From Stars to State: Astral Patterns and the Rise of Pharaonic Egypt at Adaïma (Upper Egypt)

This article examines the role of rural communities in shaping early Egyptian statehood through the evolution of funerary beliefs. Drawing on the analysis of 504 tombs from the cemetery of Adaïma (Upper Egypt, 3300–2700 BCE), we trace a growing variability in mortuary practices from the First to the Third Dynasty. By the Third Dynasty, a remarkable alignment between the heliacal rising of Sirius, the summer solstice, and the Nile inundation began to reconfigure both ritual time and space. The celestial events became instrumental in transforming materially grounded beliefs—such as the symbolic dismemberment and reassembly of the body—into immaterial religious concepts underpinning royal ideology. Through comparison with earlier necropolises and later Pyramid Texts, we demonstrate how cosmogonic myths originate from long-standing ritual patterns and how the nascent state co-opts local traditions, reframing them through the appropriation of high-status individuals and celestial legitimation to consolidate central authority.