Moreno García, Managing Resources in Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt, state income, taxation, and state expenditure
Juan Carlos Moreno García wrote:
PREFACE
As one of the most long-lived political entities recorded in history, pharaonic Egypt (3100–343 BC) constitutes an ideal case study of a society that went through extraordinary changes in the longue durée. It was a society that experienced many different configurations of power (unified monarchy, regional kingdoms, empire, vassal of foreign powers, etc.) but which claimed regardless political and cultural continuity based on beliefs, foundational myths and values that forged its identity. It was a society that developed a complex set of institutions (including kingship) as well as governmental and administrative bodies that proved remarkably adaptable to changing political, economic and social conditions under the cover of conservatism and the formal respect of traditions. Ultimately, this society was a vigorous political actor in the international sphere, recognized as such by other polities and capable of developing strategies and deploying the tools necessary to achieve its goals – from war to trade and diplomacy – in the face of other powers.
However, the contribution of pharaonic Egypt to the study of statehood and, in general, to comparative research in social sciences has been marginal despite its rich historical and archaeological record, probably because most of Egyptological research has focused traditionally on philology, religion, works of art and factual history.
That is why the aim of this book is threefold. First, it intends to show how ancient Egyptian data might be of use to social scientists and show its extraordinary potential for comparative research. Second, it addresses themes and concepts habitually discussed in social sciences so as to make this information more easily accessible for an audience of non-specialists in Egyptology. Third and finally, the book focuses on how state power was built and organized, how it reproduced itself, the limits and weaknesses it faced and the diverse political forms it took in the long term, depending on the balance of power prevailing at each time. The perspective adopted is thus a dynamic one, far from the still-popular image of an absolutist, rigid and highly centralized monarchy, an image derived mainly from monumental art and official sources.
In consequence, this book focuses on the realities of power, its construction, negotiation and exercise, the challenges it encountered, the role played by formal and informal actors, and the elaboration of an official culture that aimed to draw together the ruling elite around the king and, to a lesser degree, to provide the indispensable … Identity, Cohesion, Transcendence … essential for the reproduction and survival of any society. Other components also discussed – and which are present in almost all societies and that assumed specific contents, shapes and interdependencies in each historical context – are Territory, Authority and Rights …
CHAPTER THREE
Managing Resources
The pharaonic state managed several kinds of resources, some of them material (taxes, manpower, raw and luxury materials), and others immaterial (information, dominant cultural values, legitimacy, allegiance and obedience). Both types formed the very basis of the monarchy and provided the means necessary to enforce its authority and to guarantee the reproduction of the ruling class: the collection, selective distribution and expenditure of revenue, the building of monuments, the provision of order and security, the affirmation of legitimate and moral rule through religious and cultural values. Obviously, this was a desideratum, an ideal constantly challenged by the potential appearance of alternative poles of accumulation of wealth, information, force and legitimacy.
Their more conspicuous manifestations were the lavish display of private wealth in the form of monumental tombs, chapels and temples; the cult of ‘deified’ ancestors; the existence of extensive patronage networks centred on potentates; corruption and the capture of income due to the state; imprecise limits between public duties and private interests in the activities of the ruling elite; the existence of a powerful provincial nobility as well as families entrenched in senior administrative and court positions, etc. The monarchy thus had to negotiate with such potential foci of trouble and find satisfactory arrangements with them (not always successful, as the recurrent periods of crisis of the monarchy reveal), from co-option to the forced exile of rivals, from integration to coexistence and utter erosion of local powers. However, the pharaonic monarchy diverges from other political formations of the ancient Near East in its apparent capacity to produce considerable political stability in the long term or, to put it in other words, to prevent the emergence of durable challenges to its authority. Yet it was the manner in which the state managed the resources at its disposal to achieve this astonishing goal that was a crucial factor in its success.
Managing income: Taxation and its limits
Two myths have accompanied modern reconstructions about the Egyptian past. The first is that of an efficient, all-encompassing royal administration, organized in ‘departments’ (Granary, Treasury, House of Life, House of Weapons, Chamber of the Documents, etc.) that controlled and centralized much (if not all) of the resources of the kingdom. The second is that of a homogeneous provincial administration, with officials appointed to represent the authority of the king and execute his orders, from levying taxes and directing manpower to the development of public works.
The roots of this modern perception of ancient Egypt can be traced back to the nineteenth century AD, when the consolidation of national states in Europe, America and Japan, along with their attempts to expand their authority and managerial competences, crystallized in a new perception of what a modern state was and were transposed anachronistically to the past. Thus the long lists of administrative titles in the monuments of Egyptian officials, accompanied by claims about their efficiency and good administration, seem to recall ‘normal’ governmental practices that could be imputed to any ‘advanced’ society, ancient or modern. They were thus accepted at face value, as if they constituted another prestigious precedent of Western states – ex oriente lux. Such interpretation was reinforced by the assumption that ancient Egypt was a despotic ‘oriental’ state, dominated by a stifling bureaucracy whose only aim was to levy taxes from an otherwise stagnant and exploited peasantry. However, these interpretations were based more on prejudices than on a careful evaluation of the coercive and taxation capacities of ancient states. The administrative reality hidden behind terms like Granary, Treasury, and others still remains rather elusive, and we do not know if they really centralized and controlled specific resources of the kingdom or if, on the contrary, their goal was rather more modest and specialized. As for the limits of their respective areas of competences, in many cases they are hard to determine.
To begin with, the basic units of taxation are not always clear. Administrative documents from several periods reveal control over households and settlements founded by the crown, detailing the number of people living in them and tasks performed by the heads of the households or their proxies (such as members of their family, clients or subordinates). The general impression is that the priority was to evaluate and mobilize manpower and, perhaps, to obtain specialized items such as textiles (judging from documents from Gurob and Elephantine), rather than collecting agricultural produce and revenue from common people. Substantial amounts of agricultural produce were acquired through other means, such as the foundation of specialized royal agricultural centres close to strategic areas (quarries, garrisons, crossroads, harbours), and even the construction of temples, provided with considerable landed assets as well as workforce in a variety of forms, from seasonal forced work to leasing, serf-like workers, etc. This may explain why the basic fiscal structure of the state comprised networks of royal production centres and agricultural land, temples and so on, that produced, collected and stocked agricultural goods that would later be transported by ship to specific departments (such as the Granary). Boats would collect goods – mainly perishable and low-profit items such as wine, fruit, dates, fresh vegetables, and even textiles – from suppliers, but there is still some uncertainty about whether some of these operations should be interpreted as trading activities or a type of tax.
In any case, the amount of goods at the disposal of the crown was staggering. The Harris I Papyrus, as well as other contemporary documents, enumerate enormous amounts of grain, land, people, fresh produce, offerings and cult items granted by the king to several sanctuaries in Egypt. Temples appear thus as essential nodes of the fiscal system of the crown as well as autonomous agencies of production. They were subject to taxation and their resources used as payment for these taxes when the crown estimated it necessary. So, when pharaoh Neferirkare endowed his own funerary temple with offerings and personnel, these were gathered from several institutions, including the royal palace and the temple of Ptah at Memphis. And when Weni enumerated the institutions that were required to contribute towards a large army, overseers of temples paid up too. The interplay between crown and temples produced in many instances intricate webs of relations. Kings endowed temples with land and workers and also trusted them with the administration and cultivation of royal land. In other cases, temples benefited from specific donations made by kings, such as revenue from fisheries, mining, etc. As autonomous productive centres, temples managed their own affairs, employed merchants to commercialize part of their production and were thus able to pay to the crown substantial amounts of silver. Pharaoh Akhenaten, for instance, collected silver and other goods from temples. At the same time, kings granted temple land to (among others) officials, soldiers and local potentates, thus helping to consolidate and expand the influence of the crown in the local sphere and to secure support from local authorities. However, clarifying the rights over this land was no easy matter, as beneficiaries bought, sold and transferred these legal obligations to other people.
Another fiscal contribution made by the temples took the form of manpower, and its use by the state oscillated between donation, taxation and appropriation (if needed). As royal decrees of the late third millennium BC reveal, provincial agents of the king compiled lists of people who could work for the crown, from priests to peasant labourers, and temples would be obliged to comply. In fact the only way they could avoid these obligations would be to obtain a (revocable) exemption decree from the pharaoh (Jursa & Moreno García 2015).
Temples were only part of the picture, though, as other institutions helped create a fiscal ‘landscape’ that changed over time depending on the collecting and enforcing capacity of the kingdom. During the early phases of the Egyptian monarchy (late fourth and third millennium BC), the crown founded many agricultural and production centres all across the country. In some cases these were devoted to the production of specialized goods, such as wine or cattle; in the case of the latter, certain areas and herds would be expected to deliver a specified quota of animals to the crown. Other centres (particularly the hwt) produced and stocked foodstuffs and supplies delivered to expeditionary groups and agents of the crown passing through the locality. It appears that each of these centres controlled a small district, comprising several villages. As noted above, this system was complemented by temples, recipients of considerable royal donations of land but liable to taxation and the rendering up of goods on demand. As we can see, this early fiscal system was characterized by the crown’s direct involvement in the production and management of some of the kingdom’s basic resources, which could indicate difficulties in the collection of taxes directly from producers. From this perspective, it may be significant that the main tax objective of the monarchy in the third millennium BC was to control cattle (also gold); in other words, mobile wealth. This system disappeared around 2000 BC, and the hwt were not reintroduced after the reconstruction of the monarchy. Instead, towns and cities carried the main burden of taxation, especially with regard to the delivery of workforce, while local leaders – who ranged from provincial lords to local chiefs and dignitaries – also provided workers from their own ‘domains’, households and districts. It was then that another institution expanded, particularly around 1800 BC: the ḫ nrt, a kind of work camp. Later on, from 1550 BC, temples emerge as major hubs of economic management and mobilization, not only of their own resources but also of royal land, via what appears to be an indirect managerial system in which temples and private rural ‘entrepreneurs’ managed and cultivated crown property. Harbours were also regarded as fiscal units, because goods were stocked there and put at the disposal of the king’s agents; in some cases the harbours were even provided with their own land.
With regard to other units of taxation, it is difficult to detect a homogeneous fiscal pattern, which confirms that taxes were levied on a relatively ad hoc basis, in sharp contrast to the apparent ‘rationality’ and ‘all-encompassing’ ideals suggested by official titles. Private inscriptions reveal that administrators received entire villages as reward for their activities, but it is far from clear what the villagers contributed to the state. Many inscriptions from different periods mention villages as providers of workforce for state projects (working temple or crown land, building temples and tombs, etc.), even when the villages and domains formed part of officials’ remuneration. Texts dating back to the early second millennium BC – administrative papyri, rock inscriptions, stone marks made inside kings’ pyramids – describe in detail the local organization of workers, their conscription, and the role played by the governors of villages and localities in their recruitment. Local potentates and officials also provided people from their own households and districts, and in some cases the name of an official had a toponymic value, as it referred to the territory he controlled. In fact,‘mayors’ played a key role in mediating the mobilization of goods and manpower for the king from the districts and localities they ruled. In some cases, inscriptions from the late third and early second millennium BC record the number of workers recruited for royal expeditions from specific localities and the presence of ‘mayors’. This is the case for inscription G 61 in the quarries of Wadi Hammamat, which mentions 17,000 conscripts and twenty mayors, working out at 850 workers per mayor, an average also cited in other texts. … Documents from the second half of the second millennium BC, such as the edicts issued by Horemheb and at Nauri, mention royal agents who seized manpower from villages and forced village governors to deliver goods at the mooring posts, to cultivate crown land or to work for the temples (Jursa & Moreno García 2015). Finally, when Princess Nitocris was sent from Sais to Thebes in 656 BC:
messengers sailed upstream to the south to arrange for provisions ahead of her [...] Every mayor was responsible for his (= the harbour master) provisions, having been furnished with every good thing, comprising bread, beer, oxen, fowl, leeks, dates, vegetables, and every good thing. One would then yield to the next until she arrived at Thebes. [Ritner 2009: 579]
Other goods rendered up by towns and cities included precious metals, specialized items such as textiles as well as grain and cattle according to the famous taxation scene depicted in the tomb of the vizier Rekhmire (who lived in the second half of the fifteenth century BC), that enumerates about eighty towns and cities in southern Egypt along with the taxes levied from them, and to similar documents. According to the Duties of the Vizier, viziers were in charge of taxes (‘it is he who fixes all fixed dues as supplies for recipients’; ‘the mayors, governors of domains and every subject report their income to him’) and of some agricultural planning, as well as perhaps a general evaluation of the areas under cultivation (‘it is he who dispatches mayors and governors of domains at ploughing and harvest’). He also surveyed the boundaries of (institutional?) fields – (‘it is he who dispatches the multitude of bureaucrats of the register (?) to calculate the expenditure of the Lord. District records are to be in his bureau for hearings on any fields. It is he who sets the boundaries for every district, every garden plot, every temple estate (?), every sealed land (?)’) – and checked cattle quotas and herd lists (‘it is he who makes the allotment (?) of income for the cattle-raising estates’, ‘it is he who makes lists of every herd of which lists are made’). In addition, he was in charge of ships (although it is unclear whether he was responsible for their cargo or condition: ‘to him report is made by every council of the start of ships and end of ships’).
The provinces’ conspicuous place in the ideal representation of administration and the governmental structure of the kingdom contrasts with the paucity of actual information regarding their fiscal contributions. The recent discovery of administrative papyri at Wadi el-Jarf shows that some provinces delivered agricultural produce on a rotating basis. However, the absence of further parallels points perhaps to the ephemeral nature of this system, which was implemented during the reign of Khufu but abandoned later. When the inscriptions of provincial leaders become more informative, as in the cases of Qar of Edfu and Imeny of Beni Hasan, they show that raising cattle was one of their main fiscal responsibilities. Other inscriptions from the very late third millennium BC also confirm that administrators submitted cattle censuses to the royal administration.
From the evidence we have about the crown’s fiscal capacities, a tripartite system emerges. First, agricultural produce was obtained mainly directly, through agricultural domains and production centres established by the crown, temples or other institutions. This system produced a fiscal geography organized in networks and provided with facilities such as harbours, etc. Second, the crown’s principal fiscal concern was to control and mobilize workforces. Third, control over mobile wealth suggests that many economic activities were carried out independently of any state initiative, and that in some cases they involved the accumulation of precious metals subsequently taxed by the state.The fact that cities paid taxes in precious metals, as did temples, wealthy peasants, traders and fishermen, suggests that private ‘business’ was far more important than royal documents indicate, and goods could be exchanged at markets for silver and gold, which would be subsequently taxed by the king. This might also explain the importance of traders as mediators in the economic activities of temples and the crown, even though they could well have ‘laundered’ precious metal stolen from temples and royal tombs.
Bearing in mind that Egypt is situated at a crossroads between north-eastern Africa and the Near East, it will come as no surprise that customs and taxes levied on the circulation of goods (both arriving into Egypt, or being exported) represented another source of income for the king. The Turin Royal Canon (dating from the thirteenth century BC) reveals, for instance, that a single overseer of natron delivered to the crown, as his annual tax in the Late Bronze Age, an astonishing amount of 91 kg of gold. Natron was certainly a strategic item in the manufacture of glass, an industry that flourished then as the archaeological evidence, such as the cargo of the Uluburun shipwreck, shows. However, other – much more modest – goods probably represented the bulk of Egyptian exports abroad, as indicated by the discovery of abundant remains of Nile perch in the Levant and Anatolia. The Story of Wenamun reveals that Egyptian fish, hides, lentils, papyri, linen and grain were sent abroad, while the depreciation of the value of silver during the Late Bronze Age (from a silver:copper ratio of 1:100 to just 1:60) is probably linked to the exports of huge amounts of grain to the Hittite Empire in exchange for silver, thus opening the intriguing possibility that Egypt had already become an international exporting power well before the Greco-Roman period. Customs fees may have represented a considerable source of income for the crown, including those taxes levied in the Nile harbours. If the Turin Royal Canon mentions taxes paid at several fortresses that monitored the entrance into Egypt, Sarenput I, governor of the caravan and harbour city of Elephantine around 1950 BC, included among his duties control over river trade, harbours, markets and foreign commodities arriving into Egypt in his role of ‘overseer of all tribute at the entrance of the foreign countries in the form of royal ornaments, to whom the tribute of the Medya-country was brought as contribution of the rulers of the foreign countries’, as well as ‘one who rejoices over the quay/market-place, the overseer of the great ships of the Royal Domain, who supplies the Double Treasury, the superior of the harbours in the province of Elephantine (so that) what navigates and what moors was under his authority’. A similar claim figures in a brief literary text that celebrates markets in the city of Pi-Ramesses: ‘Pleasant is the place of distribution/market-place with its money/silver there, mainly the vine tendrils (?) and business/commerce (t-m-k-r-i-t). The chiefs of every foreign country come in order to descend with their products’. Several references from the first half of the first millennium BC refer to taxes levied by harbour-masters on merchants: ‘[who are] under the authority of the elders of the portal who are before the merchants’; ‘[in order to protect] and exempt the door-keepers [of the estate] of Amun, and [the] sailors of the sacred barge of the estate of Amun likewise in order to prevent them from paying departure tax for their ships on the river at any harbor of any city [forever (?)]’; ‘oil for the estate of Amun-Re-the-Lion-at-the-South upon the riverbank/market under the supervision of the harbor masters’. Finally, a harbour-master and governor of Heracleopolis also passed orders to the mayors who provided supplies to Princess Nitocris on her journey south to Thebes. These examples reveal that harbours were not only active markets and trade centres, but also ideal places to levy and collect taxes, thus resulting in a potential source of income not only for the monarchy but also for local leaders.
As customs monitored part of the wealth arriving into Egypt, it was not by chance that the provinces ruled by leaders charged with controlling foreign tribute during the late third and early second millennium BC became the most active political players of their time. Some of these provinces seem linked to trade with the Red Sea (Thebes), others with the arrival of goods from the deserts and, perhaps, also from the Red Sea through Ayn Sukhna (Bersheh, Beni Hasan). The wealth accumulated by such potentates can be measured by the extraordinary tombs, almost royal in scale, they built for themselves in provinces considered as ‘gateways’ into Egypt. So, rulers with vested interests in foreign trade might use their influence at court to shape Egypt’s foreign policy. The implications are considerable. Whenever taxes and contributions filled the coffers of the king, this flow of wealth had the potential to induce undesirable and, in the long term, dangerous effects for the stability of the whole system. Corruption, the appropriation of taxes and/or illegitimate seizure of state income, tax exemptions to institutions and individuals, not to mention insufficient taxation, were all sources of destabilization in the balance of power between regions, between the palace and the provinces and between different sectors of the elite. And not only because these practices limited the resources and income at the disposal of the monarchy, but also because they could easily crystallize into the excessive accumulation of wealth in private hands and lead to the emergence of other potential foci of power.
Ultimately, then, tax collection appears to be less a technical issue than a political one. Hence, many officials boasted about their efficacy as tax collectors in comparison to their peers or predecessors: when Weni was appointed Overseer of Upper Egypt, for example, he claimed to have levied twice as much taxation revenue as had been usual before his time, while an official proclaimed on the stela he erected at Bilgai that:
I am an effective official for his lord, fulfilling harvest and tax obligations, (such that) my excess of harvest and taxes was ten times greater than my assessment of harvest and taxes: 4632 amphorae of wine was [my] quota of people’s labor, (but) I had them (the amphorae) delivered as 30,000, an excess of 25,638. Nedjem, who used to be high steward, did not [approach (?)] me at all in any task which I undertook: 70 amphorae of honey was my assessment of honey, – I delivered them (the amphorae) as 700, [an excess] of 630; 70,000 [sacks] of grain was my yearly harvest assessment, – I delivered them (the sacks) as 140,000, an excess of 70,000. [Frood 2007: 180]
The bombastic tone aside, these examples are typical of the scribal culture and of the topos of the efficient official, and suggest that the amount of taxes levied depended on the zeal of officials, on political considerations and on specific needs of the monarchy (such as war, exceptional building programmes or buying political support from powerful factions and potentates). Such claims could also indicate that the evaluation of the wealth and resources of the kingdom was rather rudimentary (workforces being perhaps an exception): rather than carefully checking and updating lists of resources and taxes, tax collectors might have considered ‘local potentialities’ that could be exploited at a variable rate depending on individual circumstances, negotiation tactics, or even the resistance of local leaders. This may explain why ‘assessments’ and ‘quotas’ figure so prominently in the documentary record, as if they represented an acceptable minimum susceptible of expansion in case of need.
Other evidence supports the idea of a certain fiscal unpredictability. Royal decrees tried to put an end to illegitimate seizures of goods, especially the illegal diversion of revenue and resources – such as temple land or private funerary foundations – that had been granted previously to an institution or an individual. The enactment of consecutive decrees, seeking to enforce or to confirm previously issued rulings, reveals that the actual implementation of royal orders was difficult, especially given the absence of ‘laws’ that might provide clear, normative guides for bureaucrats’ everyday activities and competences. In other cases, privileges favoured certain institutions with temporary tax exemption. Inefficient allocation and mobilization of resources also hampered the redistributive capacity of the crown, as revealed by one of the earliest known letters ever, which complained about the non-delivery of equipment promised to a team of workers. Similar concerns affected the community of craftsmen and artists at Deir el-Medina, when delays in the delivery of the rations by the administrative powers- that-be provoked strikes and interruptions to work. Both cases reveal the limitations of the administrative system, because conflicts erupted in the vicinity of the capital (Memphis and Thebes) and the vizier himself was addressed directly by the workers and their foremen.
Another problem related to the fiscal capacity of the monarchy is the emergence of a ‘middle class’ in some periods of Egyptian history. The end of the third and the early second millennium BC was one of them. On the one hand, archaeology reveals the existence of houses owned by moderately wealthy people, equipped with storage facilities (such as silos) whose capacity exceeded the needs of a nuclear family. On the other hand, some owners of high-quality possessions (inscribed stelae, decorated coffins, statues, etc.) were not members of the royal staff and the administration, but had managed to obtain them despite being outside the circuits of rewards and remunerations granted by the king and traditionally reserved for officials. Furthermore (and as noted in Chapter 2), the frequency of the title ‘lady of the house’ and the abundant use of seals by women suggest that some ladies developed their own business in a period when texts mention an increasing use of sealed documents in private transactions. Seals of this type from Abu Ghalib, a settlement in the Western Delta, reveal domestic activities, probably developed by women, connected to the storage of grain in houses, sealing boxes and, in some cases, papyri, and probably textile production, judging from the spinning bowls also found at this site. Another element highly celebrated in the sources of this period is the importance of patronage networks; these provided resources and protection and helped connect diverse social groups without any intervention of the royal administration. Heqanakhte, a prosperous tenant from the early second millennium BC, is a good example of such a ‘middle class’ and of the economic basis of its prosperity. The letters he addressed to his subordinates contain very precise instructions about the management of his land and the allocation of resources to members of his household. What emerges from them is that his agricultural choices were guided by purely private interests, as he sought to obtain the best possible returns. Moreover, his strategies of leasing land from wealthy neighbours, and lending grain to many people near where he lived, show that he used his wealth to create a network of social relations in which he reinforced his status as neighbourhood patron and member of a local sub-elite. So how should we interpret the emergence of this ‘middle class’? One possibility is that the concentration of wealth in private hands, when fluvial trade and intense commercial activities between Nubia and the Mediterranean flourished, was possible because the crown was less efficient at capturing and taxing such wealth than it had been previously. The political consequences are obvious, as indicated by the enormous tombs built around 1950–1850 BC by some provincial officials who controlled foreign commerce: these massive constructions suggest the bureaucrats’ astonishing capacity to hang on to substantial wealth for their own advantage. Their power, and capacity to influence the affairs of the kingdom (including control over precious commodities, such as myrrh), reveal the limits of a monarchy that finally crumbled just a few decades later. The emergence of rich and powerful provincial potentates, thanks to their control of flows of wealth that had (apparently) escaped the monarchy, had an enormous political impact in the end, as it contributed to the collapse of the state and of the monarchy itself.
Another point to consider is the impact of taxation on promoting economic activity. State employees received rations and, judging from inscriptions found in quarries, these rations (which could be viewed as salaries) may have represented a considerable source of income for a substantial part of the population. Furthermore, it is also possible that this type of redistributed wealth stimulated economic activities in areas where garrisons and trade hubs had been founded by the crown. Marked storage vessels – that is, items bearing the marks of the institutions that delivered them – found at political and economic centres from 2000– 1800 BC (Lisht/Itj-tawy, Dahshur, Hawara and Karnak) and in peripheral areas (harbours, quarries, fortresses and caravan centres such as Abu Ziyar, Ayn Sukhna, Mersa/Wadi Gawasis, Askut, Qasr el-Sagha and Gebel el-Asr) show the importance of storage jars in the government’s distribution of supplies across a steadily expanding territory, and that those supplies facilitated a diversification of economic interests. As for the huge Egyptian containers found in Nubian settlements in the early second millennium BC, these reveal the fluidity of trade between the pastoral populations of northern Nubia and Egypt, which are barely documented at all in the written records. In the case of the Egyptian fortresses built in Nubia during this period, the substantial settlements that grew outside their walls (and the protection they provided) suggest that trade was the main reason for the construction of such substantial buildings, as some papyri and inscriptions from this region confirm. The economic centres built by the crown in the late third millennium BC (like the hwt) played a similar role. An inscribed dish from Elephantine mentions a hwt governor who delivered foodstuffs to the agents of the crown sent from the palace but, at the same time, who also delivered rations to a considerable number of female weavers, as if the hwt were involved not only in grain and cattle production but also in the production of textiles. In fact, expeditions – and the organization of their logistics – probably favoured business. …
… Finally, the conquest of foreign territories was accompanied by the imposition of tribute in the form of taxes and prestige items (slaves, cattle, horses, cereals, metals, timber, ivory, chariots, etc.). Harbours and supply hubs would also be used to provision armies, messengers, diplomats and Egyptian officials in transit. So, local resources were evaluated and taxed, as was the case for the farms founded in the Jezreel Valley, which produced 207,300 sacks of wheat (probably per year). Workers also arrived into Egypt as tribute – and as prisoners. Settled in temples as weavers and on the land as peasants, they contributed to the expansion of cereal production and cattle raising, thereby increasing the sanctuaries’ income (partly in grain, partly in silver). The Harris I Papyrus, for example, records that only a part of the taxes paid by cultivators to the temples amounted to the considerable sum of a ton of silver. That enormous quantities of precious metals thus stored ‘unproductively’ in temples and tombs were occasionally robbed and ‘laundered’, thanks to the complicity of their own personnel and merchants, constitutes indirect proof of the role played by markets, tribute and precious metals stored in temples as incentives of economic activities.
State expenditure
It seems improbable that the royal administration promoted a large- scale policy of hydraulic works (canals, dams, etc.) in order to improve and extend irrigated areas. The surviving evidence refers occasionally to the excavation of canals, especially for transport purposes. However, the Ramesside Wilbour Papyrus, and its detailed description of more than 2,500 plots of land and their boundary marks in the Fayum and the adjacent areas to the south, hardly mentions any canals among them. As for the redistribution policy usually credited to pharaohs, there is no real proof for it, other than rhetorical claims about the delivery of food to people in periods of shortage. In fact, the state delivered food only in exchange for work and activities it had ordered. It seems thus that the main expenditures were on court provisions, followed by the remuneration owed to officials and administrators. In some cases, particularly during the third millennium BC, the resources allocated to the ‘children of the king’ (a phrase which could apply not only to the children of reigning kings but also to offspring of the wider royal family) were managed by a specific administrative office, and it seems that their property was scattered across different provinces. Furthermore, the royal palace consumed great quantities of foodstuffs and commodities, as the bakery papyri from the reign of Seti I or the St Petersburg Papyrus 1116A, with its accounts of deliveries to the granaries of the palace, reveal.
Few documents describe the scale of regular remunerations paid to scribes and agents of the administration. Officials in the service of the king were usually rewarded with land, manpower, and ‘houses’, benefits that could be confiscated easily in the case of any subsequent serious misconduct. The formula ‘(his) house, field, people and all property’ and its variants described such grants, yet the ownership of entire villages was thus transferred. One of the most informative sources is a rock inscription from the Middle Kingdom carved at Wadi Hammamat (around 1950 BC). It reveals the following proportion of income: Chief of expedition – 200 loaves of bread;‘mayors’, the head of a team of stonemasons, and chiefs of Tens of Upper Egypt (a category of high-ranking officials in charge of manpower, usually connected to the royal family) – 100; Overseer of the Great Council, Overseer of the Treasury – fifty; scribes and middle-rank officials – thirty; craftsmen – twenty; seal bearers, warriors – fifteen; conscript workers – ten (Ezzamel 2012: 248–70). An administrative papyrus composed about 200 years later (Boulaq Papyrus 18) records the daily allowances of the members of the royal family and of senior officials associated with the court. The allotments included twenty loaves for the king’s wife and the chiefs of Tens of Upper Egypt, ten loaves for high- ranking officials and for each of the king’s children, and five loaves for mid-ranking officials. According to this papyrus, the ruling elite that ran the country during this period comprised a rather reduced number of people (about thirty), all connected through marriage links and with the extended royal family. In any case, the ratio seems quite similar in both documents: members of the highest elite (including the royal family) received about twice as much income as the most senior officials and four times more than middle- rank administrators. The ratio is quite similar to that described in the annual levy of oxen delivered to a sanctuary at Heracleopolis: high-ranking officials handed over ten oxen (but the General of Heracleopolis gave sixty), high priests and administrators of the temple between six and ten, two assistants of the general eight each, two administrators of a fortress gave five and six respectively, while twenty-five localities handed over between one and four oxen. Finally, some collectives of specialized workers (copper-smiths, gardeners, military personnel, stonemasons, potters, builders, etc.) handed over an ox each. Land was another source of wealth, and it was not unusual for the elite to receive extensive land assets from the king (Ibi, governor of Deir el- Gebrawy: 55.9 ha; Mentuhotep, High-Steward of Amenhotep III, transferred 118.5 ha of land to a statue of the king, but 60.6 ha had been given previously to Mentuhotep by the pharaoh. Setting aside extraordinary rewards, royal gifts, etc., we can gather that the state paid off standard salaries according to a well-defined hierarchy of revenue. Judging from some comparative evidence analysed by Scheidel (in a study on Han China and the second century ad Roman empire), the state spent roughly about 15 per cent of its annual revenue in salaries paid to civil servants.
Military expenses were limited until the second half of the second millennium BC. Until then, permanent forces seem rather limited and armies mostly consisted of expeditionary forces recruited as required or, as was the case in the early second millennium BC, for the construction of an exceptional chain of fortresses in Nubia (some of which were used only seasonally) supported by garrisons. However, changes in warfare and weaponry from 1550 BC, as well as repeated military campaigns and confrontations with other major powers of the Near East, meant that substantial resources were now employed in metal-based activities, such as production of war chariots and swords, not to mention of a fleet of warships. Maintaining a cavalry force also required abundant pasture areas (at least 7.5 ha for a pair of horses, according to Ramesside documents) as well as specialists and the provision of special types of hard wood that would be used in the manufacture of chariot parts. Judging from Late Bronze Age documents, soldiers and veterans – including foreign mercenaries – were paid with land, and military colonies were founded in areas like Fayum. These activities certainly had a considerable impact in the organization of crafts, the supply of raw materials, etc., and it is perfectly possible that they involved not only state-sponsored workshops but also skilled ‘independent’ craftsmen, from leather-workers to metalworkers and shipbuilders. Papyri from the early second millennium BC record administrative orders regarding the shipment of wood and other materials to the dockyard of Coptos, along with 3,756 workers, in order to build a fleet on the shore of the Red Sea. Unexpected requests from military personnel on assignment were a concern that emerges in documents from different periods. The burden of military expenses grew in the first millennium BC, particularly when kings recruited thousands of mercenaries and built war fleets to lead operations in the Mediterranean. While grants of land served to remunerate military personnel, grain exports probably also helped secure the resources needed to finance these activities.
In both cases (remuneration of military personnel and administrators), temples were crucial providers of income for the agents of the state, including (but not limited to) priests. So, some state expenditure was diverted to autonomous institutions, especially when remunerations and salaries consisted mainly of land. The various uses of temple land – from plots attached to a royal statue to a mix of land and prebends, and so on – cast some light on the complex relations between the monarchy and the sanctuaries. A good example of direct allotments of land appears in the inscriptions of Ahmose, son of Ebana, a veteran who fought under the first kings of the New Kingdom and whose deeds were rewarded with slaves (nine men and ten women cited in his tomb) and extensive estates: two of five arouras (1 aroura = 0.27 ha) in his home city of Elkab, and sixty arouras near Hadja. Plots of land of this type would remain in the hands of his descendants for generations. Mose’s inscription traces the history of one such land grant, awarded by Ahmose to Mose’s ancestor, the ship-master Neshi, veteran of the wars against the Hyksos, and the litigation that ensued among his heirs over the control of the undivided estate down to the reign of Ramesses II. In other cases soldiers were granted similar plots of land, as in the case of the Wilbour Papyrus, when smallholders of all occupations cultivated heritable plots on temple land, typically three or five arouras in size. Officials and cultivators also obtained temple land as rewards, not as salaries, and this particular category of fields fell under the supervision of the vizier. Finally, temples also received land from individuals: Berlin Papyrus 3047, a lawsuit from the reign of Ramesses II, details the transfer of privately held land to the management of a temple. According to this document, a certain Neferabet was the representative of a group of co-heirs that held an estate of more than 140 arouras, and he transferred it to the temple of the goddess Mut in what appears not as a transaction between two private parties but rather a transfer of shares to temple management for the benefit of both the temple of Mut and Neferabet himself. With the transfer, Neferabet could obtain a good income from the property as an absentee landlord while safeguarding the land by establishing a ‘tie of dependence’ with the temple (the managing institution). In this way, both parties obtained income under advantageous conditions. Penniut, a leading official in Nubia, made an endowment for a statue of King Ramesses VI. The text in his tomb enumerates the fields rented to endow the statue-cult, the total surface of which amounted to 4.1 ha. Furthermore, Penniut added another parcel of land of 1.65 ha from his own property to ensure provision of a regular sacrifice. In return, he was rewarded with a symbolic gift of two silver vessels of unguent, in what appears as a strategy to strengthen his contacts with the pharaoh.
Another substantial area of state expenses lay in building and maintaining fortresses as well as organizing the logistics for expeditions sent to quarries, mines, harbours, the desert areas, etc. (for the construction of wells, approach roads, diverse types of facilities and so on). The impact of these activities on state expenditure was probably considerable for many ordinary Egyptians, at least in periods of centralization of power, but had nothing to do with the alleged redistribution economy so often ascribed to the pharaonic monarchy. Expeditions to quarries gathered in some cases up to 20,000 men, mostly villagers and conscript workers who received salaries (rations) in exchange for their work. However, this service also deprived their households of the main breadwinner during their period of duty – if they returned at all. Not by chance, officials heading up expeditions boasted about returning with no losses when, in reality, losses could be rather significant, up to 10 per cent of the total contingent in the reign of Ramesses IV. This may explain why prisoners and soldiers were employed in strenuous work, such as extracting minerals or clearing scrubland so that it could be cultivated. It seems that one man in a hundred could be mobilized for military service in the Middle Kingdom, but that number went up to one in ten during the reign of Ramesses III. The organization of conscripts in groups of tens might explain the title of the official known as the Great of Tens of Upper Egypt (mentioned briefly above), who would be involved in the recruitment of men for expeditions, both military and ‘civil’. Work camps and workers’ ‘towns’ discovered at several sites, and dating from different periods, attest to the importance of this system and to the logistics necessary to feed, equip, accommodate and transport substantial numbers of people.
What was the cost and the economic impact of building projects? Scheidel estimates that it rose to about 13 per cent of the annual ‘budget’ of the Roman Empire in the first centuries AD. In the case of ancient Egypt, however, it is much more difficult to calculate. Leaving aside the logistics needed in the provision of building materials (bricks, blocks of stone, etc.) and equipment, such programmes certainly had an impact on the economic life of towns and cities: they provided jobs, promoted craftsmanship and opened up opportunities for specialized activities (collecting firewood, making ropes and leather, etc.). The use of compulsory workers supplied by towns and settlements is well attested, as is the foundation of settlements like Deir el-Medina, the village that hosted the artisans (nearly 120) who built and decorated the royal tombs of the New Kingdom and who were paid and supplied by the state. However, as of the third millennium BC, artisans also satisfied a private demand for luxury items in exchange for wages, when officials boasted about paying out of their own pockets for the artisans who built their tombs.A late third millennium BC carpenter from Akhmim, for instance, declared that he had manufactured 180 coffins for the people of his province. So it seems rather probable that the great building programmes also engaged artisans, specialists, skilled and seasonal workers, etc., who worked for wages and not as part of a workforce employed exclusively by institutions. As metals were used to pay craftsmen, the huge amounts of precious metals brought as tribute into Egypt may have contributed towards the financing of building programmes and stimulated the economic life of towns. Furthermore, imperial expansion from 1500 BC onwards also boosted the workforce (via prisoners of war, tribute, slaves, specialists) by at least 150,000 people, who were then assigned to temples and put to work cultivating large tracts of land and producing textiles. These workers facilitated the expansion of a system of agricultural production based on workers attached to the fields in which they laboured and who delivered fixed quotas of grain (15,360 litres of grain per year) from standard plots (5.5 ha). This system declined at the beginning of the first millennium BC, when the empire collapsed. Thanks to their increased economic capacities, temples became great consumers and their expenditures stimulated specialized agricultural and craft activities in their local areas.
A final word concerns an indirect source of ‘expenditure’: corruption. Documents such as those outlining the so-called ‘Elephantine scandal’ describe the theft of just over 5,000 sacks of grain from the temple of Elephantine, over a period of several years, by a captain of a ship employed by this institution and assisted in his nefarious activities by its priests. In other cases, corruption consisted of the annexation of state land, as in the example described in Rylands Papyrus 9, whereby the priests of a provincial temple illegally seized part of the crown land on a Nile island including cultivable land, woodland and sandy areas. Abuses of authority by officials inspired literary works such as The Eloquent Peasant, while bribery helped ‘buy’ support in feuds and lawsuits. In other instances, soldiers and state personnel requested extra workers, private or temple property or whatever they needed through requisitions, appropriation or basic theft. The edicts of Dahshur of Pepi I, Nauri or Horemheb are good examples of these practices. The other side of these practices is that people might use them against their opponents, as was the case in the affair of the robbery of the royal tombs, when one faction accused the other of being involved in the plundering of tombs. However, high-ranking officials often came out well from these situations, even when they had appeared in court. A letter from the late third millennium BC shows the disappointment of two Elephantine dignitaries about the behaviour of a senior official who had committed robbery, because he was not ‘one who is living off his own possessions’, and yet who came through the trial unscathed. While the burden on the state is impossible to evaluate, these cases nonetheless show that any claim about thorough bureaucratic control over the wealth of the country was more ideal than real. We receive the impression that both the taxation system and tax records were less than rigorous, and left ample room for corruption of all types and for officials’ personal enrichment through ‘illegal’ practices. As the protagonist of The Teaching of Amenemope (a scribe and overseer of fields and grain in the Ramesside period) exhorted:
do not move the markers on the borders of fields, nor shift the position of the measuring-cord. Do not be greedy for a cubit of land, nor encroach on the boundaries of a widow . . . do not move the scales, nor alter the weights nor diminish the fractions of the measure. Do not desire a measure of the fields, nor neglect those of the treasury . . . beware of disguising the measure, so as to falsify its fractions. Do not force it to overflow, nor let its belly be empty. Measure according to its true size, your hand clearing exactly. Do not make a bushel of twice its size [. . .] Do not accept a farmer’s dues and then assess him so as to injure him. Do not conspire with the measurer, so as to defraud the share of the (royal) Residence.
It seems that the state sometimes resorted to these extreme measures. Thus the robbery of royal tombs and temples at the end of the second millennium BC seems to represent exceptional circumstances (a rebellion in Nubia) that demanded extra income in order to raise an army. [END]
The Source:
Juan Carlos Moreno García, The State in Ancient Egypt: Power, Challenges and Dynamics, Bloomsbury Academic, 2020
Evolutions of social order from the earliest humans to the present day and future machine age.