soil along the lower reaches of the river. River water, impounded for
the purpose, provided the means of irrigating an all but rainless desert
countryside. Skillful engineering drained the swamps, adding to the
cultivable area of a narrow valley cut by the river through jagged
barren hills. Deserts on both sides of the Nile protected the valley
against aggressors and migrants. Within this sanctuary the Egyptians
built a civilization that lasted, with a minor break, for some 3,000
years.

Egyptian temples and tombs carry records chiseled and painted on hard
stone, which throw light on the life and times of upper-class Egyptians,
including emperors, provincial governors, courtiers, generals,
merchants, provincial organizers. In a humid, temperate climate these
stone-cut and painted records would have been eroded, overgrown and
obliterated long ago. In the dry desert air of North Africa they have
preserved their identity through the centuries.

Since the Egyptians had a few draft animals, and little if any
power-driven machinery, energy needed to build massive stone temples,
tombs and other public structures must have been supplied by the forced
labor of Egyptians, their serfs and slaves.

Egypt's history dawns on a well-organized society: The Old Kingdom,
based on the productivity of the narrow, lush Nile Valley. The products
of the Valley were sufficient to maintain a large population of
cultivators: some slave, some forced labor, about which we have little
knowledge; a bureaucracy, headed by a supreme ruler whose declared
divinity was one of the chief stabilizing forces of the society. Between
its agricultural base and its ruling monarch, the Old Kingdom had a
substantial middle class which procured the wood, stone, metals and