Administration

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On ancient
institutions and sources

Economy and estate	Kingship	Administration - the vizier	Treasury
Fields	Granary	Labour	Temple

What we do
not know: the redistribution question

It is often
assumed that the Ancient Egyptian economy operated as a centralised unit in
which the king/centre collected and redistributed national resources.

Specifically,
many accounts of the Ancient Egyptian economy take at face value ancient written
statements that the king was lord (interpreted as owner) of the land.

Modern commentators
also often assert that there were kingly monopolies on economic operations,
such as foreign trade.

• Are such statements ideological?
  Or do they reflect a juridical reality?
• How does the archaeology of local
  wealth square with a formal image of central control and redistribution?
• If there was a mixed economy of
  central/state/public and local/personal/private, how large was each sector?
• Can we use modern economic terminology
  for an ancient economy? If we cannot use public/private, for example, how
  can we describe ancient economies?

Economy
and estate

• Egyptian word pr �house� with
  different meanings, notably �living-space� and �estate� (lands regularly producing
  resources for those in the living-space)
• These two different meanings encourage
  a tripartite division of the �house� (applicable to the wider economy) into
  (1) living-quarters with luxury items and place for consumption of commodities
  converted into meals, (2) food-producing area where commodities are converted
  into meals (broadly equivalent to a �kitchen area�), (3) fields for crops
  and herds (can be scattered across regions)

seal of the 'house official Sebef' Sebef might have been responsible for a private estate of a high official

Kingship

• King is son of the sun-god � mortal
  life-span, human form, divine essence
• King corresponds to supreme executive
  and judicial authority
• Egypt is an early state not a
  modern state: it corresponds to a single political unit covering speakers
  of one language, Ancient Egyptian, and has relatively clearly defined borders
  BUT it does not show a modern-style separation of powers (judiciary, executive,
  military, religious, administrative) � some authors prefer to avoid the word
  �state� and use the word �kingship� instead to emphasise the lack of separation
  between these aspects of rule

Administration

• Egyptian title for head of administration
  is TAty conventionally translated �vizier� in Egyptology
• Inscription in four New Kingdom
  (about 1550-1069 BC) tombs of viziers records �Duties
  of Vizier�
• Principal role is co-ordinator
  of sectors, of labour deployment
• Prominence of bureaucratic dimension
  (title �scribe� equivalent to �accountant�)

the title TAty on a relief (click on the picture to see the whole relief) viziers on Digital Egypt: Nefermaat, (Nebsum)nu, Panehesy

Treasury

• Egyptian term equivalent to �treasury�
  is pr-HD, literally �White House�, attested from the Early Dynastic (about
  3000 BC)
• Top official for treasury is �overseer
  of sealed items� (usually rendered �treasurer�), or in some periods �overseer
  of the White House�

seals with title 'treasurer' (imi-rA xtmt) and the name of the treasurer (snb-sw-ma - left; HAr - right)

• Treasury covers all commodities,
  but there is a focus on the more precious �sealed� items (items �sealed�,
  locked away, because of their value)
• Note our incomplete knowledge
  of relation between administration of luxury items and administration of staples
  � compare separation of house=estate and house=living-quarters, above

Fields

• The agricultural cycle revolves
  around the harvest of barley and, to a lesser extent, emmer wheat, with harvest
  in spring/early summer
• Harvest is crisis time in agricultural
  economies, mobilizing all available labour: fields administration is partly
  about calculating revenue before or after harvest, and partly about mobilizing
  labour
• The title �Overseer of fields�
  is among higher titles at some periods (Middle Kingdom (about 2025-1700 BC))

seal of the Royal sealer and overseer of fields Ankhu.

• There is little evidence for central
  state interest in maintaining fields or irrigation networks: the central state
  becomes involved at the collection of revenue
• The juridical status of lands
  is uncertain, so the collection of revenue may be either rent or levy: the
  levy seems more a sporadic call for resources than a regular annual levy in
  the style of a modern tax

Granary

Grain is main currency, making the granary a principal bank The title �Overseer of the Granary� (often �Double Granary� � double to denote the national as opposed to local reach of the title) is prominent in some periods, not in others; at all periods administration of grain resources is crucial, given the variations in the height of the river Nile in its annual cycle of flood and low water

Institutions
attested in some periods, not in others

Labour

• Middle Kingdom (about 2025-1700 BC) sources refer to
  a �Bureau for labour deployment� (xA n dd rmT): this is not identifiable in
  other periods, and may relate to a stricter regime of �national service� in
  this period
• Middle Kingdom sources include
  �census� documents, headed wpwt �breakdown (of persons in a house-unit/estate)�:
  other lists of �houses� and of households are preserved from the late New
  Kingdom (about 1550-1069 BC) (list of �houses� on the West Bank at Thebes)
  and Ptolemaic Period (for example, demotic and Greek lists of names and professions,
  from Rifeh in Middle Egypt, third century
  BC)

Temple

• Egyptian religion allotted sacred
  space to three types of being: gods, kings, and the blessed dead (broadly
  speaking, recent generations of dead in the family)
• Before New Kingdom, temples of
  gods, as opposed to those of kings, are not prominent in administration
• From the New Kingdom on, main
  temple in each city is a substantial architectural complex with large enclosure
  wall, making it an ideal secure store for large quantities of grain as well
  as for high-value commodities: the temple of Amun-Ra
  at Karnak (ancient Thebes) acts as a kind of holding bank for the state
• Note that there is no clear state-temple
  opposition or tension, even in the later periods when temple architecture
  is most impressive: much modern writing about Egypt assumes such an opposition,
  with alleged �priestly� control of resources, but (1) the relations between
  kingship, institutions, estates remain complex and only partly understood,
  (2) the elite is not easily divisible into separate sections such as military,
  temple priesthood (so-called �clergy�), bureaucracy � instead, the surviving
  sources attest to the same elite families across these sectors, and at least
  a theoretical central control of appointments. In the old theory of state-temple
  opposition, it was assumed that the Amun-Ra priests took control of Thebes
  at the end of the New Kingdom: postwar research has tended to show that the
  New Kingdom ended with the rise of, not priests, but generals, of western
  desert nomadic origin (�Libyans�)

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