges. Typically, from time to time,
leaders are moved by a marriage of ego and ideology to excel across the full range of cultural forms:
bigger temples, more and larger quarrying expeditions, braver military campaigns if you were a king
of ancient Egypt. Between these surges the scribes
seek to make the consequences work to the advantage of themselves and their masters. They manage
the system until the next upheaval takes place, when
the fruits of their care might be thrown away.
What of the earlier period, the Middle Kingdom, in which Askut was built? The new model
state of the early New Kingdom replaced, following
the Second Intermediate Period, a state which seems
to have been less well integrated. The Middle Kingdom was a time of classic high culture, of rulers able
to exercise great authority, and of a deeply penetrating bureaucracy. But for much of the time kings
shared power with a local nobility in a relationship
that has sometimes been compared to the feudalism
of medieval Europe, a comparison which, as long as
it is not taken too far, is useful in that it illustrates
how powerful kings can co-exist with others possessing immense freedom of political manoeuvre.
The parallel certainly extends to the possession of
private armies of several hundred men which, as the
texts in the tomb of the nomarch Amenemhat at Beni
Hasan reveal, a nomarch could take with him when
accompanying the king on a campaign into Nubia.
Those great fortresses in Nubia, although built to
defend Egyptian interests against hostile Nubian
kingdoms, are also statements of power, and the
part that they might have played in assisting the
kings of the Twelfth Dynasty to demonstrate their
authority to their own potentially unruly aristocracy
is a factor that should not be ignored.

and its residence cities were indeed centres of conspicuous consumption, but the policy of building
and endowing provincial temples also created numerous lesser centres which extended with no apparent diminution of scale through Nubia. Thus,
although Nubia was a source of wealth (including
gold) for the Egyptian court, it is a reasonable guess
that a significant portion of it was used to enrich the
temples that the Egyptians built there. Smith scorns
the concept of an imperial balance-sheet with a debit
side, but this ignores the likely way that society in
the New Kingdom had come to be constructed.
And then, at a mature stage in the evolution of
New Kingdom society, we have Ramesses II's extraordinary programme of temple-building which
embraced both Egypt and Nubia and which is bound
to have involved a major reallocation of temple
wealth. It produced in Lower Nubia the rock-cut
temples of which the larger at Abu Simbel is one of
the major surviving monuments of his reign anywhere. What rational economic motives explain Abu
Simbel? It was not situated in a particularly fertile
area or one possessed of strategic importance, and
what land there was is likely to have been allocated
to the typical patchwork of private and institutional
ownership more than a century previously.
We can understand Ramesses II only by looking to the same set of values that the Egyptians
themselves expressed. Successful kingship in ancient
Egypt encompassed the paternalistic ideal, the creation of a general feeling of well-being throughout the
country. So the acts public works of various kinds
which included warfare and empire-building of
those kings who had achieved it served as models.
By emulating the past they reinforced it. Ramesses II
became the ultimate expression of royal rolefulfillment. Sixty years after his death and a dynastic change, Ramesses IV indulged in a wishful
prayer:
More numerous are the deeds and benefactions
which I have done for your temple in order to
supply your sacred offerings, and to seek out every
effective and beneficent deed, and to perform them
daily in your precinct in these 4 years than those
which King [Ramesses II] did for you in his 67
years. And so you shall give to me the long lifespan
and the prolonged reign which you gave him . . .
(Peden 1994, 93)

In these conditions (another of which was the

common control of local temples by the leading local
family) the rather clumsy garrison policy in Nubia,
perhaps founded on the experiences of the civil wars
in Egypt of the preceding First Intermediate Period,
becomes more understandable. The time was not
right for the leap of imagination required to see that
Nubia was suitable ground for temple foundation
and for extension of Egyptianness.
All aspects of the study of ancient Egypt have
for so long been dominated by textual sources that it
is easy to sympathize with those who, like Smith,
turn to archaeological theorizing for inspiration.

There is no need to seek in the mind of Ramesses II a

grand economic plan for Egypt or for Nubia. Here
was a forceful individual acting out the role for which
he had been prepared, and cost-minimization was
not part of it.
130

Askut in Nubia

There is, however, a danger in going too far, and of

being lured by simplistic models to underestimate
the complexity of the worlds to which archaeological sites belong and the scale and power of the ideas
behind them. The Egyptian empire in Nubia took on
a particular shape from period to period, one we can
relate to certain universals in history, the typologies
of empire which provide the framework for this book.
They were the outcome, however, of visions which
were particular to their time and place. Ideology
shapes decisions as much as it legitimizes them. Indeed, a useful rule for addressing the question of
imperialism might be: first find the ideology.

provide useful categories for analyzing shifts in Egyptian policy in Lower Nubia (Fig. 6). My own research
convinces me that Egypt's involvement in Nubia
was primarily motivated by economic considerations
and I agree with Smith's inference, based on Susan
Alcock's model, that the form this intervention took
in successive periods was conditioned by changing
imperial goals and the structure of indigenous systems as these were interrelated in a cost-minimization strategy. A similar approach was implicit in my
schematic analysis of changing trading arrangements
between Egypt and Upper Nubia in Pharaonic times
(Trigger 1976a).
Smith's findings at Askut greatly clarify the
hitherto uncertain nature of the Egyptian presence
in Lower Nubia from the Middle into the New Kingdom. They support and extend Harry Smith's conclusion, based on his analysis of burial patterns at
Buhen, that the garrison of the Egyptian fort system
shifted from rotating military units to permanent
Egyptian settlers about the end of the 12th Dynasty.
It also appears that the descendants of these Egyptian settlers continued to live at Askut through the
Second Intermediate Period and into the New Kingdom. The presence of much larger amounts of Nubian
pottery in the Second Intermediate Period also indicates that these settlers interacted much more with
C-Group, Medjay (Pan Grave), and Kerma people
than their military predecessors had done. I would
like to consider further some of the implications that
Smith's findings may have for understanding what
was happening in Lower Nubia at this time, especially in terms of ethnic relations.
In a recent doctoral dissertation (1996) Wendy
Anderson has undertaken a detailed quantitative
analysis of mortuary remains from fifteen C-Group
cemeteries in Lower Nubia in order to investigate
changing patterns of social differentiation. Her findings indicate that economic inequality was present
among the C-Group at all times and was greatest
during the middle of the Second Intermediate Period. Yet the C-Group shows no sign of rigid stratification at any period and locally shifting patterns of
wealth and access to Egyptian goods suggest considerable competition both among and within C-Group
communities. The evidence seems to rule out the
formation of stable (state-like) hierarchies of C-Group
communities as well as the complete suppression by
the Egyptians of intercommunity competition even
at the height of Egyptian power in the Middle Kingdom. On the other hand, growing evidence of tomb
and corpse destruction, the presence of weapons in
graves, and the construction of fortifications along

Nubia Rediviva
Bruce G. Trigger
Department of Anthropology, McGill University,
Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H3A 2T7
Over thirty years ago Lower Nubia was drowned
beneath the waters of the High Dam and archaeological work ceased there except in Napatan and
later levels at and around the citadel of Qasr Ibrim.
After a flurry of site reports and syntheses, interest
shifted north into Egypt and farther south into the
Sudan leaving Lower Nubia largely forgotten. In
recent years, however, there has been a renewed
interest in Lower Nubia among archaeologists, many
of whom were not born when the region was flooded.
Research based on site reports and museum collections by David Edwards (1996) and Dorian Fuller
(1996) has resulted in new interpretations of the
Meroitic period, while work by Josef Wegner (1995)
and Wendy Anderson (1996) is transforming our
understanding of the C-Group period and the New
Kingdom. Stuart Tyson Smith's re-analysis of Alexander Badawy's unpublished excavations at the
Egyptian fortress of Askut between 1962 and 1964 is
a further distinguished contribution to the revival of
the archaeological study of Lower Nubia. Once again
it becomes evident that ancient Nubia has great potential for expanding our understanding of colonialism and ethnic relations.
Askut in Nubia exemplifies the great progress
that has been made since 1965 in drawing the study
of ancient Egypt both technically and theoretically
into the mainstream of archaeological research.
Ronald Horvath's and Brad Bartel's definitions of
eradication, acculturation, and equilibrium strategies
131

Review Feature

with the re-use of abandoned Egyptian ones by the

C-Group (Wegner 1995) appear to indicate increasing conflict among C-Group communities as Egyptian control weakened in the late 12th Dynasty and
the early Second Intermediate Period. Egyptian settlers may have lived as traders in the midst of intensifying struggles among C-Group communities.
It is clear from Egyptian records that at least by
the late Second Intermediate Period the rulers of
Kerma to the south claimed suzerainty over Lower
Nubia. Yet the archaeological record fails to reveal
people affiliated with the Kerma culture occupying
obvious positions of authority in Lower Nubia. Egyptian settlers continued to live in the Middle Kingdom forts, at least some of them proclaiming their
ties to the king of Kerma, while the C-Group continued to have its own leaders. Immigrant Kermans
appear as small clusters of settlement near Askut
and other Egyptian forts or as individuals living in
KAMOSE
Elephantine^

Lower Nubia
AHMOSE

Fadms

Wadi Allaqi
Gold fields

Mirgissa J ^ B 2
Semna %f Askut

Upper Nubia

O Kurgus

Dongola
Reach
100 km

Key
Cataract
Overland routes

O Atbara

Egyptian fortress
O Other site

Figure 4. The reconquest of Lower Nubia. (After Smith

1995, fig. 6.1.)
132

or near a number of C-Group communities. Smith

notes that even the Saras area, around Askut, which
contained the only substantial concentration of Kerma
sites in Lower Nubia, had only a small population
which seems to have been concerned with trade and
military and administrative liaison rather than with
occupying and ruling Lower Nubia. In their heartland to the south the Kerma people constituted a
formidable power, against which the Egyptians had
to fortify their southern frontier very carefully already in the Middle Kingdom and whose uprisings
had to be suppressed a number of times after the
conquest of Kerma in the early New Kingdom.
The archaeological evidence raises the question
of the actual control that the rulers of Kerma exercised over Lower Nubia. Smith argues persuasively
that there is no indication that they annexed Lower
Nubia by force. It therefore seems likely that they
did not so much extend their control over Lower
Nubia as draw both the Egyptian settlers and the CGroup people living there into some sort of alliance
with Kerma. Kerma's power in Lower Nubia may
never have been great and this may explain why
early in his reign Kamose had so little trouble extending his control south to Buhen. The Kerma state
and various C-Group populations may have been
allied against their respective Theban and Medjay
adversaries. The main role played by the Egyptian
settlers probably was to conduct trade between
Kerma and Egypt and to supply various kinds of
technical and military support to the Kerma rulers.
The evidence of continuity in Egyptian families
at Askut from the Second Intermediate Period into
the New Kingdom is especially interesting. On his
Karnak stelae Kamose boasted that after he had captured Egyptian towns that had remained loyal to the
Great Hyksos kings he burned them into heaps of
red ruins forever because they 'had forsaken Egypt
their mistress' (Gardiner 1961, 167). This suggests a
ruler who was unlikely to deal leniently with those
whom he regarded as traitors. At Buhen the leading
officials who had been connected with Kerma disappear following Kamose's conquest and possible sacking of that settlement, and it is uncertain to what
extent the original Egyptian settlers were allowed to
go on living there or were replaced by new ones.
Nevertheless the evidence from Askut indicates that
at least some Egyptians in Lower Nubia were on
sufficiently good terms with the Theban government
that they survived this critical juncture. This suggests that during the Second Intermediate Period the
Egyptians living in Lower Nubia may have cultivated good relations with both the Kerma and Theban

Askut in Nubia

was probably archaeologically the most extensively

studied region in the world, it ceased to be available
for further research just when the analysis of existing data might have allowed archaeologists to pose
some really interesting questions. The work of Stuart
Tyson Smith and others suggests that, despite severe
limitations on archaeological research in this region,
a surprising amount can still be learned about Lower
Nubia from site reports and museum collections.

rulers while being fully subordinate to neither. A

similar complex game was probably played by many
local officials in middle Egypt in their relations with
the rival Theban and Hyksos rulers during the late
Second Intermediate Period.
There is also some archaeological evidence that,
following the withdrawal of Egyptian garrisons in
the 12th Dynasty, Medjay pastoralists from the Eastern Desert may have intruded into Lower Nubia, at
first sharing and later taking over C-Group territory.
Their occupation of Lower Nubia may have intensified in the New Kingdom if, as Theban allies, they
were permitted to occupy large parts of rural Lower
Nubia while the Egyptians continued to live in the
urban districts that grew up around the forts they
had occupied since the Middle Kingdom. Elsewhere
I have presented evidence to suggest that the New
Kingdom Nubian princes of Miam and Tehkhet
might have been of Medjay rather than C-Group
origin (Trigger 1976b, 117; forthcoming).
One argument that I do not find fully convincing is Smith's suggestion that interaction among the
local C-Group, Egyptian expatriates, and Kerma people during the Second Intermediate Period created
the infrastructure for the Egyptian pursuit of
acculturative colonialism in the New Kingdom. It
seems, as Smith acknowledges briefly (pp. 173-4),
that the Egyptian government was driven to seek
greater control over Lower Nubia as a result of their
expanding relations with powerful states in Mesopotamia and Anatolia, which required larger and
more regular supplies of gold and exotic goods from
the south for trade and royal gift exchanges. The
need to maintain cost-effective relations with their
Medjay allies, who could if disaffected harass the
gold-mining areas of the Eastern Desert, also led the
Egyptians to concentrate the surviving C-Group people near Egyptian centres in Lower Nubia so that
grazing and farming lands could be provided to the
Medjay. Lower Nubia seems to have been occupied
and transformed along new lines by the Egyptians
as much for political reasons that were external to
the region as because Lower Nubia itself had
changed. Smith notes that in Lower Nubia the extant
system was inadequate to meet New Kingdom Egyptian needs without radical restructuring (p. 17). This
view also accords with Alcock's assumption that a
cost-minimizing interaction between the needs of
the imperial power and the structure of indigenous
systems provides a framework for understanding
changes in imperial systems.
Those of us who worked in Lower Nubia in the
1960s often have lamented that, while in 1965 this

Imperial Motivation a Mesopotamian

Angle
Nicholas Postgate
Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of
Cambridge, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge,
CB3 9DA
Historians of Mesopotamia are not often asked to
trespass across Sinai into Egypt, and when they do it
is often to enter an unfamiliar world. To find explanations for differences between Egypt and Mesopotamia tends to draw us in two directions: either to
re-assess one in the light of the other, which may
expose greater similarities than were previously apparent (such as the degree of early urbanization in
Egypt), or to seek a level of generalization in which
both civilizations are considered as members of a
larger class. In his opening, and originally independent, chapter Smith sets out to generalize, taking examples from recent work on the Inka empire
(D'Altroy) and Roman Greece (Alcock). Nothing
wrong with that, but there may also be lessons to be
learnt from practices in Mesopotamia, closer in space
and time.
In the context of Egypt, there are really only
two case studies for imperial domination at our disposal, Nubia and the Levant. Different strategies were
employed in the two areas, and Smith rightly insists
that the pre-existing nature of the subjected polity
will affect the mode of domination (see Smith on
Doyle, pp. 12-14). This shows clearly in Liverani's
work on the expansion of Assyrian domination in
North Mesopotamia in the ninth century BC, where
the mode of imposition correlates very closely with
the pre-existing political order, chiefdoms being regularly plundered and annexed, kingdoms contributing tribute and granted client status (see Liverani
1992, figs. 14-15 with pp. 117-18).
133

Review Feature

Smith applauds Alcock's study for balancing

the nature of the dominated polity against the 'exploitative goals of the imperial system' (p. 17), and
perhaps, since he is operating on an analytical plane,
it would have been helpful to expose the argument
more bleakly. Since we have just the one 'dominator', at a fundamental level differences in the strategy for domination can only exist in the dominating
entity's objectives, in the nature of the subjected entity to

be dominated, or in both. This leaves only three

choices to explain differences:
similar objectives
dissimilar objectives
dissimilar objectives

dissimilar subjects
similar subjects
dissimilar subjects.

and
Egypt's relations with Nubia were ultimately driven
by economic (not ideological) considerations which
spanned the entire system and connected with external systems, (p. 15; cf. also p. 178)

Where, as in the case of Nubia and the Levant, we

attempt an explanation for a differing strategy, it
will probably help to consider all three choices explicitly and also the connections between the two
sides of the pattern. Obviously, (the perception of)
differences in the subjects may lead the dominator to
adapt the objectives, but are there 'pure' objectives
independent of the area to be dominated, or is there
not always a feed-back between subject and objective (e.g. re-absorption of one-time colonists into their
'home state', ethnic prejudices or administrative concerns disqualifying the subject population in the eyes
of the dominators, etc.)?
This procedure might have alleviated what

Much could hang on what is meant here by 'ultimately', but let us press on regardless.
Smith sees his emphasis as shared by Alcock,
whose 'approach is explicitly economic, as it relies
on a cost-minimization strategy by the dominant
state as the prime mover' (p. 17). The implication is
that Alcock sees economic gain as the prime incentive for a state to absorb another, or as the prime
objective against which alternative styles of domination are measured. My reading of her text does not
suggest that she privileges the economic motive so
explicitly. Her general statements tend rather to acknowledge the dual importance of the economic and
the 'symbolic': 'Politico-administrative foundations
. . . were both pragmatic and symbolic acts' (Alcock
1989, 90) or 'Consideration of the extent of political
reorganization... can provide one basic index to the
"material and symbolic restructuring" at work within
each empire' (Alcock 1989, 94).
This is surely right, and unlike Smith ('ideology serves primarily as a means of legitimization,
with only a secondary role in determining the imperial strategy' p. 17; cf. p. 178) I am not happy to
banish ideology to the margins of imperial motivation. For instance, there are considerations of sentiment, attached to certain territories or their
populations: an Egyptian tradition in Nubia features
in Smith's account of Askut (e.g. p. 176), and in
Mesopotamia we can think of the drive of NeoAssyrian kings to recover cities and land previously
occupied by Assyrians but overrun by Aramaean
tribes, often described with explicit mention of the
historical background, or earlier of territorial entities with a cultural rather than political sense of

'o other
Western
Asian
Centres
Long distance exchange
Trade from exploited
periphery
Centre
To other
African Centre

pgj

seems to me an unfortunate polarization in Smith's

approach to imperial strategies. He recognizes two
main motivating forces behind the forms of domination he describes: economic and ideological, and he
comes down firmly in favour of the economic as the
principal stimulus:
The World System can contribute to the study of
ancient imperialism through its emphasis on the
fundamentally economic nature of contacts between
societies, which might be the result of stronger
societies and their elites imposing themselves on
less developed areas for material profit

Point of contact

Exploited periphery

Figure 5. Near Eastern multiple world system c. 1300

BC. (After Smith 1995, fig. 1.4.)
134

Askut in Nubia

identity (Postgate 1994). Clearly the appeal to such

concepts could serve as subsequent justification for
the expansion of territorial domination undertaken
for economic motives, but it will not do to discard
them entirely as a motivating force also, nor to maintain without better reason that the 'ultimate' motivation is always economic.
No-one is likely to deny that there are strong
economic motives built into most imperial episodes,
but it is not very productive to have a quantitative
tug-of-war with economics at one end of the rope vs
ideology at the other, attributing a high percentage
of imperial motivation to economic causes and the
remainder to ideology. A change of approach might
help. Rather than view them as competitors, is it not
more constructive to explore the interaction between
them? We need to ask ourselves on the one hand,
how economic motives are reflected in the ideological statements visible to us, and on the other, whether
choices in the economic sphere are skewed or determined by ideological considerations.
So, for example, the formal act of submission to
imperial domination may involve grovelling, but it
also carries with it the presentation of gifts, of one
kind or another. In the case of the Assyrian empire, a
clear formal distinction is maintained between goods
delivered to the person of the king by the rulers of
states acknowledging his hegemony ('tribute'), on
the one hand, and on the other hand goods contributed by provinces within the Assyrian frontier to the
Assur Temple at Assur: these are designated 'regular offerings', and are groceries intended for the temple kitchen, not gifts fit for monarchs. The point is
that here, as with similar contributions to central
places in amphictyonies further back in time, we
have a political statement represented symbolically
in economic terms (Postgate 1992).
Similarly, on p. 6 Smith seems to me to dismiss
too lightly the opinion attributed to Kemp that 'the
extension of the state, both secular and religious, fits
a scribal, bureaucratic value system . . . it is this subsystem, well integrated throughout the Egyptian state
system as a whole, which drove Egyptian imperial
policy in the New Kingdom' (p. 6). The power for
self-perpetuation inherent in an established bureaucracy should not be underestimated, and Kemp's
words have an echo in Ur III Mesopotamia, of which
I recently, though quite independently, wrote that
'the intrusive tentacles of the new state provided a
tangible counterpart to the ideological construct of
the king's divine patronage, whereby the state's character and identity were given substance by the density of its bureaucratic fabric' (Postgate 1995, 402; cf.
135

1994,10). In Egypt as in Mesopotamia, the principal

activity of the bureaucracy is of course the administration of economic affairs, and here too the economic and the ideological are inextricable.

Tracking Egyptian Imperialism in

Ancient Nubia
Carla M. Sinopoli
Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
In the burgeoning literature on the archaeology of
early empires, information on Egypt has been curiously scarce. In my own review article on the topic
(Sinopoli 1994), Egypt was excluded completely. This
was in no small part a result of my ignorance on the
subject, but the lack of attention to Egypt in my work
and in the writings of other scholars interested in
comparative approaches to early empires (e.g.
D'Altroy 1992; Schreiber 1992) also results from the
relative isolation of much Egyptological research and
writing from the mainstream of anthropological archaeology. In order to remedy my own lack of knowledge concerning Egyptian imperialism I therefore
turned to this volume, a revision of Smith's doctoral
dissertation, with considerable interest.
In his study, Stuart Tyson Smith undertakes an
admirable mission to reanalyze data from Alexander Badawy's 1962-1964 work at Askut, excavated
in its entirety as part of the UNESCO Aswan Dam
Salvage Campaign. Spanning from the Middle Kingdom through the Second Intermediate and New Kingdom periods, the fort and settlement of Askut
provides an opportunity to examine processes of
change in strategies and goals of Egyptian (and
Nubian) imperialism and in political, economic, military and ideological relations between Egypt and
Nubia. Smith incorporates data from the related forts
of Buhen, Mirgissa, Semna, and Uronarti into his
discussion, presenting information on architecture,
mortuary remains, and domestic artifacts.
As a non-Egyptologist, I leave it to the specialists in that area to evaluate the substance of Smith's
analysis, and will limit my focus largely to his theoretical and methodological approach to the study of
early empires. Here, I was disappointed. Smith's interpretations of Askut are hampered by limiting and
limited theoretical frameworks and questionable (and
usually implicit) assumptions concerning issues of

Review Feature

cultural identity, political dynamics, and the complex webs of relations, participants, and activities
that constitute the creation and operation of imperial states.
While much recent scholarship on early states
and empires has emphasized their internal variability and the inherent contradictions among different
organizational spheres, territories, incorporated polities, and social actors (e.g. Alcock 1993; Brumfiel
1994; Mann 1986; Sinopoli & Morrison 1995), Smith
instead employs a rigid typological framework (presented in a 2 x 3 matrix) developed by Ronald
Horvath and Brad Bartel (pp. 8-9; Fig. 6). In this
typology, imperialism is first distinguished from colonialism according to the absence or presence of
permanent settlers. Both colonialism and imperialism are further subdivided into three catagories
eradication, acculturation, and equilibrium distinguished on the basis of the impact of foreign conquerors on indigenous populations. Eradication
imperialism is defined by 'the disappearance of all
regional habitation'; acculturation imperialism is
identified by 'changes in [the] indigenous economic
system to [the] imperial system'; and equilibrium
imperialism entails 'indigenous cultural maintenance
with only small imperial presence' (p. 9). The criteria
used to define each subcategory differ, and include
demographic, economic, and 'cultural' characteristics respectively, creating some analytical vagueness.
In many cases, the colonialism/imperialism distinction would likely be very hard to draw. This strict
typological approach seems anachronistic in a 1995
publication, though to his credit Smith's later discussion does allude to some of the internal variability and historical dynamics that such a typology
necessarily obscures. Smith views imperial conquest
as an economic strategy, and seeks to document the
economic puruits of Egypt as they pursued 'costminimization' to meet their 'inherently economic'
goals (p. 22). In his conclusion he claims to have
demonstrated this thesis; however, in much of his
discussion Askut seems to be a consumer of both
state and locally generated resources rather than a
generator of wealth that benefited more distant state
coffers.

Colonialism

Imperialism

Eradication

Replacement of
native by
colonial culture.

Disappearance of
all regional
habitation.

Acculturation

Indigenous
culture change to
colonial culture.

^Change in indigenous
economic system to
imperial system.

Equilibrium

Separate settlement
enclaves of the
two cultures.

Indigenous cultural
maintenance with
only smll imperial
presence.

Figure 6. Horvath/Bartel matrix. (From Smith 1995,

fig. 1.2.

Askut similarly shifted their loyalties to a different

imperial power. This is a fascinating process, and
one probably common in border locales in many
imperial polities, with their characteristically fluid
and changing boundaries. A more nuanced study of
how inhabitants of such boundary zones respond to
political transitions would be quite interesting. Unfortunately, Smith's focus remains Egyptocentric and
his discussion of the dynamics of Egyptian-Nubian
relations from the Nubian perspective is minimal
throughout the work.
In the New Kingdom, Askut again comes under Egyptian control, and a policy of 'acculturation
colonialism' is undertaken, resulting in the disappearance of local traditions of material culture, with
a lessened need for coercive control and a greater
emphasis on economic investment and extraction. It
should, however, be pointed out that the first part of
this interpretation rests on the assumption that people claiming Egyptian cultural identities would be
less likely to resist imperial demands and therefore
require less coercion than people with non-Egyptian
identities. Given the frequency of 'internal' rebellions in many early empires, as well as Smith's failure to consider issues of identity, this seems a risky
assumption.
Throughout his discussion of these changes,
Smith refers to the descendants of the original Egyptian settlers of Askut as 'expatriates', who during the
New Kingdom, are said to have aided in the 'acculturation of native C-group and Pan Grave peoples'
by 'providing a convenient infrastructure for exploitation' (p. 148). I find this a curious and troubling
usage, based in an essentializing approach to Egyptian (and by implication Nubian) cultural identity.

Using his typology, Smith proceeds to trace

Askut's historical development from a late 12th Dynasty border fortress and storehouse ('equilibrium
imperialism') to a fortress inhabited by Egyptian settlers in the 13th Dynasty ('equilibrium colonialism').
During the Second Intermediate period, control of
the fort may have shifted to local Nubian populations
and Kerma. Smith suggests that the inhabitants of
136

Askut in Nubia

ment in ancient Mexico, in Factional Competition and

Political Development in the New World, eds. E.M.
Brumfiel & J.W. Fox. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 89-102.
D'Altroy, T.N., 1992. Provincial Power in the Inca Empire.
Washington (DC): Smithsonian Institution Press.
Edwards, D.N., 1996. The Archaeology of the Meroitic State:
New Perspectives on its Social and Political Organisation. (Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology 38; BAR International Series 640.) Oxford:
Tempus Repararum.
Fuller, D., 1996. Arminna West. Paper presented at Symposium on the Pennsylvania-Yale Excavations and other
Work in Nubia and at Giza and Abydos. Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, March 30-31,1996.
Gardiner, A., 1961. Egypt of the Pharaohs: an Introduction.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kitchen, K.A., 1990. The arrival of the Libyans in Late
New Kingdom Egypt, in Libya and Egypt: 1300-750
BC, ed. MA. Leahy. London: School of Oriental and
African Studies, 15-27.
Lichtheim, M., 1976. Ancient Egyptian Literature; a Book of
Readings, vol. II: the New Kingdom. Berkeley (CA),
Los Angeles (CA) & London: University of California Press.
Liverani, M., 1992. Studies on the Annals of Ashurnasirpal II,
2: Topographical Analysis. (Quaderni di Geografica
Storica 4.) Rome: Universita de Roma 'La Sapienza'.
Peden, A.J., 1994. The Reign of Ramesses IV. Warminster:
Aris & Phillips.
Postgate, J.N., 1992. The land of Assur and the Yoke of
Assur. World Archaeology 23, 247-63.
Postgate, J.N., 1994. In search of the first empires. Bulletin
of the American Schools of Oriental Research 293,1-13.
Postgate, J.N., 1995. Royal ideology and state administration in Sumer and Akkad, in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, I, ed. J.M. Sasson. New York (NY):
Charles Scribner's Sons, 395^111.
Schreiber, K.M., 1992. Wari Imperialism in Middle Horizon
Peru. (Anthropological Papers 87.) Ann Arbor (MI):
Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan.
Sinopoli, CM., 1994. The archaeology of empires. Annual
Review of Anthroplogy 23,159-80.
Sinopoli, CM., 1995. Dimensions of imperial control: the
Vijayanagara capital. American Anthropologist 97,8396.
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Trigger, B.G., 1976a. Kerma: the rise of an African civilization. International Journal of African Historical Studies
9,1-21.
Alcock, S.E., 1989. Archaeology and imperialism: Roman
expansion and the Greek city. Journal of Mediterra- Trigger, B.G., 1976b. Nubia under the Pharaohs. London:
Thames & Hudson.
nean Archaeology 2, 87-135.
Alcock, S.E., 1993. Graecia Capta: the Landscapes of Roman Trigger, B.G., forthcoming. Toshka and Arminna in the
New Kingdom, in Studies in Honor of William Kelly
Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Simpson. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts.
Anderson, W., 1996. The Significance of Middle Nubian
C-Group Mortuary Variability, ca. 2200 BC to ca. 1500 Wegner, J.W., 1995. Regional control in Middle Kingdom
Lower Nubia: the function and history of the site of
BC. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Department of AnAreika. Journal of the American Research Center in
thropology, McGill University, Montreal.
Egypt 32,127-60.
Brumfiel, E.M., 1994. Ethnic groups and political develop-

Assuming Smith's reconstruction is correct, these

New Kingdom 'expatriates' were individuals whose
ancestors may have resided in the region of Askut
for at least two centuries, who had clearly undergone multiple shifts in political affiliation, and who
may similarly have forged new kinds of social and
kinship relations and established distinctive cultural identities. Whether or not they still defined
themselves as 'Egyptians', and acted accordingly,
seems to be something to be evaluated rather than
asserted.
The volume concludes with an interesting discussion of the contrasts between Egypt's economic
relations with Nubia, as a 'part of Egypt' with the
obligations inherent therein, versus an Egyptian imperial ideology which portrayed Nubia as a stereotypical foreign enemy (again with no discussion of
Nubian perceptions of Egypt). The economic dynamic, which provided the impetus for imperialism
in Smith's model, sought to effect efficient extraction
and transfer of goods within the polity. The ideological claims, intended for internal (elite?) consumption, helped to maintain the portrayal of the Egyptian
king as vanquisher of foreign enemies.
While I have raised questions about many of
the explicit and implicit theoretical assumptions of
this work, the book does raise several interesting
issues relevant to consideration of empires in many
parts of the world. Smith makes use of a range of
archaeological data ceramics, architecture, burials, ornaments presenting qualitative and quantitative assessments of temporal and spatial variability
in form and distributions, and using these to examine changes at Askut during nearly a millennium of
occupation. The book addresses a fascinating period
in a fascinating region, and while the end result does
not live up to its promise, Smith has demonstrated
that there is much potential for additional work on
this topic using data from sites excavated with very
different goals in mind.

137