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Ancient Egypt maintained one of the longest continuous civilisations in the world, from the first unification of Egypt by ancient warrior-kings c.3100 BC to the last native Egyptian ruler in c.343 BC. This is a huge length of time, and throughout Egypt remained, for the most part, remarkably stable and consistent in its culture. Egyptologists commonly divide this timeframe up into smaller chunks known as Kingdoms, with Intermediate Periods of social change and civil unrest between them. This chronology runs thus (all dates are circa):

The Predynastic (prehistoric) Period to c.3100 BC
The Early Dynastic: 3100-2686 BC
The Old Kingdom: 2686-2181 BC
The First Intermediate Period: 2181-2055 BC
The Middle Kingdom: 2055-1650 BC
The Second Intermediate Period: 1650-1550 BC
The New Kingdom: 1550-1069 BC
The Third Intermediate Period: 1069-747 BC
The Late Period (incorporating two Persian Periods): 747-332 BC

Following this are the Ptolemaic Period (332-30 BC) of Cleopatra's time and the Roman Period (30 BC- AD 395) where Egypt was a province of the Roman Empire. I shall not address the issue of Egyptian social structure in these periods of its history. Suffice it to say that they became increasingly Romanised and lost a great deal of their native culture.

The Kingdoms are regarded as the times when Egypt was stable, ruled by the king from his capital, and generally prospered. The Intermediate Periods refer to those times when, for one reason or another, the traditional Egyptian kingship failed and government became decentralised, often in the hands of powerful nobles or foreign kings (such as the Hyksos in the Second Intermediate Period).

To further confuse the issue of chronology, Egyptologists commonly follow the technique used by the Late Period Egyptian priest Manetho in further dividing the Kingdoms and Periods into Dynasties, of which there are approximately 30. Manetho used the reasonably accurate records of kingship and reigns known as the King Lists' set the reigns of individual kings and bloodlines into dynasties according to commonly accepted family lines. These King Lists are known to be accurate to a degree some kings believed to be illegitimate or inappropriate by their descendants were omitted, a classic example being Akhenaten. However, carbon dating and other methods allow Egyptologists to expand upon the work of Manetho and create a remarkably full and accurate chronology for ancient Egypt.

Before this essay begins to sound too much like an exposition on Egyptian

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