Government and Bureaucracy
The pharaoh was supreme overlord of Egypt. In his
name the administration controlled the lives of the populace and the
court and ordered the economy. There was a strictly organized
hierarchy directed from the offices of the royal residence; under
this, local governors supervised the bureaucracy of each
administrative district.
At the central level there were departments of granaries, agriculture and farming, and building works, as well as the army, ships, frontiers, trading expeditions, foreign relations, justice, prisons, and health. Temples and wealthy landowners also had their own administrations, which were sometimes independent but at other times came under direct government control. The arrangements were generally complicated and involved the lives of many people since most holders of offices in the system were employed either by the state or the temples. Even in the Archaic Period some centralized departments had already been established at Memphis, the new capital city. These included the administration, judiciary, and foreign trade and also the treasuries of the Two Lands (named the White House and Red House), which collected and redistributed the national revenue. These departments were probably already connected to the provincial administration, and the two levels addressed the problems of governing a country that included settled urbanized and closely organized communities as well as more loosely structured agricultural units. In the Old Kingdom pyramid building had required the existence of a fully supportive, highly organized bureaucracy, and consequently a very centralized government emerged. This subsequently broke down, and in the Middle Kingdom a new system was introduced by the rulers of Dynasty 12 who usurped the throne. By the New Kingdom the establishment of a permanent army and an empire, as well as greatly expanded temple estates, resulted in many changes in the administration of the country. It was this bureaucratic system that enabled civilization to flourish in Egypt. A complex society emerged with well-developed institutions and a king as the central figure who represented divine rulership and embodied the state. He was assisted by a group of deputies who headed the administration, the army, and the priesthood. They were paid large salaries, and they received rent from the land and royal gifts in addition to a share of the temple revenue at certain periods and the gift of a tomb from the king. The administration was headed by the vizier (tjaty), who was usually appointed from the ranks of the scribes. His job was to advise the king from whom he directly received his orders. As head of the judiciary and with responsibility for the whole administration, his powers were extensive. At some periods there were two viziers to serve the northern and southern parts of Egypt, and the office of vizier was in place from Dynasty 4 until the fourth century BC. There were many minor officials below the top ranks including scribes, priests, and artisans. These were the retainers of the upper classes; they were paid in kind and were fairly affluent. Below them were the peasants. They had worked on the land and had also probably been part of the labor gangs at building sites in the Old Kingdom. By the Middle Kingdom the peasantry included not only native Egyptians but also some prisoners of war. All the peasants were liable to corvĂ©e duty; they worked in the fields, on building sites, in the workshops, mines, and quarries; in early times they were also obliged to fight as soldiers for their overlords. Their lives were organized by the office to which they were attached the state administration, temple, or private individual and their work was essential to the state. The extent to which some of the peasants were slaves in the modern sense is unclear. The government, the temples, or wealthy individuals seem to have “owned” some workers in that they had the right to buy, sell, bequeath, or emancipate them. However, slaves could also own land and possessions and sell or bequeath them as they wished; they could also marry freeborn women and employ servants. Therefore, the concept of a slave as someone who is totally owned by another did not exist in ancient Egypt. Even the kind of slave labor that did exist was not a major factor in the economy, and early projects requiring large scale labor, such as the Old Kingdom pyramids, would have been built by native serfs rather than slaves. The government was upheld by a police force basically employed to protect the weak against the strong. The police had local responsibilities to guard the farmers against theft and attack and to expel troublemakers from the community; they were also expected to use persuasion and even physical force to ensure that the peasants paid their taxes. Other groups patrolled the east and west frontiers of Egypt or sought out and returned escaped slaves and prisoners to their captors. The police were not part of the army. In Dynasty 18 a special group was established in the force when the Medjay (nomads from the Nubian desert) were enrolled and became a very effective law enforcement branch. The government was supported by the treasury and by trade. The main export trade was a royal government monopoly, and the king protected the state’s interests by imposing customs duties at Egypt’s frontiers. Access for foreign merchants was probably strictly limited, and when they were permitted to enter the country they were controlled by the government and sometimes confined to their own cities within Egypt. Taxation was heavy and could be administered universally because an elaborate bureaucracy was in place. The districts paid some taxes to the Crown in gold, and this was used for subsidies in foreign diplomacy and for paying the salaries of government ministers. However, the state’s most important duty was to pay its many officials, and to build up a food stock for the times of famine. The economy was based on a barter system, and the taxation procedure rested on a regular census of the fields, herds, and gold that was undertaken from the Old Kingdom onward. Each year for the agricultural census officials were sent out to measure the arable area and to compile a list of the institutions and private owners who held the land. This enabled them to estimate the year’s crop and the probable tax that it would yield; once the crops had begun to grow other inspectors would return to make a final tax assessment. .
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Laws and Punishment
Compared with other ancient civilizations Egyptian law has yielded little evidence of its institutions. It was, however, clearly governed by religious principles: Law was believed to have been handed down to mankind by the gods on the First Occasion (the moment of creation), and the gods were held responsible for establishing and perpetuating the law, which was personified by the goddess Ma’at. She represented truth, righteousness, and justice and maintained the correct balance and order of the universe. Theoretically the godking was the sole legislator with power of life and death over his subjects, but in reality his freedom in legal matters, as in other areas, was determined by precedent. As chief official of the judiciary the king was a priest of Ma’at, and the vizier, as the king’s delegate, was head of the courts of justice. Officials of the judiciary were also priests of Ma’at. Inscriptions in tombs and on stelae and papyri, which provide the earliest extant legal transactions, can be dated to the Old Kingdom. They indicate that the legal system was well developed by this date and suggest that there must have been a long period of experimentation beforehand. Egyptian law ranks with Sumerian as the world’s oldest surviving legal system, and its complexity and state of development are on a level with ancient Greek and medieval law. In general there are many transactions that deal with funerary property. Although the king had absolute rights over his subjects and their property, in practice there was private as well as royal law, and property was often dealt with through private legal transactions. There was no formal law code (such as the Code of Hammurabi in Babylon), and cases were largely decided on precedent. The laws were generally humane (more than those of other ancient societies), and they controlled and regulated an essentially law-abiding society. Men and women of all classes were treated equally, and there was great emphasis on protection of the family within the society. The punishments were generally severe, and there was a complex system of procedure within the law courts. Some evidence still exists of legal transactions during the Old and Middle Kingdoms, but most information derives from the New Kingdom. Major changes were introduced under the Ptolemies and Romans. Ownership and transfer of property were the subject of either Crown or private transactions. In ownership cases, the original owner drew up a special document setting out the terms of the transfer, which was then passed to the new owner. This document was witnessed by three persons, and then the papyrus was rolled up and sealed by a high official. These were usually prepared for houses and other valuable possessions; wills in the modern sense were unknown, but a person could leave a transfer document to pass on, at his death, a valuable item to someone else. Special arrangements were made to protect the provisioning of the tomb. Because family commitments to bring food offerings to the tomb were often neglected, a legal arrangement existed which provided an “insurance policy” against this omission. The tomb owner would set up an “eternal property” from a profit-bearing part of his estate. From this, a selected special priest (ka servant) would receive a perpetual income in exchange for a legal agreement to place offerings at the tomb. When the priest died his heirs would inherit his income and this obligation. Even this arrangement was not entirely satisfactory, however, and the offerings would lapse, so the tomb owner also resorted to magic and provided his tomb with wall scenes and models depicting food in addition to an inscribed menu. The legal system operated through the law courts, although it was possible to reach private agreements. There were two types of court: the local courts (kenbet) included local dignitaries under a chairman and they dealt with most cases; the High Court sat at the capital under the vizier and tried serious cases, particularly those entailing capital punishment. The courts admitted and considered all kinds of evidence, which was studied by the judges, but a case did not end with the judgment: It had to be followed by a declaration of submission by the defeated party. Documentary evidence (particularly tax rolls in deciding ownership cases) was often used. A change that was introduced in Dynasty 19 marked a deterioration in the system. A verdict was now sometimes obtained by means of an oracle. The statue of a god became the judge and its decision was ascertained through ceremonies performed in front of the image. A list of named suspects would be read out, and the statue was supposed to give a sign at the name of the culprit. The system was clearly open to corruption and abuse. Punishments were severe and were intended to deter future offenses. Officials could pursue ruthless interrogation of the suspect in court, beating him until he confessed, and independent witnesses could also receive severe treatment so that their “evidence” would be presented to support the desired outcome of the case. Minor misdemeanors could be punished with 100 strokes, and imprisonment and forced labor in the mines and quarries were also often imposed. If prisoners tried to escape their ears and noses were sometimes amputated before they were sent back to their captors. The death penalty offered a number of options. Some criminals were left to be devoured alive by crocodiles. As a special favor or indication of high status, some individuals were allowed to commit suicide. Children who killed their parents underwent an ordeal in which pieces of their flesh were cut out with reeds before they were placed on a bed of thorns and burned alive. However, parents who killed their children were not put to death but were instead forced to hold the dead child’s body for three days and nights. Deserters were also spared death, but they suffered great disgrace (although they could be reinstated to favor if they later performed a courageous deed). The operating principle here was that disgrace could often be worse than death. Also, a rehabilitated person could be useful again to society whereas an executed criminal could never contribute. Sometimes a whole family might be punished for the actions of one member. Other punishments included the emasculation of a man who committed rape against a freeborn woman; the amputation of the hands of dishonest officials; and the removal of tongues of those who released military secrets. If a man committed adultery with a woman’s consent he would receive 1,000 blows, but she might suffer amputation of her nose, or she might be divorced or even burned to death. Although the lawmakers were men, the system safeguarded the financial position of women and children and attempted to protect and promote the family. Property was invested in women. On marriage a woman retained her own property, and under the terms of the marriage contract the husband sometimes transferred the whole of his property to his wife to hold and pass on to their children. This transfer of property was probably more theoretical than actual, and in most cases the man would have retained the right to administer and use his own property, at least until divorce. Outside the royal family bigamy and polygamy were rare, although some men had serf concubines as well as a wife. Divorce was possible for both men and women; legally, it was easier for a man to divorce his wife, but if he did so he had to pay her compensation and she retained the property she had brought to the marriage. Archival material that illuminates the Egyptian legal system is rich and varied. It includes papyri fragments from town archives; temple documents that provide details of the trial of men and women implicated in a harem conspiracy to assassinate the king; and wellpreserved papyri that record the trials of the royal tomb robberies in the Ramesside Period. .
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Taxes and Finance
In theory the king owned all land and possessions. In reality, although he was the largest landowner and possessed areas within each nome (administrative district), the temples and even private individuals owned substantial real estate. The royal lands were officially registered and administered by an overlord appointed by the king. The Crown also constantly acquired new land; sometimes this would be bought from men who had lost their own wealth and needed to exchange their land for other commodities. It was the main duty of provincial and town governors to collect taxes for the king. There is more information about taxation in the New Kingdom than there is for earlier periods; for example, in the reign of Tuthmosis III it is known that taxes were collected in the form of cereals, livestock, fruit, and provisions, as well as gold and silver rings and jewels. The governors annually assessed the cereal payable for that year, basing their calculations on the surface area of each nome and the height of the Nile rising. The levels of inundation were recorded on nilometers; built at the river’s edge, nilometers were designed to measure the annual height of the inundation. If there was a low Nile when the water did not reach the usual level, the tax to be paid that year was reduced accordingly. There was also a tax on livestock based on a general census of the herds; this was carried out every second year by the government inspectors who visited the privately owned estates to assess their liability. The temples had gained major concessions from the king as early as the Old Kingdom when he gave land to the priesthood and signed decrees that exempted them in perpetuity from taxation of goods or services. They also had other important privileges: Some temple personnel could not be used for the service of the king or the royal household, and the king could not remove funds allocated to the god’s worship to use for his own benefit. Despite Akhenaten’s closure of the temples, once they were restored under Horemheb the priesthood continued to amass great wealth as before, and the temples once again owned vast property. Under the administrative system the country was divided into nomes: twenty-two in southern Egypt and eventually the same number in the north. There was a leading city in each nome where the district governor and his staff had their headquarters. These governors (who replaced the virtually independent local rulers of the Middle Kingdom) were appointed by the king. Their many duties covered the areas of public works, law and order, provision against famine, and raising taxes. An important task was to build up a reserve food supply after a good harvest that would offset the dire consequences of a future low inundation. Individuals also owned land or sometimes administered the king’s estates as a way of earning a living. This was a desirable position as the official could keep some of the profits from the royal estate for himself. Another way in which individuals acquired land and property was through inheritance, or sometimes the king provided high-ranking officials with tombs and with the land to supply their tomb offerings. From the New Kingdom onward land was also given to professional soldiers as a reward for military service; this remained in the soldier’s family as long as they continued to fight for the king. The Egyptians were among the first people to pay tax. The most important was the poll tax. The revenue officer regularly gathered the information to raise this tax from the head of each family. He had to declare all the members of his household including servants and slaves; the number of pregnant women in each household was also noted so that the officer could assess how many new taxpayers might be expected the following year. Taxes were paid in kind since Egypt had no official coinage until the Persian Period (c.525 BC). They were not only collected in the form of agricultural commodities; by the New Kingdom craftsmen had to hand over to the state a proportion of the articles they produced. The commodities paid to meet tax demands were stored in government treasuries and then redistributed to meet the state expenses. It is not surprising that the Egyptians incurred debts. A debtor would swear an oath in which he invoked the king or a god, and confirmed that he would repay this obligation in the future. The rate of interest on loans was 100 percent per year, and at the end of each year the outstanding interest was added to the capital sum, and a further 100 percent was charged on this. Payment consisted of any objects the creditor would accept, and all commodities were valued against a general standard. In the Late Period (c.700 BC) it was possible to enter into a “self-sale”; this involved a person selling himself into servitude in order to meet the demands of an overdue loan (working off his debt) or selling himself to become another person’s “son.” This carried certain obligations to the “father,” such as ensuring that the correct burial procedures were carried out on his behalf. If a couple were childless they would sometimes enter into such an agreement and adopt an adult “son” to ensure that their burial was performed correctly. In return, under the law of succession, the person who carried out the burial rites would inherit the deceased’s property. .
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Government and Bureaucracy
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