The Old Kingdom covers roughly the period 2682–2060 BCE and comprises primarily the Third to Sixth Dynasties. Technically, the rule of a single king at Memphis continued into the Eighth Dynasty (Papazian 2015), but because little evidence outside of the names of kings, particularly in the Abydos King List, is preserved, the Old Kingdom after the Sixth Dynasty is not included in this study. The Old Kingdom begins with the Third Dynasty, for which the Turin King List gives the names of five kings and a total number of seventy-four years for their reigns. Five Horus names of kings are known from inscriptional evidence dating to this dynasty, but there are difficulties matching these Horus names with the nsw-bit (nsw bit), or “King of Upper and Lower Egypt,” crown names used in the Turin List.

This study covers approximately 1,000 years, centering on two broad periods of pharaonic civilization referred to by scholars as kingdoms: the Old Kingdom and the earlier part of the Middle Kingdom, when the state is reunified and reformed. Later there would be changes in the New Kingdom that follows. These, in large part, were brought about by external forces and foreign peoples, but, for the most part, New Kingdom kingship, state administration, and, in the early New Kingdom, royal marriage patterns, were based on Middle Kingdom practice developed from that of the Old Kingdom. The Old Kingdom lasted roughly from 2686 to 2181 BCE, and the Middle Kingdom from 2055 to 1650 BCE (Shaw 2004, 184).

Kingship and ancient Egyptian civilization are virtually synonymous. Rule by a single king over the land of Egypt began in around 3300 BCE and was intrinsic to the country thereafter: pharaoh was Egypt. When central control came undone, as it did at the end of the Old Kingdom, the state was reunited and re-formed by a king claiming divine birth and authority, returning to the basic tenets of kingship developed early on in the first few dynasties and cemented in place by the beginning of the Old Kingdom. As seen in late Predynastic Hierakonpolis, the power of the king was symbolized quite physically not only in the strength of wild animals but in the ability to defeat them. The king’s control of chaos, in the form of hunting animals and defeating foreigners, was depicted in art for the rest of pharaonic history.

Traditionally, the beginning of the Fifth Dynasty has been tied to a story in the Westcar Papyrus, in which the wife of a priest of the sun god gives birth to triplets. Goddesses appeared to help with the birth, and, as each male child was born, Meskhenet, the divine midwife, said: “A king who will assume the kingship in this whole land” (Lichtheim 1973, 220). Many books about the history of ancient Egypt interpret this story quite literally, stating that the first three kings of the Fifth Dynasty, Userkaf, Sahura, and Neferirkara, were brothers who were born as triplets. This situation is no longer accepted as history, although it is possible that the story may reflect the situation of Queen Khentkaues I, who appears to have been the mother of two kings.

A literary text, The Prophecy of Neferti, is used to shed light on the beginning of the reign of Amenemhat I (Berman 1985, 19). The text, written in the Eighteenth Dynasty of the New Kingdom but set in the Fourth Dynasty reign of King Sneferu, describes a future in which the situation in Egypt will be a time of civil strife, disorder, and foreign invasion. “Then a king will come from the South, Ameny, the justified, by name, son of a woman of Ta-seti, child of Upper Egypt” (Lichtheim 1973, 143). The name Ameny is short for Amenemhat (Posener 1956, 22–23).

By the thirtieth year of the reign of Nebhepetra Mentuhotep II, Egypt was once again a united country under the rule of one king. As a king who united the Egyptian state, Mentuhotep II was remembered later on a par with Menes of the First Dynasty and Ahmose of the Eighteenth (Habachi 1963, 50; Kemp 2006, 63). Mentuhotep II descended from a line of nomarchs, beginning with Intef the Great, who ruled Thebes during the First Intermediate Period. These local rulers used Horus names, beginning with Intef I, the third ruler in this dynastic line, and by the reign of Mentuhotep II’s grandfather, Wa’ankh Intef II, the fourth ruler, these men are calling themselves: “King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Son of Ra.”

Pharaonic Egypt is often viewed as having been monolithic and unchanging. Ancient Egyptian civilization was certainly long-lasting, and throughout its 3,000 years the basic tenets of its culture endured. There was development and change, however, as kings faced evolving situations, both natural and manmade, and responded to political and economic pressures in order to keep their hold on power. From the time of the very first dynasty, however, the ideology of royal power in Egypt “contained certain key concepts that all successive pharaohs strove to maintain intact” (Valbelle 2002, 97).