The Egyptians themselves did not refer to this period by that name and would have seen no difference between the period which preceded or succeeded it. The name 'Old Kingdom' was coined by archaeologists in the 19th century CE in an attempt to demarcate Egypt's long history. The Old Kingdom began to collapse as more and more local governors assumed more power over their regions, and the central government at Memphis was increasingly seen as irrelevant. During the 5th and 6th Dynasty, however, the priesthood began to grow in power, primarily through their hold over the very mortuary practices which gave rise to the great pyramids, empowering the local officials of the districts and the kingship suffered.
The 4th Dynasty of the Old Kingdom was a time of progress and a strong centralized government which could command the kind of respect necessary for such building projects. They diverted enormous resources from the entire country for this purpose, filling a 70-kilometer-long stretch of the desert edge along the west bank of the Nile near modern Cairo with huge monuments still awe-inspiring today despite the ravages of time. Most of the 20-some kings compelled thousands of laborers to quarry, transport, put in place, and decorate vast quantities of stone in order to construct royal mortuary monumnets.
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