Citizenship in ancient Egypt

The Citoyenneté is a Greek notion of the social organization of the city which tallies badly with the design of the Egyptians of their place in the universe. One could possibly analyze the evolution of this design at the time of last times of ancient Egypt especially under the Ptolémées or the Roman domination although it is a concept imported and thus foreign with the spirit of the natives of the country of the Pharaons.

Under the Lagides, with the creation of large cities such Alexandria or Ptolémaïs, the concept of citizenship was reserved for the elite Macedonian, then with time extends itself then to the inhabitants of these cities, although the Egyptians of the district of Rakhotis in the ancient Alexandria never had really access to this statute, and the city consisted of well delimited districts which often entered in conflict, thus showing the somewhat relative aspect of the ancient citizenship.

While going up in time one can quote the creation of Naucratis under the Pharaon S of which the destiny was to gather the various Greek communities in a city-counter in order to better control the trade, city which was governed by laws that the Egyptian administration specifically promulgated for its inhabitants. There still one can easily realize that it is more about a need for differentiation of the people related to a xenophobia which had developed on banks of the the Nile with the recent invasions that the country had to undergo during the Low Time.

This Community fold in reaction to the most noxious aspects of the contact with their neighbors and competitors cannot thus be regarded as the reflection of a spirit of membership citizen but well like that of a company which vis-a-vis the inescapable changes of its environment, changes which it cannot control any more, can make other choices only be centred on its cultural and social identities in a somewhat preserving frame of mind. It is particularly visible in the choice of the return towards old guns in art (one speaks then about Saïte Rebirth) or in the increased development and who will not cease any more until the end of the history of their religion, of the worship of hypostases of their gods (Apis, Bastet, Thot etc). Hérodote which visited the country at that time left us an invaluable testimony on this point.

While going up still more one comes to the periods when the Egypt was one of the powers over which it was necessary to count and of which richness and stability attracted much foreign people which ended up being absorptive completely by the culture, the religion and the science of the former Egyptians. One can quote for example the Libyan tribes, Nubie or even the Hyksôs which in addition will give all their dynasty of kings to one moment or another of the history of the country. It is this design of an immutable ground, blessed gods, left initial paradise at the base of all creation, then guarantor of the universal balance which is deeply enracinée in the national spirit of the ancient Egyptians.

They were conceived indeed like pertaining to this ground considered as crowned expressing by there still and always this religious attachment who characterizes them as people. According to their mythology they are the herd of God, and the simple fact of living this ground is in oneself a sign of social membership.

If we do not have an Egyptian treaty on this concept of somewhat theological membership instead of philosophical as in ancient Greece, we have an outline of this mentality through the narrative texts on papyruses which reached us like in particular the Conte of Sinouhé or the account of the rocambolesque voyage to Byblos of Ounamon. Any Egyptian expatriate for some reason that it either wished only one thing: to return on banks of the Nile and if such could not be the case being buried in Egypt which remained for them to some extent the Holy Land which one day was the residence of the gods.

Other milked particular of the ancient Egyptians: their fidelity with the person of Pharaon, still theological design there, since Pharaon was the alive incarnation of Horus on ground. This fidelity can be connected with our modern design of citizenship related to the national membership. In the case of the ancient Egyptians, the nation is Pharaon. It is besides by its existence on ground that the balance of the world is guaranteed since it is the crowned bond which links this ground and its people in the divine world.

It thus seems that the modern concept of citizenship was foreign to the ancient Egyptians, even if one can make lifting bringings together. It is even truer if one takes this concept of citizenship of ancient Greece or the Roman citizenship which are concepts of membership of a company appeared rather tardily in the history of the antiquity and which will have truly established among in Egypt only from the edict of Caracalla, of 212 ( Constitutio Antoniniana ), guaranteeing the Roman citizenship with the free men of all the Empire.

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