Nomarch
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Nomarchs were the semi-feudal rulers of Ancient Egyptian provinces. Serving as provincial governors, they each held authority over one of the 42 nomes (Egyptian: sepat) into which the country was divided. Both nome and nomarch are terms derived from the Greek nomos, meaning a province or district. [1] The nomarchs exercised considerable power in the period from the breakdown of the Old Kingdom, the First Intermediate Period to the rise of the New Kingdom at the end of the Second Intermediate Period, when stronger centralized control was once again established.
The position of the nomarch was at times hereditary, while at others nomarchs were appointed by the pharaoh [2]. The balance of power between nomarchs and the central government varied from one pharaoh's rule to the next. Generally, when the national government was stronger, nomarchs were appointed governors. But when the central government was weaker – at times of foreign invasion or civil war, for example – rulers of individual nomes would assert themselves and establish hereditary lines of succession. Conflicts between these different hereditary nomarchies were common during, for example, the First Intermediate Period [3] – a time that saw a breakdown in central authority lasting from the sixth to the eleventh dynasty, until one of the local rulers, Mentuhotep of Thebes, was able to assert his control over the entire country as pharaoh.
The division of the kingdom into nomes can be documented as far back as the Old Kingdom (in the 3rd millennium BCE) and continued even up until the Roman period.
[edit] References
- ^ Nicolas Grimal, A History of Ancient Egypt, Blackwell Books: 1992, pp.142 & 400
- ^ The Inscription of the nomarch Kheti, son of Sit, in J. H. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, Part One, Chicago 1906, §§ 407 ff.
- ^ The biography of Tefibi, in J. H. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, Part One, Chicago 1906, §§ 393 ff.
