This assignment is a simulation that places you in the position of a community leader over several years in Old Kingdom Egypt. Your goal is to ensure the gradual expansion of your community's influence over other communities up and down the Nile, without getting conquered or deposed. You have a range of variables that you must track in order to manage effectively. These include population growth and decline, land area under cultivation, temple construction, the size of your civil service, military size, and defensive walls to mention some of the most important. Note that this is a turn-based simulation, so you will be running the simulation against other students in your study group, so competition and cooperation will come into play.

You will be asked to choose what mode you want to run the simulation in, that is as either independent city-states, as a feudal style kingdom or as an empire with a Pharaoh in charge. If you choose either of the first two modes you will need four players, if you choose the Pharaoh option you will need five players - four mayors and a Pharaoh. You will be asked to enter your names and choose which cities you want to manage from the cities listed on the map after you download and launch the application. Once you have chosen a city you will go to the control screen for that city. Initial values will be set for you by the computer. After those values have been set, you can explore your options on the control panel. To move the simulation along, click on the button in the lower left of the screen labeled "Map". This will take you back to the map so that the next player can exrecise their turn in the simulation. Remember that parameters you change in one year usually don't have an effect until you have moved on to the next year. The main idea is to try to keep your city growing and moving along on an even keel. You may find this more difficult than you might think at first. As you work through the simulation, keep some notes on changes over time, such as general trends in population growth. Think about how the combination of environmental and human factors affected the development of early state level societies.

	1. Contents 2. Introduction 3. Simulation Courseware Page
Comments to: george@id.ucsb.edu All contents copyright © 1990-2003, The Regents of The University of California. All rights reserved.