3100 BCE: (Hor-Aha and the Destruction of Qustul — Hor-Aha Either the First or Second King of the First Dynasty Sending His Forces Southward to Destroy the R…

3100 BCE: (Hor-Aha and the Destruction of Qustul — Hor-Aha Either the First or Second King of the First Dynasty Sending His Forces Southward to Destroy the Remnants of the Qustul State and Secure the Southern Frontier of the Old Kingdom for Centuries to Come, the Early Old Kingdom Continuing to Reveal Its Historical Indebtedness to the Wider Middle Nile Cultural World in Its Political Institutions and Ritual Associations): Hor-Aha, who was either the first or the second king of the First Dynasty, sent his forces also southward, destroying the remnants of the Qustul state and securing the southern frontier of the Old Kingdom for centuries to come. The early Old Kingdom, even with this transformation, continued to reveal the historical indebtedness of its political institutions and ritual associations to the wider Middle Nile cultural world. The destruction of Qustul by the first pharaohs is one of history’s great ironies. The Egyptian state destroyed the very polity from which it had inherited much of its political culture, its royal iconography, and its conception of sacral kingship. Hor-Aha marched south wearing a White Crown that a Qustul king had worn before him, accompanied by a Horus falcon that had first attended a Nubian ruler, to destroy the kingdom that had helped create the very institution he now embodied. The student destroyed the teacher. And then, as is the way of conquerors, the student pretended the teacher had never existed. But the political institutions and ritual associations of the early Old Kingdom betray the truth. The indebtedness to the Middle Nile cultural world persisted in every ceremony, every royal observance, every expression of the divine nature of kingship that the pharaohs practiced. You can destroy a kingdom. You cannot destroy the cultural inheritance it left in your bones.