Climate Change, State-Building and Societal Resilience in Ancient Egypt

Abstract

We combine the time inconsistency theory of state-building with the first provincial data set on the climatic conditions, institutional evolution and population dynamics of Bronze Age Egypt to document two key patterns inconsistent with the collapse archeology literature’s mantra that the 4.2 ka BP megadroughts provoked Egypt’s societal breakdown. First, the long period of low Nile floods and severe droughts started with the Sixth Dynasty pushed the Pharaohs to grant a larger fiscal autonomy to some of the provinces of Upper Egypt and the relative governors to use the tax revenues at their disposal to procure local public goods. Second, these discontinuities convinced the non-elites to cooperate in farming investments despite the worsened climate conditions and sustained settlement. Ultimately, climate change shaped ancient Egypt directly via deteriorated production conditions as well as indirectly through institutional resilience. Crucially, we also show that, contrary to the claims of the environmental circumscription theory of the state, this dimension is unrelated to state-building and societal resilience.