661 AM · ≈ 3100 BCE · world history
Unification of Egypt
Upper and Lower Egypt come under one rule, and a single kingdom begins.
The Nile valley and the delta had long lived apart: different crowns, different gods, different economies. The earliest monuments — above all the Narmer Palette — tie the unification to a king who put on both crowns at once. A state emerges, with its capital at Memphis, its years counted by reigns, and its officials watching the river's flood and the grain harvest. Egypt takes on the shape it will keep for three thousand years: pharaoh as mediator between men and gods, scribes, temples, and a tax on the harvest.