A.B.C., by Fernand Leger (Date: 1927)
Economy, writing, and administration
[Dict. In the Neolithic period farm animals were first domesticated, and agriculture was introduced. It began in the Near East by the 8th millennium BC and spread to northern Europe by the 4th millennium BC. Neolithic societies in northwestern Europe left such monuments as henges, long barrows, chamber tombs, and settlements inside concentric ditches spanned by causeways.]
Extract from: Prehistoric Egypt, by Christiana Köhler, in The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East (2021)
… Neolithic agricultural villagers living along the Nile would have produced primarily for their own subsistence. But the Chalcolithic period saw a significant change in economic organization, probably triggered by increased population size, craft specialization, and an increased demand for various commodities in the funerary sphere. This is demonstrated very well by the furnishings of elite tombs … These tombs contained a wide range and significant quantity of goods…
These were acquired via intensive interregional and long-distance trade and exchange networks radiating out from the commercial centers where the manufacturing industries and elites were based.
As the funerary culture of southern Egypt became a vehicle for the expression of social distinction, there are grounds for assuming that the elites took an active interest in supporting and controlling craft industries and the flow of goods within and beyond their territories. The purchasing power for the acquisition of these commodities was provided by accumulated wealth in agricultural products and livestock as well as any revenue generated by industrial production, trade, and the exertion of political leverage over economic partners and rivals. Local elites would have eventually steered the economy toward their own political ends, a system of political economy that laid the foundations for the later pharaonic state economy.
This system was facilitated by an emerging tool that allowed political leaders, or chiefs, to control production and distribution: hieroglyphic writing.
The beginnings of the idea of writing probably date to ca. 3300/3400 bc, as shown by cylinder seals and clay sealings. It is very possible that long-distance trade with the Levant and Mesopotamia played a role in this phenomenon. …
Generally speaking, the earliest written records in Egypt can be found in economic and administrative contexts and served as a means of communication over long distances as well as in the documentation and monitoring of commodities. All of this implies the existence of administrative personnel in charge of these activities.
When writing first appeared, there probably were a number of polities with commercial centers along the river that engaged in intensive interregional exchange, long-distance trade, and peer-polity competition.
All of these required dependable communication, and it is probably in this context that the administrative system was first developed.
Soon after the appearance of cylinder seals and sealed commodities, other writing media were explored. The range of these is still best illustrated by the contents of a large tomb at Abydos dating to ca. 3250 BC … Tomb U-j probably belonged to a powerful ruler and descendant of a group of Abydene elites …
This tomb contained large numbers of Egyptian pottery and stone vessels. In addition, it contained various imported goods, such as obsidian, cedar wood, and turquoise, and several hundred imported ceramic wine jars from as far afield as northern Lebanon. It appears that these jars were inspected and sealed on arrival in Egypt, as the clay sealings, upon which cylinder seals with geometric and figural designs were impressed, were made of local Nile silt.
In addition, large quantities of tiny bone tags with holes for attachment to containers of commodities, possibly textiles, were recovered … the quantity of these goods mattered and was therefore recorded … some of the ink signs as the personal names of rulers and the inscriptions as references to their agricultural estates. …
… The evidence from Tomb U-j thus suggests that by ca. 3250 BC Abydos elites had access to a wide-ranging trade network that dealt in manufactured goods of both local Egyptian and Levantine origin. In addition, these elites engaged in administrative transactions involving the quantification and recording of commodities. Similar, contemporary evidence, especially cylinder seals and sealings, has been found at other sites such as Naqada in the south and Zawyet el-Aryan and Helwan in the northern Nile valley, pointing to the existence of comparable administrative institutions in different parts of the country at this time.
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