Theories of Urbanization

The lavish painted w every(prenominal)s of Amenhotep's palace at Luxor and the rock tombs of his nobles on the west bank of Thebes lighten bear witness to the political and economic stability of a country which had been dominated by the same ruling family for over 200 years.

In the mid-sixteenth century BCE, the Theban prince, Ahmose, drove out the Hyksos, a group of Asiatic rulers who had held sway over displace Egypt during the so-called Second Intermediate Period. Ahmose's descendants, the rulers of the Eighteenth Dynasty, used the fertilizable fields of the Nile Valley and the mineral riches of the Eastern and western sandwich Deserts to transform Egypt into an imperial power, threatened only by the distant Babylonians, Mittanni and Hittites. The military achievements of Thutmose III in particular situated the foundations for the comparatively peaceful reign of Amenhotep III. The scene was set, however, for one of the oddish episodes, and even stranger cities, in Egyptian history.

Amenhotep IV, later called Akhenaten (Weigall 9), ascended to the govern of Egypt in 1353 BCE. He was the second son of Amenhotep III, one of the great kings of Egypt, who ruled an empire that stretched from Nubia to modern day Syria. Thus Amenhotep IV became king in the shadow of a famous begetter and was faced with the dual tasks of controlling the empire and ruling his accept land effectively. During this period, Egyptians worshipped many gods, the

most important of whom was Amun, the king of gods (Weigall 12). Monumental and splendid temples were construct for him at Thebes, staffed by the most important priests in the kingdom. As the years of Amenhotep IV's reign progressed, the prominence of a minor god, the Aten, or "sun-disk," eventually superseded all the others. In 1349 BCE, the fifth year of his reign, Amenhotep IV appointedly changed his name to Akhenaten (or "Horizon of the Sun-Disk), and the cult of the Sun-Disk became the sole official cult of the Egyptian empire (Silverberg 57).

With the development of cities, the land and all it produced became the property of the temple and the god (Mumford 107). Within the city, property rights became of bang importance, and led to class distinctions.

All these factors - specialization, division, compulsion and depersonalization - produced tightness in cities, and may have been part of the reason for the nett abandonment of Amarna. The city, from its very beginnings has been based on forced constancy produced by enslavement and monopoly over the food supply (108). mean scarcity and the threat of starvation led to the effective regimentation of the parturiency force. The great storehouses of early cities such as Amarna were within the temple and well-guarded. The situation was probably tolerated because of the trickle down of some of the kindliness to even the poorest citizen, making him better off than a villager. The cordial constituents of a city, while forcing individuals to spend their entire life at a single task, at the same time do them part of a collective entity. While the individual's life index be on a narrow track, it was enriched by their interaction with a wide range of other individuals, and allowed them to discover the wealth of human potential that would have not been visible to them in another type of setting. It was within the setting of a city that a person was able to develop a virtuoso of the individual personality. The city produced a p
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