The Nome Polities in Egypt and Mesopotamia in the Fourth and Third Millennia BC: Reconstructions and Scholarly Models
Journal: Social Evolution & History. Volume 24, Number 2 / September 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.30884/seh/2025.02.13
Ivan A. Ladynin
Lomonosov Moscow State University HSE University (Na-tional Research University ‘Higher School of Economics’), Russia
Alexander A. Nemirovsky
Institute of World History Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
A. EGYPT
Anyone going to speak about the Egyptian nome polities of the Predynastic period, when they are expected to have existed as independent entities, might easily hear that they are going to talk about something that probably really existed but is virtually unobservable with means of optics at our disposal. In fact, the word ‘nome’ (νομός) was introduced by Herodotus (II. 164) to denote the regions (Egyptian spt) of Persian-governed Egypt, which were just small provinces, as presented in sources from the earliest times, apart from the epochs of country's dissipation during the so-called ‘intermediate periods’. Even then, not every nome gained independence, as autonomous structures of those times often comprised several nomes. Nevertheless, each nome was denoted by a sign of a sacred standard with a specific symbol over it, having as its center a larger town with an old and renowned temple. So it was natural to infer that their history went back to the most ancient times when nomes could be real inchoate Predynastic polities of the fourth Millennium BC. (This actually led Igor Diakonoff to transplant the term ‘nome’ in his account of Early Dynastic Mesopotamia.) But by the end of the twentieth century, the scheme of 22 Upper and 20 Lower Egyptian nome states mingling together into two big entities, with Upper Egypt finally conquering Lower, was abandoned in favour of a more nuanced notion based on well-considered archaeological evidence (see, among the mass of bibliography, synthesis in Wilkinson 2000; Hendrickx 2014; Köhler 2020).
The basis for postulating this scheme are the archaeological sites in Upper Egypt, with Lower Egypt being a real outsider to the process, but an important mediator in contacts with the Eastern Mediterranean. The evidence for the scheme comes from archaeological sites, especially wealthy tombs and elite cemeteries. What might be called ‘nome polities’ has to be looked for at stages 1 and 2, especially at stage 1, because stage 2 has already seen their merger. Notably, by far not all of these polities developed into historical nomes in dynastic Egypt: Abadiya, Naqada, and Gebelein were eventually incorporated by other nomes as smaller townships. Hence Wolfang Helck stated in his research on the nomes' system that they actually developed from royal domains in different parts of the country (Helck 1974: 49), which is supported by the evidence of agricultural development in the Delta in the early Old Kingdom. However, the key question for those (few) Egyptologists reflecting over the origins of the state in the land of their interest is the distinction between pre-state formations and those that can be qualified as early states.
Stage 1 saw the emergence of artifacts and pieces of iconography that could be connected with the symbols of kingship in Dynastic Egypt (a red crown on a pottery piece from Naqada, images of a falcon comparable to the eventual Horus at Hierakonpolis, an image of a ruler smiting his enemies at Abydos), and the society of that time was strongly stratified (notably, the elite cemeteries at Hierakonpolis and Naqada were separated from the burials of common people). But nothing attests to the existence of an administration before stage 3, which saw the emergence of writing used to account for goods flowing to the kings of Abydos from various parts of Egypt (tomb U-j). Thus, defining the polities of stage 1 as chiefdoms is well-attested in scholarship (e.g., Köhler 2020: 133–134). If this is true, then the real early Egyptian state must have emerged during stage 2 and/or at the early stage 3, during the unification wars and the expansion of a complex trade network across Egypt and its periphery. Incidentally, a feature of eventual dynastic Egypt was the underdevelopment and weakness of kinship ties in society: it seems likely that this resulted from the deliberate eradication of clans and local structures as natural competitors to the all-Egyptian state, almost immediately after its emergence. The total merger of not only early polities, but also rural communities omnipresent in prehistoric societies, must have been the result of this course.
B. MESOPOTAMIA
The history of early Mesopotamian institutions and territorial organization, as far as it can be traced through archaeological and surviving written data, provides greater clarity regarding the timing of the accumulation of features indicating this or that kind of potestary structures (cf. Stein and Rothman 1994; Crawford 2013).
By the middle of the Ubaid period (5th mill. B), relatively large settlements served as centers for groups of smaller ones, with a large structure in the center of these settlements (proto-temple communal centers), pre-scriptural means of economic accounting, but there was almost always no trace of social differentiation or the existence of an elite or powerful ruler in burials or anywhere else (cf. Kopanias and Barlagianni 2019). Some prominent scholars argued that the entire Ubaid era was an era of chiefdom (Gil Stein in Stein, Rothman 1994; Flannery 1999). By the middle of the subsequent Uruk period (ca. 3500 BC), there existed about twenty local polities (city-states in usual terminology) maintaining an alliance that enabled them to effectively establish colonies of the same type. The monumental structures in their centers were undeniably temples, and social differentiation had progressed significantly, and an ideographic proto-cuneiform script functioned, primarily for keeping records of a large centralized household (with dozens or hundreds of personnel) belonging to temple, which also served as administrative centers. Professional overseers are mentioned, and the existence of some managerial apparatus is undeniable. High-ranking officials managed the temple economies, but the relationship between their authority and other institutions remains unknown.
For the subsequent Jemdet Nasr phase (late 4th mill. BC), the statuses of en (head of a local polity, primarily with priestly functions) and other high-ranking officials became known, along with the fact that they were provided with large land holdings (far larger than the allotments of commoners). It is considered more likely that these lands were assigned to them as to holders of corresponding offices. In the first half of the following Early Dynastic period (ED II, 28th–27th centuries BC, Ur archive; early ED III, late 26th century, Fara archive; see Westenholz 2002; Bartash 2020), a range of new institutions became known. The rulers of local polities were hereditary (as perhaps before), and alongside the status of the local ruler, ensi (apparently derived from en), emerged the status lugal (‘big man, sovereign, king’), somewhat like the Roman ‘emperor’ in some respects. The term was used as an epithet for the city's patron god, who stood above the ensi, and when applied to a human ruler it originally denoted direct, primarily military-command authority, with a fundamentally diminished (or none) role for communal potestary structures (councils and popular assemblies) – including the role of hegemonic rulers over subordinate rulers. At least occasionally, the militia could declare someone a lugal. The residence of the lugal and the ensi was the palace (egal, ‘great house’), with its own vast household separate from the temple economy (temples were now directly led by high priests and maintained a connection with the ruler). It is not definitively known whether leaders designated as ensi and lugal could temporarily coexist within a single polity (probably not), but typically, an ensi would either transition to the title of lugal or be replaced by rulers who adopted it. The epic tradition preserved memories of a ruler's ability to compel community members to perform construction work and wage war at his discretion. In the Early Dynastic period, in addition to militia, there existed household troops under the ruler's command.
No doubt, the ‘city-states’ or ‘nome states’ of the Early Dynastic period were indeed states. But was the Ubaid period an era of chiefdoms, or did its societies belong to an earlier stage? A more complex question, further dependent on terminology, deals with defining structures from the fourth to the early third millennium (Uruk to ED I), as it remains unclear to what extent the temple-administrative center and its governing apparatus, headed by a ruler, stood above the collegial self-government of the polity, and to what degree it was their establishment; how the palace estate emerged and separated from the temple; what were potestary opportunities for rulers and institutions, etc. Compared to Egypt, a clear distinguishing feature was the much longer existence of local polities in Mesopotamia even after the end of any possible chiefdom era (i.e., at least from the mid-4th mill. until the Akkadian unification of Lower Mesopotamia in the late 24th century BC). One obvious factor contributing to this dissimilarity was that Mesopotamian local centers were not situated along a single river line, but across multiple rivers, thus excluding the ‘snowball effect’ in their integration. This can be compared to the lag of Egypt's Delta behind the rest of Egypt in terms of political integration.
REFERENCES
Bartash, V. 2020. The Early Dynastic Near East. In Radner, K. et al. (eds), The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East. Vol. 1 (pp. 531–611). Oxford: OUP.
Crawford H. (ed.). 2013. The Sumerian World. London: Routledge.
Helck, W. 1974. Die altägyptische Gaue. Wiesbaden: Reichert.
Hendrickx, S. 2014. The Emergence of the Egyptian State. In Renfrew, C., and Bahn, P. (eds.), The Cambridge World Prehistory. Vol. 1. Africa, South and Southeast Asia and the Pacific (pp. 259–278). Cambridge: CUP.
Flannery, K. 1999. Chiefdoms in the Early Near East: Why It's So Hard to Identify Them. In Alizadeh, A. et al. (eds.), The Iranian World: Essays on Iranian Art and Archaeology (pp. 44–63). Tehran: Iran University Press.
Kopanias, K., Barlagianni, G. 2019. Unequal in Life but Equal in Death? The Mortuary Evidence for Social Stratification in the Ubaid Polities. Ash-Sharq: Bulletin of the Ancient Near East 3 (1): 1–21.
Köhler, Chr. 2020. Prehistoric Egypt. In Radner, K. et al. (eds.), The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East. Vol. 1 (pp. 95–162). Oxford: OUP.
Stein, G., and Rothman, M. S. (eds.). 1994. Chiefdoms and Early States in the near East: The Organizational Dynamics of Complexity. Madison: Prehistory Press.
Westenholz, A. 2002. The Sumerian City-State. In Hansen, M. (ed.), A Comparative Study of Six City-State Cultures (pp. 23–42). Copenhagen: Reitzel.
Wilkinson, T. A. H. 2000. Political Unification: Towards a Reconstruction. Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Abt. Kairo 56: 377‒395.