States in archaeological and historical parlance generally are large and dynamic entities with continually fluctuating borders and boundaries across large land masses. States also are characterized by multiple nodes of settlement and multiple regions of resource availability within those large land masses, including agricultural fields, animal pastures, raw materials, and labor power. The northeastern African continent however provides a rather different spatial configuration for states’ prerequisites of agricultural intensification and social integration: the ancient Egyptian state—and all subsequent political entities called “Egypt”—have been framed by the valley of the Nile as a long and narrow corridor of human viability. Using “flow” as a phenomenological concept in which experiences are heightened by restraint conditions, this article examines the characteristics of political and social cohesion given geographic limitations on communication, migration and territorial expansion. The constraints of a viable landmass surrounded by uninhabitable desert parallel the conditions experienced by island states, enabling the productive application of island and archipelagic models to the analysis of the ancient Egyptian state.

考古和历史术语中的国家通常是大型且充满活力的实体，其边界和边界在大片土地上不断变化。州的特征还在于这些大片土地上包括居民点，动物牧场，原材料和劳动力在内的多个定居点和资源可获得性的多个区域。但是，东北非洲大陆为各州农业集约化和社会融合的先决条件提供了一种截然不同的空间配置：古埃及国家以及随后的所有被称为“埃及”的政治实体，长期以来都被尼罗河谷所包围。人类生存能力的狭窄走廊。将“流动”作为一种现象学概念，其中通过约束条件来增加经验，本文探讨了在沟通，移民和领土扩张受到地理限制的情况下政治和社会凝聚力的特征。可行的陆地被无人居住的沙漠所包围，其局限性与岛国所经历的条件平行，从而使岛国和群岛模型能够有效地应用于古埃及国家的分析。