The Fall of an Empire: The Role of Geology in the Decline of the Ancient Egyptian Old

Kingdom
Savhannah Carpenter
Salt Lake Community College

GEOG 1700
Professor Michael Kass
Fall Semester 2016

The year was around 2200 BC, and the people of ancient Egypt were facing famine and
death every way they looked. The Nile, once a reliable and crucial lifesource for the people of

ancient Egypt, was no longer surging with the velocity and ferociousness it once did. Crops and
harvests began to suffer and as a result, so did the people who called the Nile and the land
surrounding it home. An era of ancient Egypt was coming to an end; an empire collapsing as a
result of the treacherous desert environment that housed it.
Before its collapse, the Old Kingdom was significant in the world of Egyptology for a
myriad of reasons. Known as the Age of Pyramid Builders, this was a period in history that
many well-known Egyptian monuments were erected; including the Pyramids of Giza, the
Sphinx, the Pyramid of Djoser and the Temple at Saqqara. The Old Kingdom was also a time for
economic and political prosperity for the Egyptians, and art and culture had began to flourish
throughout the society as a whole.
However, in the transition from ancient times to modern times the Old Kingdom of Egypt
was wiped out, creating opportunity for the New Kingdom of Egypt to spring into existence.
This once formidable and notable Old Kingdom now lives in our textbooks and curiosities,
igniting the imagination of Egyptologists and young children alike. But what exactly was it that
caused this powerful civilization to come crashing down? Scientists suggest that the reasoning
for this mysterious demise is most likely the one force more powerful than men on this planet;
the planet Earth itself.
The Old Kingdom, an era beginning around 2686 BC and ending around 2181 BC, relied
heavily on the fertile Nile River for food and natural resources. The Nile provided fish, transport,
water supply and an annual flood that helped to fertilize crops and provide nutrients to soil. This
annual flood was a reliable constant in the world of the ancient Egyptians, and the prospect of the
Nile missing a flood was like the idea of the sun simply not rising; it meant that crops could not
be fertilized and the population would suffer as a direct result.

The Old Kingdom was a symbol of success and prosperity at the height of its existence.
The Egyptians were quite advanced for their time in the fields of art, literature, and overall
economic well-being. This was a well-established society, made up of skilled workers whose
talents created a resilient and self-sustaining societal construct. It was originally theorized by
those studying the field of ancient Egypt and its culture that this once powerful and influential
society was brought to its knees following the death of a king and the introduction of political
unrest.
This explanation for the sudden collapse of a once great empire came to a halt in 1971,
when Egyptologist Dr. Fekri Hassan discovered the tomb of an Egyptian governor called
Ankhtifi, who lived through the collapse of the Egyptian Old Kingdom. On these newly
discovered tomb walls, scientists found detailed hieroglyphics telling the story of widespread
famine that affected the entire Egyptian community. Ankhtifi wrote about the devastating effects
of the famine, comparing Egypt to a starving grasshopper and detailing the new tradition of
eating children that Egyptian parents had begun to embrace as the famine worsened. It was from
this troublesome find that the Egyptologists of the time began to look at climate conditions, and
not political unrest as the actual cause of the fall of the Old Kingdom.
Fast forward to 1996, when archaeological evidence of the widespread famine chronicled
in the tomb of Ankhtifi finally surfaced. In the North, Egyptologists were excavating an area in
the Nile Delta. Dr. Donald Redford of Pennsylvania State University, and his team of
archaeologists uncovered a mass Egyptian grave, holding the remains of over 9000 bodies. Dr.
Redford suggests that his findings dated back to the end of the Old Kingdom, and that the bodies
he found were most likely impoverished and dramatically under fed. Here for the first time we
have evidence of [climate change] in dirt archaeology, confirmation of that final and rather

sudden destruction of the Egyptian civilization of the Old Kingdom, Professor Redford
explained (British Broadcasting Corporation 2001). This accomplishment in the world of science
marks the first physical evidence we have of the conditions of the collapse of the Old Kingdom.
What was once a simple hypothesis based upon ancient writings was now a full fledged theory
with real evidence to back it up, thanks to the work of Dr. Redford and his team.
Now that a crucial puzzle piece had been placed in the mystery of the collapse of ancient
Egypt, it was necessary for scientists to then discover what exactly caused this widespread
famine to occur in the first place. One obvious hypothesis of the cause of the famine was
environmental occurrences, as the well-being of crops and harvests depends almost entirely on
the climate in which they are grown. Because of this natural train of thought, Egyptologists
began their search in the beds of the powerful and internationally-known Nile River.
The Nile, like clockwork, experienced great amounts of flooding on an annual basis
throughout all of Egypts recorded history. Ancient Egyptians attributed this geologic cycle to the
tears of their goddess Isis, who they believed annually mourned the death of her husband, the
god Osiris. Though this is the account most often read on tomb walls, the reasoning behind this
yearly flood cycle lies in much more scientific territory. These floods were caused by heavy rains
in the South of Egypt, causing an influx of Nile water travelling North into the body of the Nile
Valley, eventually emptying out into the Mediterranean Sea. This process created fertile mud
along the banks of the nile, which promised the Egyptian people a successful yearly harvest.
Further evidence of a sudden change in ancient Egyptian climate was found when
scientists began to examine charcoal found throughout the Egyptian desert. The charcoal found
present in the geologic record throughout the area indicated that before the collapse of the Old
Kingdom, there were higher levels of wetland pollen present. Then, as the once prosperous

Egyptian empire fell, charcoal levels indicate a sudden decrease in wetland pollen occurred,
proof that there was a plant-reducing drought happening at this point in history. Essentially, the
Nile did not flood for several years because there was no precipitation in the south, leading to a
decrease in soil fertility and a mass loss of plant life throughout the Egyptian ecosystem.
In 2003, a study was conducted with the support of the Walcott Fund of the National
Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Institution regarding the sudden decrease in
biology caused by a decrease in the volume of the Nile. This [event] resulted from a decrease in
vegetative cover and an increase in erosion rate accompanying the marked decline in rainfall.
These new geoscience data indicate major changes in annual flooding and baseflow of the river
Nile, marked short-term paleoclimatic-related events that may in part have led to the collapse of
the Old Kingdom, wrote the scientists behind the study, Jean-Daniel Stanley, Michael D. Krom,
Robert A. Cliff, Jamie C. Woodward. (Stanley et al., 2003).
Scientists around the globe have confirmed through study of various geologic records that
there was a worldwide drought dating back to the time of the Old Kingdoms collapse, thus
cementing the theory that climate change was the ultimate force behind the fall of this empire.
Examples of similar scientific findings have been uncovered in various nations ranging from
Iceland to nearby Israel. This large scale event turned out to be more than the ancient Egyptians
were prepared to handle. As stated by USGS Director Marcia McNutt in 2012, Even the mighty
builders of the ancient pyramids more than 4,000 years ago fell victim when they were unable to
respond to a changing climate (USGS, 2012).
As soil continued to dry out throughout the region, sandstorms began to intensify,
contaminating remaining crops and further diminishing the Egyptians chances of survival. This
intensified the poor conditions in which the Old Kingdoms peoples were living, and ultimately

led to demise of this once thriving society. What once was a flourishing and illustrious
civilization had fallen victim to the indomitable powers of the Earth and its processes.
The Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt, though now extinct, will forever be considered one
of the greatest early civilizations on record. As the mysteries of the Sphinx and its pyramids
continue to captivate and mystify us, we can move forward with the knowledge of the deadly
consequences the climate can truly have upon us as a society through the story of this notable
empires collapse. All civilizations, ancient and modern, are at risk from the dangers of natural
geologic processes; a warning we as a society must learn from. The Old Kingdom of ancient
Egypt was a powerful empire, but a simple lack of precipitation feeding into the Nile was enough
to set off a disastrous chain of events ultimately ending in the death of the Age of the Pyramid
Builders.

References

Ancient Apocalypse: Death on the Nile [Motion picture on VHS]. (2001). British
Broadcasting Corporation.

Kerner, S., Dann, R. J., & Bangsgaard, P. (2015). Climate and Ancient Societies.
Copenhagen, Denmark: Museum Tusculanum Press.

Stanley, J., Krom, M. D., Cliff, R. A., & Woodward, J. C. (2003, March). Nile
Flow Failure at the End of the Old Kingdom, Egypt: Strontium Isotopic and Petrologic
Evidence. Geoarchaeology, 18(3), 395-402.

United States Geological Survey, United States of the Department of the Interior.
(2012). Climate and Drought Lessons from Ancient Egypt Using Fossil Pollen to
Augment Historical Records [Press release]. Reston, VA: Office of Communications and
Publishing