Well, your general problem is that you are probably following a broadly flawed scholarship regarding Egypt, that was distorted by the tendency criticism of the 19th and early 20th century philologists, notably the German philologists, and US ones with links to the German schools (Chicago, Pennsylvania, Brown NY etc)
These were the ones that first established the 'tendency criticism' whereby the impact of Egypt was first assumed to be minimal (for wider modern social reasons), and then all of the evidence had to be interpreted within that paradigm. Obviously you can see the problems with that methodology when it is explained in those terms, and this is the reason you probably hold the views you do at the moment.
If you have an anthropological background it will make you more susceptible to this.
As for Egypt's congruence with the Early Complex State development theories/model, well it fits pretty well, however you also need to realise that these theories are not reality, and are only approximate general models. I've just finished looking at Renfrew's Peer Polity Interaction model in some detail, which could also be applied in some ways to Egypt, which was not only a centralised state, it was a federation of disparate Nomes.
Finally, you may think me telling you you are wrong is insulting, but in fact I find it insulting when you assume to tell everyone on the site here that Egypt is nothing special, when in fact this erroneous statement is the result of your own lack of appreciation of the facts.
Let's just cherry pick one hard fact to show this, so you can see this is not opinion but reality:
The Great Pyramid of Giza was the tallest building on earth for more than 3 millenia.
No harm meant, I'm just keeping the record straight as usual.
Dave L
The Journal of Ancient Egyptian Architecture JAEA:
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egyptian-architecture.com]
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glasgow.academia.edu]
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egyptology-scotland.squarespace.com]
Dave's Archaeology Homepage:
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arkysite.wordpress.com]
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 05/13/2007 08:44AM by Dave L.