3300–3100 BCE: (The Decline of Qustul and the Rise of Upper Egypt — The Qustul Kingdom Declining in Wealth and Power Between 3300 and 3100 BCE as Desiccation…

3300–3100 BCE: (The Decline of Qustul and the Rise of Upper Egypt — The Qustul Kingdom Declining in Wealth and Power Between 3300 and 3100 BCE as Desiccation Caused the Falloff of Its Outlying Populations, While Upper Egypt with Far More Arable Land Along the River Attracted Greater Populations and Could Field Larger Armies, Three Notable Developments in the Last Three Centuries of the Fourth Millennium: Larger Polities in the Naqada Culture Region, the Invention of Writing, and the Unification Under the First Dynasty in the Thirty-First Century BCE): The Qustul kingdom, with the falloff of its outlying populations driven by desiccation, appears to have declined in wealth and power between 3300 and 3100 BCE. By contrast, in Upper Egypt the coincidences of timing suggest that these events set off an opposite trend during these centuries. With far more arable land along the river itself than in Lower Nubia immediately to the south, the rulers of polities in Upper Egypt controlled territories able to attract and support much greater populations, and so they would have soon been able to field larger armies than the Qustul state could any longer put in the field. In consequence, three notable developments came about in Egypt in the last three centuries of the fourth millennium BCE. Initially, one or more larger polities took shape in the regions of the Naqada culture in Upper and Middle Egypt. During the same time the invention of writing took place. And then, finally, in the thirty-first century BCE, ambitious rulers brought the First Dynasty of the Old Kingdom into being, unifying all the Nile regions from Aswan to the Delta. The shift of power from Qustul to Upper Egypt was not a cultural rupture but a geographical rebalancing within the same cultural world. The desiccation that destroyed Qustul’s hinterland enriched Upper Egypt’s. The populations that fled the desert settled along the Egyptian Nile, adding their numbers and their cultural traditions to the communities already there. The political center of gravity moved northward, but the cultural substance remained the same — the same ritual practices, the same royal iconography, the same sacral conception of kingship that had been developing across the Middle Nile Culture Area for three millennia.