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LECTURE | Rethinking Early States: Ancient Egypt, and Beyond | David Wengrow

Scholars have long sought for the origins of modern states in antiquity, with ancient Egypt serving as a prototype of “the archaic state.” Drawing on ideas in my recent book with David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything (L’alba di tutto), my lecture will present an alternative thesis. Rather than being a deeply rooted political form, the modern state may instead be regarded as a recent convergence of three different principles of social power: sovereignty, competitive politics (e.g. elections), and bureaucracy. An archaeological perspective suggests that these three principles of organised power have distinct origins and often appeared independently or in tension with each other. This may provide a more compelling way to understand the variety of political forms in the human past, than searching for “the origins of the state”. David Wengrow is Professor of Comparative Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London (UCL) and has been a visiting professor at New York University (Institute of Fine Arts), the University of Auckland, and the University of Freiburg. David has conducted archaeological fieldwork in Africa and the Middle East. He is the author of numerous books and scholarly articles, including The Archaeology of Early Egypt, What Makes Civilization? and co-author with David Graeber of the New York Times bestseller, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity.