Warden. Pottery and Economy in Old Kingdom

Chapter SEVEN
Placing Royal Administration and State Revenue
Old Kingdom Egypt is commonly assumed to have functioned as a state-

controlled economy, in part as the crown had evident economic activities
in both the capital and the provinces. The ceramic industry, a dominate
player in the movement and measurement of wages, shows rather that
the royal house was not in control of the economy, nor was the econ-
omy locally managed nome-by-nome. Instead, diversity and complexity
throughout the economic structure was evident throughout wage pay-
ment networks, the structuring of the ceramic industry, and the relation-
ships of the ceramic, baking, and brewing industries. However, given the
scale and political influence of the Old Kingdom bureaucracy, the state
would nonetheless have had some impact on the economy.1 Though the
bureaucracy included a host of administrators from the beginning of the
Old Kingdom, the strength, expanse, and unity of the central government
appears to have varied over the period. This is particularly true of the
crown’s administrative relationship with the provinces, which seems to
have been characterized by constantly changing degrees of involvement
and ever-new approaches to provincial management. This fluidity illus-
trates the manner in which the state was connected to the provinces and
the type of power held by the Old Kingdom crown across the country.
Royal Administration and the Provinces
Evidence of provincial administration at the dawn of the Old Kingdom, in

Copyright © 2013. BRILL. All rights reserved.
the Third Dynasty, is sparse, existing only on vessels from the Step Pyra-
mid complex. The titles employed for nomarchs at that time were the
1 Economies are all influenced by the economic structures in which they operate:
M. I. Finley, The Ancient Economy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 26–27;
G. M. Feinman, “Archaeology and Political Economy: Setting the Stage,” in Archaeological
Perspectives on Political Economies, ed. G. M. Feinman and L. M. Nicholas (Salt Lake City:
University of Utah Press, 2004), 2.
Warden, L. A. (2013). Pottery and economy in old kingdom egypt : pottery and economy in old kingdom egypt. Retrieved from
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Created from brown on 2018-02-07 15:53:03.
224 chapter seven
same as seen in the Fourth Dynasty.2 From the Fourth Dynasty through
the early Fifth Dynasty, the evidence is more robust and it is apparent
that the management of the provinces was entrusted to officials bearing
titles such as, but not limited to, ἰmἰ-r wpt (Overseer of Commissions/
Apportionments),3 sšm tꜣ (Leader of the Land),4 and/or hḳꜣ spꜣt (Ruler
of the Nome).5 These individuals supervised at least two nomes at any
given time, which meant that their attentions would have been divided
between differing populations and large expanses of land.6 The adminis-
trators of Lower and Upper Egypt bore many of the same titles, particu-
larly ḥḳꜣ ḥwt-Ꜥꜣt (Ruler of the Great Estate) and ἰmἰ-r wpwt.7 Yet even at this
early period there were some distinctions, for example Lower Egyptian
provincial officials also being Ꜥḏ-mr (District Official) while Upper Egyp-
tian officials bore sšm tꜣ, implying different handling and conceptions of
the two regions.8 All officials were buried in the capital; they lived their
lives there and not in any of the provinces which they managed, many of
which were hundreds of miles distant.9 The nomarchs were more closely
tied to the royal house than they were to the nomes they managed.10
In the third millennium bc, a distant administrator equated to a dis-
tant and ephemeral authority figure with no on-the-ground knowledge of
his nomes or their populations. Issues like personal wealth, land owner-
ship, and land use appear to have been quite complex at the local level.
It seems likely that provincial land holdings would have been dispersed
in multiple locations as a safeguard against unpredictable Nile floods.11 A
2 É. Martinet, Le nomarque sous l’ancien empire (Paris: Presses de l’université Paris-
Sorbonne, 2011), 111.
3 D. Jones, An Index of Ancient Egyptian Titles, Epithets and Phrases of the Old Kingdom,
vol. 1–2 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2000), 88.
4 Ibid., 975.
5 Ibid., 683.
6 N. Kanawati, Governmental Reforms in Old Kingdom Egypt (Warminster: Aris and
Phillips, 1980), 1–2; K. Baer, Rank and Title in the Old Kingdom: the structure of the Egyptian
administration in the fifth and sixth dynasties (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960),
274–275; H. G. Fischer, Dendera in the Third Millennium B.C. down to the Theban Domina-
tion of Upper Egypt (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1968), 12.
7 Martinet, Le nomarque sous l’ancien empire, 116, 121, 128, Tab. A.
8 Ibid.
9 N. Kanawati, The Egyptian Administration in the Old Kingdom: Evidence on its Eco-
nomic Decline (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1977), 77; H. G. Fischer, “Four Provin-
cial Administrators at the Memphite Cemeteries,” JAOS 74 (1954): 26–34; M. Baud and
D. Farout, “Trois biographies d’Ancien Empire revisitées,” BIFAO 101 (2001): 43–57.
10 Martinet, Le nomarque sous l’ancien empire, 134.
11 M. Lehner, “Fractal House of Pharaoh: Ancient Egypt as a Complex Adaptive System,
a Trial Formation,” in Dynamics in Human and Primate Societies: Agent-Based Modeling of
royal administration and state revenue 225
diverse land portfolio ensured that even if some land was poorly flooded
and gave a poor yield, other fields might be in better-watered areas. While
ideal for the individual landholder, this means that bookkeeping would
have been quite challenging for an administrator at the multi-regional
level.12 Matters were further complicated as land control and use might
have been different from the actual ownership of the land.13 The ceramic
industry was not held to any standard which would aid in accounting for
bread or beer distribution, and the baking and brewing industries do not
appear to have offered any other avenue for accounting.14 Without stan-
dardized accounting, it is improbable that a royal administrator would
have been truly and fully informed of provincial structure, wealth, and
needs based solely on occasional visits. Under the loose provincial struc-
ture prevalent in the early Old Kingdom, the central government would
not have had thorough knowledge of each provincial individual or the web
of personal connections which would have bonded each village together.
Provincial temples provided the king with no administrative support, as
there is no evidence that their cults or their priesthoods were any more
centrally organized at this juncture.15 Instead, they were small affairs,
locally built and dedicated to local gods.16 The provincial administration
existed without direct control over the nomes themselves, resulting in an
unincorporated and poorly networked provincial administration. If any-
thing, the use of titles to unify the nomarch while still keeping the entities
of Lower and Upper Egypt distinct echoes the ideology of the royal house
as unifier of the two lands rather than being a statement of the political
unity and political power.
Social and Spatial Processes, ed. T. A. Kohler and G. J. Gumerman (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2000), 297, 298–305 for basin agriculture and its effects on social organization.
12 Andrew Monson, though discussing Ptolemaic economy, proposes a demographic
model for land ownership which could potentially be applied to the Old Kingdom as well.
Land use when a population size is low and available land is great is too costly to measure
or control, simply because access can be so easy. Old Kingdom Egypt fits both of those
criteria. Thus, if there were large categories of provincial public land, as suggested in his
model, it would be almost impossible for a central administrator to understand or measure
its use or yield. See: A. Monson, “Royal Land in Ptolemaic Egypt: A Demographic Model.”
JESHO 50, no. 4 (2007): 364.
13 Lehner, “Fractal House of Pharaoh,” 297; C. J. Eyre, “Feudal Tenure and Absentee
Landlords,” in Grund und Boden in Altägypten, ed. S. Allam (Tübingen: Selbstverlag des
Herausgebers, 1994), 110–111.
14 See Chapter 4–6.
15 Fischer, Dendera in the Third Millennium B.C., 23–34.
16 B. J. Kemp, Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization (London: Routledge, 2006),
112–142.
226 chapter seven
Perhaps the strongest case of government involvement in a provincial

town during the early Old Kingdom comes from Elephantine, on the Egyp-
tian southern frontier. In the middle of the First Dynasty, the central gov-
ernment founded a fortress on the island with apparently little concern
for the ritual life of the already extant town upon which it built.17 This
fortress gradually fell out of use but in the Third Dynasty, perhaps during
the reign of Huni, the state built a proto-pyramid and an administrative
complex on a part of the island that had been previously uninhabited.18
Additional proto-pyramids were located at Seila, Zawiyyet el-Meitin, Aby-
dos, Naqada, Edfu, and Hierakonpolis; like the example at Elephantine,
these pyramids seemed to mark areas of state concern, perhaps linked to
state lands.19 The Third Dynasty seems to have been the high point for
state administration on the island, though evidence of central adminis-
trative activities continues to appear through the Sixth Dynasty.20 Seal-
ings from the island show that a royal administration co-existed with a
local, indigenous, administration creating a process of ‘Egyptianizing’ the
inhabitants.21 The two spheres, local and central, coexisted and perhaps
sometimes interacted. Yet on the whole, state administration was pre
sent without interacting with all the concerns of the local population.
The state’s presence on Elephantine island specifically appears to result
from royal interest in monitoring trade with or access to Nubia, making
Elephantine’s role unique among the provinces.
Changes to the central bureaucracy began in the late Fourth Dynasty
during the reign of Menkaure. Menkaure opened the highest offices,
including that of vizier, to non-royal individuals.22 Menkaure also diver-
sified and expanded the administration, beginning in the royal scribal
corps. J. Nolan suggests that Menkaure increased the number of scribes
17 S. J. Seidlmayer, “Town and State in the Early Old Kingdom: A View from Elephan-
tine,” in Aspects of Early Egypt, ed. J. Spencer (London: British Museum Press, 1996), 112;
M. Ziermann, “De l’habitat à la ville fortifiée: Elephantine. Données choisies sur
l’urbanisation et l’architecture,” Archéo-Nil 12 (2002): 31.
18 M. Ziermann, Die Baustrukturen der älteren Stadt (Frühszit und Altes Reich) (Mainz:
Philipp von Zabern, 2002), Abb. 41; Seidlmayer, “Town and State,” 119.
19 M. Lehner, The Complete Pyramids (London: Thames and Hudson, 1997), 96.
20 J.-P. Pätznick, “La ville d’Éléphantine et son matériel sigillaire: enquête sur un arte-
fact archéologique,” CRIPEL 22 (2001): 142.
21 J.-P. Pätznick, Die Siegelabrollungen und Rollsiegel der Stadt Elephantine im 3. Jahr-
tausend v. Chr.: Spurensicherung eines archäologischen Artefaktes (Oxford: Archaeopress,
2005); Pätznick, “La ville d’Éléphantine,” 143–145; D. Raue, “Who was Who in Elephantine
of the Third Millennium BC?” BMSAES 9 (2008): 4–7.
22 N. Strudwick, The Administration of Egypt in the Old Kingdom: The Highest Titles and
their Holders (London: Keagan Paul International, 1985), 338.
located at the pyramid workman’s village of Heit el-Ghurob in order to

train individuals for positions elsewhere in the administration.23 By the
Fifth Dynasty, offices within the administration were more numerous
and the individual officeholders seem to bear responsibility for more spe-
cific duties than in earlier periods.24 In the reign of Djedkare in the late
Fifth Dynasty, nomarchs, typically bearing titles including ἰmἰ-r wpt, were
buried in the provinces that they governed, which seems to signal the
nomarchs’ residency in their provinces rather than in the capital.25 Addi-
tionally, nomes 9–20 were assigned three locally based administrators,
and a second vizier was created specifically to oversee Upper Egypt.26 In
the late Fifth or early Sixth Dynasty, the administration founded a new
frontier town in Dakhla.27 These actions demonstrate not only the expan-
sion of the royal administration, but are taken as signaling its attempt to
embed royal administration in provincial life.
However, central authority was less coherent, and perhaps more fragile,
than expansion of the bureaucracy might lead us to assume. The rank-
ing system employed for titles began to fluctuate in the reign of Djedkare
Isesi and does not show any stable, long-term structure after this point.28
Old Kingdom pharaohs would never achieve a unified titulary or titular
system for individuals who ruled a nome. Rather, provincial nobles uti-
lized a host of titles that varied by region lending no coherence to the
system.29 Not until in the reign of Teti in the Sixth Dynasty was there a
one-to-one relationship between royal administrator and most, but not
all, of the southern nomes.30 In Dakhla, the mayors continued to bear
23 J. Nolan, “Mud Sealings and Fourth Dynasty Administration at Giza” (PhD diss., Uni-
versity of Chicago, 2010), 324–325.
24 Strudwick, Administration of Egypt, 337.
25 E. Martin-Pardey, “Gedanken zum Titel (ἰmἰ-rꜤ wpt),” SAK 11 (1984): 231–251.
26 Kanawati, Governmental Reforms, 2.

27 G. Soukiassian, M. Wuttmann, and D. Schaad, “Le ville d’Ayn-Asil à Dakhla,” BIFAO
90 (1990): 348; L. Giddy, Egyptian Oases: Bahariya, Farafra, Dakhla and Kharga during
Pharaonic Times (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1987), 185.
28 Baer, Rank and Title, 297.
29 E. Martin-Pardey, Untersuchungen zur ägyptischen Provinzialverwaltung bis zum Ende
des Alten Reiches. (Hildesheim: Verlag Gebrüder Gerstenberg, 1976); H. Goedicke, “Review:
Untersuchungen zur Ägyptischen Provinzialverwaltung bis zum Ende des Alten Reiches
by Eva Martin-Pardey,” JARCE 14 (1977): 121–124, though his review is generally critical of
Martin-Pardey’s methods of analysis. For an older view of Old Kingdom provincial admin-
istration as arising from Thinite royal administration, see W. Helck, Die altägyptische Gaue
(Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1974), 49–60.
30 Baer, Rank and Title, 297; C. J. Eyre, “Peasants and ‘Modern’ Leasing Strategies in
Ancient Egypt,” JESHO 40, no. 4 (1997): 371–372 suggests that even at this point there was
228 chapter seven
titles relating them to the Memphite court and considered themselves

linked to the royal administration; yet in day-to-day reality the oasis likely
operated with a large degree of autonomy.31 Sealings from Ayn Asil show
approximately 5–6 administrators per generation bearing titles referenc-
ing the royal house, while the vast majority of the corpus comes from
private stamp and cylinder seals linked to the local administration of the
gubernatorial palace.32 The expansion of provincial administration seems
to have introduced constant flux and change into the royal administration
rather than stability. The interaction of the royal house, its administra-
tion, and the provinces appears to have been rethought multiple times a
generation.
In the Fifth Dynasty, the titulary of provincial officials broadly resem-
bled that of the Fourth Dynasty though with the introduction of some new
titles.33 Spheres of power fluctuate even when titles do not, so this con-
tinuity should not be uncritically equated to stability within the system
of provincial power, especially when considering the greater changes to
the central administration beginning with the reign of Menkaure.34 Some
of the new Fifth Dynasty titles, like rḫ nswt (One known by the king),
become almost systematized in Upper Egypt, showing that the administra-
tion of Egypt’s two regions remain conceptually separated.35 By the Sixth
Dynasty, however, the provincial administration seems to have changed
drastically from that of the early Old Kingdom.36 The title ḥḳꜣ ḥwt-Ꜥꜣt dis-
appears, though ḥḳꜣ ḥwt gains popularity; whole new titles are introduced
no centralized survey and revenue collection because the ancient Egyptian bureaucracy
simply was not large enough to handle such tasks.
31 L. Pantalacci, “De Memphis à Balat: Les liens entre la residence et les gouverneurs de
l’oasis à la VIe dynastie,” in Études sur l’Ancien Empire et la nécropole de Saqqâra dédiées
à Jean-Philippe Lauer, ed. C. Berger and B. Mathieu (Montpellier: Université Paul Valéry,
1997), 341, 344–345.

32 L. Pantalacci, “L’administration royale et l’administration locale au gouvernorat de
Balat d’après les empreintes de sceaux,” CRIPEL 22 (2001): 157–160.
33 Martinet, Le nomarque sous l’ancien empire, Tab. C.
34 For example: E. Cruz-Uribe, “A Model for the Political Structure of Ancient Egypt,” in
For His Ka: Essays Offered in Memory of Klaus Baer, ed. D. P. Silverman (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1994), 43–53. Cruz-Uribe allows for families to have defined power and
royal relationships during the Old and Middle Kingdoms, an argument that accords well
with the economic findings in this book. For the New Kingdom, however, he suggests that
the ‘spheres’ of power should be defined as more conventional bureaus such as the vizier,
the army, and temples.
35 Martinet, Le nomarque sous l’ancien empire, 143–154, 160.
36 Ibid., Tab. E1, Tab. E2.
and the titles of the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties largely abandoned.37 The
increase in the number and range of titles marks “plusieurs modèles
d’administration provincial” as existing in the Sixth Dynasty.38
Lower Egypt and Upper Egypt continued to be divided in this period,
but Upper Egypt was further parceled into many separate administrative
bodies, including the Head of the South.39 While this might have lent
some administrative coherence within a region, the constantly changing
location of administrators like the Overseer of the South and the Vizier
of Upper Egypt suggests that the challenge of communication was never
fully addressed.40 With such a complex, non-unified structure, distance
between the royal house and its administrators would have borne great
effect on the relationship between crown and province. The distance
between Memphis and Aswan is 620 kilometers, a distance which would
have taken over 10 days to travel via boat.41 The distance from Memphis
to the Dakhla oasis would have been similar.42 J. C. Moreno García argues
that regions closer to the capital at Memphis, such as Lower Egypt and
portions of Middle Egypt, were governed by the royal house and centrally
based administrators by virtue of proximity; travel within this larger region
from the capital took under nine days.43 However, this scenario does not
equate to close, regular, daily government control of the provinces as it
still preserves distance and separation between the two.
At the same time, the royal house began building kꜣ chapels attached to
provincial temples, dedicated to the cult of members of the royal family.
These provincial kꜣ chapels were dedicated to the soul of the king, queen
mother, or favored nobles.44 This practice is documented in both Upper
37 Ibid., 177–209, Tab. E1–E3.

38 Ibid., 177.
39 Fischer, Dendera in the Third Millennium B.C., 68–69; Martinet, Le nomarque sous
l’ancien empire, 211–212.
40 Kanawati, Governmental Reforms, 129–130.
41 J. C. Moreno García, Ḥwt et le milieu rural égyptien du IIIe millénaire. Economie,
administration et organisation territoriale (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1999), 243–245.
42 Pantalacci, “De Memphis à Balat,” 345.
43 Moreno García, Ḥwt et le milieu rural, 243–248.
44 W. M. F. Petrie, Abydos I (London: EEF, 1902), 9; D. O’Connor, “The Status of Early
Egyptian Temples: An Alternate Theory,” in The Followers of Horus: Studies Dedicated to
Michael Allen Hoffman, 1944–1990, ed. R. Friedman and B. Adams (Oxford: Oxbow, 1992),
90; E. Brovarski, “Abydos in the Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period, part 2,” in For
His Ka: Essays Offered in Memory of Klaus Baer, ed. D. P. Silverman (Chicago: The Oriental
Institute, 1994), 16–17.
230 chapter seven
and Lower Egypt, with kꜣ chapels being documented at sites like Tall Basta,45
Coptos,46 al-Kab, Akhmim, Assiut, Zawiyet al-Mayetin, Memphis,47 Aby-
dos, and Hierakonpolis.48 These temples appear to have been generally
small in scale.49 While the presence of royal chapels illustrates an expan-
sion of royal interest in the provinces at this late time, their size suggests
that they had restricted economic authority and limited resources. None-
theless, their influence would have been very real to the provincial elite
in the region of these new-found institutions, who would have become
enriched, empowered, and economically linked to the state.50
Concurrent to the erection of kꜣ chapels, royal decrees such as the Aby-
dos Decree of Neferirkare,51 the Abydos Decree of Teti,52 and a group of
Sixth to Eighth Dynasty decrees from Coptos53 show that royal economic
activities did bear effects upon the provinces. Most of these documents
were written to protect specific royal cults attached to the provincial kꜣ
chapels and temples,54 frequently exempting them from the labor corvée.55
45 L. Habachi, Tell Basta (Cairo: IFAO, 1957): 11–32.

46 M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. 1: The Old and Middle Kingdoms
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 28.
47 E. Brovarski, “Tempelpersonal,” in Lexikon der Ägyptologie, Band VI, ed. W. Helk and
E. Otto (Wiesbadden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1980), 388.
48 D. O’Connor, “The Status of Early Egyptian Temples,” 89–92.
49 B. J. Kemp, “The Osiris Temple at Abydos,” MDAIK 23 (1968): 151–153; O’Connor,
“The Status of Early Egyptian Temples,” 90; Brovarski, “Abydos in the Old Kingdom, part
2,” 15–21.
50 J. C. Moreno García, “L’organisation sociale de l’agriculture dans l’Egypte phara-
onique pendant l’ancien empire (2650–2150 avant j.-c.),” JESHO 44, no. 4 (2001): 437–441;
J. C. Moreno García, “The State and the Organization of the Rural Landscape in 3rd mil-
lennium bc Pharaonic Egypt,” in Aridity, Change and Conflict in Africa: Proceedings of an
International ACACIA Conference held at Königswinter, Germany, October 1–3, 2003, ed.
M. Bollig et al. (Köln: Heinrich-Barth-Institut, 2003), 320–323.
51 H. Goedicke, Königliche Dokumente aus dem Alten Reich (Wiesbaden: Otto Harras-
sowitz, 1967), 22–36; R. J. Leprohon, Stelae I. The Early Dynastic Period to the Late Middle
Kingdom. Corpus Antiquitatum Aegyptiacarum. Loose-Leaf Catalogue of Egyptian Antiq-

uities. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1985), 49–53; Strudwick,
Texts from the Pyramid Age (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005), 98–101. Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston 03.1896.
52 T. G. H. James, British Museum: Hieroglyphic Texts from Egyptian Stelae, etc. (London:
Trustees of the British Museum, 1961), pl. XXXI; Goedicke, Königliche Dokumente, 37–40;
Strudwick, Texts from the Pyramid Age, 102–103. British Museum 626.
53 W. C. Hayes, “Royal Decrees from the Temple of Min at Coptus,” JEA 32 (1946): 3–32;
Goedicke, Königliche Dokumente, 41–54, 87–147.
54 Though see the Coptos decrees, several of which were directed to the cult and priest-
hood of the god Min.
55 L. A. Warden, “Centralized Taxation in the Old Kingdom,” in Proceedings of the Con-
ference Towards a New History of the Old Kingdom: Perspectives on the Pyramid Age: April
26, 2012, ed. T. Schneider and P. der Manuelian (in press).
This practice seems to mark the spread of royal power into the provinces,
using temples as a node of easy access into local bureaucracies—though
not all provincial temples seem to have been used in this fashion.56 A pro-
vincial temple could be protected by multiple decrees, written by different
kings over the course of several reigns; the current king could also remove
exempt status, as shown by the letter of the young Pepi II included in the
biography of Harkhuf.57 However, the decrees always exempted labor and
very rarely goods; moreover, they were typically granted to cultic insti-
tutions which were explicitly royal.58 Royal penetration into the prov-
inces through provincial temples was but one node of economic activity
amongst many; these decrees and the kꜣ chapels with which they were
associated were far from the defining factors in any local economy.
The Sixth Dynasty illustrates new royal strategies, with a decentraliza-
tion of the administration occurring in tandem with royal marriage into
important provincial elite families.59 The power of provincial individu-
als apparent in such a scenario should not be seen here as usurpation of
royal prerogatives, but rather as an expression of power they had held
throughout the Old Kingdom. It is highly improbable that the Old King-
dom state ever exerted the type of close control and expansive power nec-
essary for comprehensive economic redistribution or even for large-scale
government involvement in private economic ventures. Government
bureaucracy was simply too inefficient,60 and the central government’s
approaches to the provinces were constantly changing. Local economic
knowledge would have remained local.61 Obviously the royal house was
interested and invested in the provinces, but just as clearly it did not
control them so much as maintain open lines of access to them. Despite
the challenges presented by the Egyptian administration, advocates of
56 Papazian, “Domain of the Pharaoh,” 111, 272–286. Papazian also notes the role of
New Towns in the pharaoh’s expansion of bureaucracy. For an example of an Old Kingdom
provincial temple which does not seem to have had any state involvement but is instead
expressive of local identities, see M. Bietak, “The Early Bronze Age III temple at Tell Ibra-
him Awad and its Relevance to the Egyptian Old Kingdom,” in Perspectives on Ancient
Egypt: Studies in Honor of Edward Brovarski, ed. Z. Hawass, P. der Manuelian, and R. B.
Hussein (Cairo: Supreme Council of Antiquities, 2010), 65–77.
57 Urk. I, 131: 4–7.
58 Warden, “Centralized Taxation.”
59 Martinet, Le nomarque sous l’ancien empire, 225, 231–233.
60 C. Eyre, “On the inefficiency of bureaucracy,” in Egyptian Archives: Proceedings of
the First Session of the International Congress Egyptian Archives / Egyptological Archives,
Milano, September 9—10, 2008, ed. P. Piacentini and C. Orsenigo (Milano: Cisalpino,
2009), 23–28.
61 Eyre, “On the inefficiency of bureaucracy,” 29.
232 chapter seven
complete government economic control do not offer suggestions on how

a large-scale redistributive endeavor could have functioned according
to what we know of third millennium Egypt’s administration.62 Keynes-
ian economics, too, requires a strongly centralized, well networked
government which seems to have been absent in the Old Kingdom. The
weakness of the administrative structure must have been related, in part,
to the low population of the country at this period and the population’s
fairly wide distribution. Land was not at a premium and policing the eco-
nomic activities of Egypt’s rural hinterland was a logistic impossibility.
A more informal economic structure in which the royal house played a
role but did not define the system simply fits the administrative evidence
better.
The Economic Powers of the State
The textual evidence outlined above provides a window into the financial
management and wealth creation mechanisms of the state. Old Kingdom
royal administration broke its high fiscal offices into the branches of the
granaries (šnwt/šnwty) and the treasury (pr ḥḏ/prwy ḥḏ). The institution
of the treasury seems to have been involved with goods like linen, wine,
and oil. The granary, on the other hand, served as grain storage.63 Both
institutions could perhaps have serviced the whole country, though the
textual evidence does not prove this; there also could have been local
or private versions of the granary and treasury. N. Strudwick documents
fewer bearers of high treasury office than high granary office.64 This could
perhaps indicate that the granary was the larger institution dealing with a
larger volume of goods, particularly wages. For the purposes of this study,
both institutions are treated as a unity, referring to the unit simply as ‘the
treasury,’ as the goal of this study is not to elucidate the different organs
within the state bureaucracy but to understand the economic relationship

of the state and the provinces. The term ‘state/royal/central treasury’ will
be used to refer to the state’s management of goods which it controlled.
Inputs into the central treasury of the Old Kingdom came from sev-
eral sources, all of which are difficult to quantify. Taxation and royal
domains appear to be the most dominant. Mining or quarrying projects
62 See Chapter 1.
63 Strudwick, Administration of Egypt, 265–268, 294, 299.
64 Ibid., 265–270, 290–294.
also delivered mineral wealth to the central government.65 Large scale

exploitation of mineral wealth, in particular, would have required state
resources and involvement in order for such projects to have been viable.
The only textually documented mining excursions carried the weight of a
royal decree.66 Gifts from neighboring states, though important factors for
the royal purse in the New Kingdom, are generally lacking during the Old
Kingdom and foreign trade seems to have been minor and not a defining
factor in third millennium state economy.67
The ability of pharaohs to sponsor large building projects demonstrates
that the state treasury was robust relatively early in Egyptian history. The
number of institutions dedicated to the goals of the state, from pyramid
towns to solar temples to its royal bureaucracy, also forward the crown’s
fiscal health. The crown was very wealthy and the state must have had
access to goods in order to stock the treasury. One must remember
that wealth in the third millennium bc was not measured in money, as
true money or coinage did not exist at this period. The economic sys-
tem focused instead on the value of foodstuffs—grain, cattle, bread, and
beer—as well as linen. The copper dbn, a prominent value measure in the
New Kingdom, does not appear to have served the same exchange or valu-
ation function in the Old Kingdom. It is unattested as a unit of payment
in any Old Kingdom textual genres.
65 Examples of mining and quarrying include: R. Kuper and F. Förster, “Khufu’s ‘mefat’
expeditions into the Libyan Desert,” EA 23 (2003): 25–8, G. Möller, Die Felseninschriften
von Hatnub (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1928), I. Shaw, “Pharaonic Quarrying and Mining: Settle-
ment and Procurement in Egypt’s Marginal Regions,” Antiquity 68 (1994): 113ff; D. Arnold,
Building in Egypt: Pharaonic Stone Masonry (New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1991),
31; S. Vereecken, “About Bread Moulds and Bread Trays: Evidence for an Old Kingdom Bak-
ery at al-Shaykh Sa’id,” in Functional Aspects of Egyptian Ceramics in their Archaeological
Context, ed. B. Bader and M. F. Ownby (Leuven, Peeters, 2013), 53–71.
66 C. J. Eyre, “Work and the Organization of Work in the Old Kingdom,” in Labor in
the Ancient Near East, ed. M. A. Powell (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1987), 10;
E. Bloxam, P. Storemyr, and T. Heldal, “Hard Stone Quarrying in the Egyptian Old King-
dom (3rd Millennium BC): rethinking the social organization,” in ASMOSIA VII, ed. Yannis
Maniatis (Athens: L’École française d’Athènes, 2009), 187–201. Though see I. Shaw, “Phara-
onic Quarrying and Mining,” 111ff for discussion of private use of gypsum quarries.
67 For trade with Byblos in the reign of Snefru, see Wilkinson, Royal Annals of Ancient
Egypt: The Palermo Stone and its Associated Fragments (London: Kegan Paul International,
2000), 141. For trade and relations with Nubia see particularly K. P. Kuhlmann, “The ‘Oasis
Bypath’ or the Issue of Desert Trade in Pharaonic Times,” in Tides of the Desert: Contribu-
tions to the Archaeology and Environmental History of Africa in Honour of Rudolph Kuper,
ed. Jennerstrasse 8 (Köln: Heinrich Barth Institut, 2002), 125–170; D. O’Connor, “The Loca-
tions of Yam and Kush and their Historical Implications,” JARCE 23 (1986): 27–50; G. E.
Kadish, “Old Kingdom Activity in Nubia: Some Reconsiderations,” JEA 52 (1966): 23–33.
234 chapter seven
State Finance
Regardless of the pharaonic administration’s state of flux, it would have
required a regular stream of financing in order to support its building proj-
ects and royal cults. The central administration is often assumed to have
been maintained through ‘staple finance,’68 where the pharaoh received
utilitarian and agricultural goods from the populace through taxes. Both
redistribution and a Keynesian framework require that central taxation
functioned to increase labor and production, thus generating the wealth
needed to build the pyramids.69 However, finding taxation of goods in the
Old Kingdom textual record is a challenge. The Palermo Stone references
two events which scholars regularly treat as revenue-generating and syn-
onymous with provincial taxation:70 the Following of Horus (šmsw ḥr) in
the First through Third Dynasties and the Census (ṯnwt) from the Second
through Fifth Dynasties.71
To begin with the role of the šmsw ḥr : the Palermo Stone entries in which
it appears are not detailed, thus making it difficult to define the entity’s
activities or place them in context.72 The šmsw ḥr was clearly important
in order to merit recording in a permanent temple record,73 but being
recorded in the annals does not guarantee the economic importance of
the šmsw ḥr, as annals are firmly tied to the ideological role of the king.
The šmsw ḥr was also referenced in the Coptos decree of Pepi I (Coptos
Decree A) as well as the autobiography of Harkhuf.74 These are the only
two references to the Following of Horus in the Sixth Dynasty. In Coptos
68 T. N. D’Altroy and T. K. Earle, “Staple Finance, Wealth Finance, and Storage in the
Inka Political Economy,” CA 26 (1985): 188.
69 D. Warburton, “Before the IMF: The Economic Implications of Unintentional Struc-
tural Adjustment in Ancient Egypt,” JESHO 43 (2000): 116.
70 For example, see S. L. D. Katary, “Taxation (until the end of the Third Intermediate
Period),” in UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, ed. W. Wendrich and E. Frood (Los Angeles:
University of California, 2011), http://escholarship.org/uc/item/9p13z2vp; S. L. D. Katary,
“Land Tenure and Taxation,” in The Egyptian World, ed. T. Wilkinson (London: Routledge,
2007).
71 Wilkinson, Royal Annals, 64, 140.
72 Ibid., 90.
73 Though the original context of this document is not known, recent scholarship
places it within a Memphite temple complex: T. Wilkinson, Early Dynastic Egypt (New
York: Routledge, 1999), 92; A. Roccati, La littérature historique sous l’Ancien Empire égyp-
tien (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1982), 36. See also D. B. Redford,
Pharaonic King-Lists, Annals, and Day-Books: A Contribution to the Study of the Egyptian
Sense of History (Mississauga: Benben, 1986), 128.
74 Goedicke, Königliche Dokumente, 48–52. For the highly fragmentary reference in the
autobiogaphy of Harkhuf, see: Urk. I, 126:8.
A, Pepi I states: “I have ordered the exemption of this kꜣ chapel . . . nor

does my Majesty allow that the šmsw ḥr take advantage of this kꜣ chapel.”75
These lines link the Following of Horus to the confiscation of goods in the
provinces. As H. Goedicke points out, an additional implication is that,
possibly, the royal presence is not required to validate the activities of the
Following of Horus;76 confiscation of goods does not necessarily equate
to taxation or supply of the royal treasury. As the Following of Horus was
likely a traveling entity, as evident through the regular use of the boat
determinative in its writing on the Palermo Stone and the its implied trav-
els in Coptos A,77 any goods which they confiscated likely went directly to
their own support and sustenance and was unlikely to have been held for
deposit in the royal treasury.
The role of the šmsw ḥr in royal ideology is also apparent in reliefs from
the Early Dynastic temple of Hathor at Gebelein78 and in the Fifth Dynasty
Solar Temple of Niuserre at Abu Ghurob.79 In both cases, the šmsw ḥr is
involved with royal ritual, playing a supporting role to the activities of
the king. The Gebelein reliefs, though provincial in origin, highlight the
king’s role as emissary to the gods on behalf of the community.80 The
Niuserre reliefs show the šmsw ḥr as part of the Sed festival (fig. 7.1). To
interpret these reliefs as administrative activity and taxation requires that
one extrapolate from very little data. While the šmsw ḥr’s cultic role does
not mean we can entirely rule out the possibility of it having administra-
tive authority, any authority it might have had does not seem to have
been systematic or consistent over time.
75 Goedicke, Königliche Dokumente, 41, Abb. 4; Strudwick, Texts from the Pyramid Age,
105.
76 Goedicke, Königliche Dokumente, 52.
77 Wilkinson, Royal Annals, 90–91, fig. 1; Goedicke, Königliche Dokumente, 41, Abb. 4;
Strudwick, Texts from the Pyramid Age, 105.
78 The cult of Hathor is one of the few exceptions to state involvement with cultic
activity in the provinces. See H. Goedicke, “Cult-Temple and ‘State’ during the Old King-
dom in Egypt,” in State and Temple Economy in the Ancient Near East. Vol. 1, edited by
E. Lipiński (Leuven: Departement Oriëntalistiek, 1979), 113–131; Kemp, Anatomy of a Civi-
lization, 111–135.
79 L. Morenz, “Zur Dekoration der frühzeitlicken Tempel am Beispiel zweier Fragmente
des archaeischen Tempels von Gebelein,” in Ägyptische Tempel—Struktur, Funktion und
Programm (Akten der Ägyptologischen Tempeltagungen in Gosen 1990 und in Mainz 1992),
ed. R. Gundlach and M. Rochholz (Hildesheim: Gertenberg Verlag, 1994), 217–238; F. W. F.
von Bissing, Das Re-Heiligtum des Königs Ne-Woser-Re (Rathures), Band II: die kleine Fest-
darstellung (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1923).
80 Morenz, “Zur Dekoration der frühzeitlicken Tempel,” 234–235.
236 chapter seven
Figure 7.1: The Following of Horus at the Sed Pavilion of Niuserre, box around
šmsw ḥr caption added. Illustration from F. W. F. von Bissing, Das Re-Heiligtum
des Königs Ne-Woser-Re (Rathures), Band II: die kleine Festdarstellung (Leipzig: J.C.
Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1923), Blatt 11.
The ṯnwt—‘Count’ or ‘Census’—might at first glance be a more likely can-

didate as a regular organ of state finance. It first appears on the Palermo
Stone in the Second Dynasty during the reign of Ninetjer.81 Goedicke sug-
gested that the distinction between the šmsw ḥr and the ṯnwt reflects a
fundamental shift in Old Kingdom administration and the count takes the
place of the earlier royal Following of Horus.82 In the Second Dynasty, the
ṯnwt counted gold and fields; later in the Old Kingdom the ṯnwt was instead
applied to cattle.83 Such a census would have been an enormous task to
have coordinated over the expanse of the country, one which a poorly
networked, constantly in flux administration would have been greatly
challenged to have organized. However, it has been recently and convinc-
ingly argued by J. Nolan that the ṯnwt was a symbolic or ritual count; it
therefore would not have served as true, expansive taxation. Nolan points
81 PS r.IV.3
82 Goedicke, Königliche Dokumente, 49.
83 For the Count of Gold and Fields: PS r.V.5; J. S. Nolan, “The Original Lunar Calendar
and Cattle Counts in Old Kingdom Egypt,” in Basel Egyptology Prize 1: Junior Research in
Egyptian History, Archaeology, and Philology, ed. S. Bickel and A. Loprieno (Basel: Schwabe
& Co. Ag, 2003), 77. For the Count of Cattle: PS v.II.2; M. Baud and V. Dobrev, “De nou-
velles annales de l’Ancien Empire égyptien: une ‘Pierre de Palerme’ pour la VIe dynastie,”
BIFAO 95 (1995), 23–92; M. Baud and V. Dobrev, “Le verson des annales de la VIe dynastie.
Pierre de Saqqara-Sud,” BIFAO 97 (1997), 35–42.
out that such a ritual function of the Count would accord well with the
ritual purpose of the Palermo Stone, upon which the ṯnwt is first recorded,
as well as fitting with the tenor of the stone’s other entries.84 The Census
appears more likely to have been linked to calendrical reckoning, its ritu-
alized occurrence marking years without the intercalary months serving
to keep the lunar and civil calendars in sync.85
Small avenues for royal absorption of provincial assets are provided
by royal decrees found in provinces.86 These decrees do not provide an
overriding system for central collection of wealth; rather, they show brief
moments and instances of taxation which are quite difficult to put into
an overall economic picture. Each decree is unique, exempting different
temples and different agents. Many of these decrees exempt the individu-
als serving the temple from corvée service without mentioning a taxation
of goods, such as the decree of Neferirkare from Abydos (MFA 03.1896):
“I do not entitle any man to levy the corvée for any project for any god’s
field (where) there is priestly service upon it by any priests [and . . .?].87
Coptos A and the Teti decree of Abydos include similar wording.88 Some
also mention a tax levied by the crown, exempting the town or temple as
an entity from paying that tax.89
The surviving royal decrees form a patchwork of exemptions, spread
by individual pharaohs to different spots in the country, which would
have made any broad system of taxation difficult to systematically apply.
There was not one system of taxation, applied across the country through-
out the entirety of the Old Kingdom. Nor do the Following of Horus and
Census appear to have presented a regular, unified system of taxation.
Rather, the state seems to have gathered foodstuffs or called the cor-
vée only when and where the crown required such goods and services.
84 J. S. Nolan, “Lunar Intercalations and ‘Cattle Counts’ during the Old Kingdom: The
Hebsed in Context,” in Chronology and Archaeology in Ancient Egypt (the Third Millennium
B.C.), ed. H. Vymazalová and M. Bárta (Prague: Czech Institute of Archaeology, Charles
University in Prague, 2008), 56–59; Nolan, “Original Lunar Calendar,” 80.
85 Nolan, “Original Lunar Calendar,” 88–92.
86 See fn 52–54 for references.
87 Translation following Leprohon, Stelae I, 49–53, lines 3, 13–16. Also see Goedicke,
Königliche Dokumente, 22–36; Urk I, 170–172.
88 Coptos A: Strudwick, Texts from the Pyramid Age, 105; Goedicke, Königliche Doku-
mente, 41–54. Teti decree: Urk. I, 208; James, Hieroglyphic texts from Egyptian stelae, pl. 31;
Strudwick, Texts from the Pyramid Age, 102. Now BM EA 626.
89 Strudwick, Texts from the Pyramid Age, 103; Goedicke, Königliche Dokumente, 55–77;
Urk I, 210: 2–6.
238 chapter seven
In many ways, the ritual function of these entities was at least as impor-
tant, if not more so, than their administrative function.
C. Eyre argues that Egypt never had a monolithic government and that
Old Kingdom villages would have been created through internal coloni-
zation without a centralized bureaucracy.90 This is a thought provoking,
though very dramatic, argument. The state certainly existed and was active
across the country. There was a large degree of cultural unity throughout
the provinces as evidenced by the use of the same basic artistic repertoire,
continuity in material culture across the country, and similar mortuary
practices. The provinces and the central government must have inter-
acted, especially in the late Old Kingdom when crown-appointed officials
were resident in the nomes. Most likely, court and province were differ-
ent, co-extant, intertwined systems.91 The lack of systematic exemptions
and institutions suggests that the Egyptian state finance system was not
put together according to modern ideas of rationality—though doubtless
it was founded upon its own necessary logic. The evidence points to the
presence of a flexible, informal economic system more related to patrimo-
nialism than a government-controlled, redistributive model. Complexity,
not consistency or thorough central penetration, seems to be the best term
to define both the administration and economy of Old Kingdom Egypt.
Royal Domains
Despite the scarcity of taxation practices, it is certain that the Egyptian
pharaoh and his administration were wealthy during the Old Kingdom.
With this wealth, the royal house was able to construct massive monu-
ments and establish the beginnings of a network of international trade.
The irregularity of the state’s taxation practices requires that this wealth
not be attributed to a regular collection of goods from the populace of the
country. However, also in place was a system of royally owned domains
that existed perhaps as early as the Second Dynasty.92 These estates

were centers of agricultural production for the Old Kingdom crown,
providing the otherwise missing link between production, storage, and
90 C. J. Eyre, “Village Economy in Pharaonic Egypt,” in Agriculture in Egypt from Phara-
onic to Modern Times, ed. A. K. Bowman and E. Rogan (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999), 33–60; Eyre, “Peasants and ‘Modern’ Leasing Strategies,” 371–372.
91 See Chapter 8; also Kemp, Anatomy of a Civilization, 101–110, 141–142.
92 H. K. Jacquet-Gordon, Les noms des domaines funéraires sous l’ancien empire égyptien
(Cairo: IFAO, 1962), 9.
consumption.93 Domains varied in size from two to 110 auroras; from the
Fourth Dynasty to the close of the Old Kingdom they were used by the
crown for the support of the royal funerary cult.94 By the late Old King-
dom, the royal domains also supported and equipped royal expeditions,
such as trade expeditions into Nubia.95 As a result, the maintenance of
the royal cult—and, perhaps, the building of the mortuary monument—
would not have had to be reliant upon the sporadic financing garnered
through taxation. These ḥwt domains were always royal property.96
Over time, already extant towns (nἰwt) were added to this funerary
economy, though their names continued to be marked with the nἰwt
determinative, differentiating them from the earlier ḥwt domains. Addi-
tionally, new nἰwt were also founded within the domain structure.97 Nἰwt
as royal domains expanded in popularity over the Old Kingdom. By the
Fifth Dynasty, the royally founded domains appear to have been closely
tied with the Temple of Ptah.98 By the late Old Kingdom, private individu-
als also founded nἰwt. Royal domains appearing in private tomb lists were
inalienable from the crown, but privately founded domains seem to have
belonged to private individuals.99 This transition in the late Old Kingdom
occurred alongside the proliferation of royal kꜣ chapels in the provinces. It
is possible that these two phenomena are not simply correlated but that
they had a causal relationship. Perhaps the appearance of provincial kꜣ
chapels in the late Old Kingdom was intended to balance the income and
control “lost” to the state through the establishment of private domains
or the maintenance of crown domains by providing new locations from
which to access land and labor.100
Once established, the domain of a king continued to exist even after
his death. The network of domains continued to expand through the Old
93 J. C. Moreno García, “Estates (Old Kingdom),” In UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptol-

ogy, ed. E. Frood and W. Wendrich (Los Angeles, 2008), 1, http://escholarship.org/uc/
item/1b3342c2; Moreno García, Ḥwt et le milieu rural égyptien.
94 Jacquet-Gordon, Domaines funéraires, 3, 5.
95 Urk I, 131: 25–26. See also Moreno García, Ḥwt et le milieu rural égyptien, 208,
281–282.
96 Moreno García, Ḥwt et le milieu rural, 205–206.
97 Jacquet-Gordon, Domaines funéraires, 7.
98 Jacquet-Gordon, Domaines funéraires, 24; H. Papazian, “The Temple of Ptah and
Economic Contacts between Memphite Cult Centers in the Fifth Dynasty,” in 8. Ägyptolo-
gische Tempeltagung: interconnections between temples, ed. M. Dolinksa and H. Beinlich
(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010), 137–154.
99 Jacquet-Gordon, Domaines funéraires, 11–12.
100 Ibid., 18, 22.
240 chapter seven
Kingdom, with new domains being founded by both the crown and pri-
vate individuals. This has suggested to some that the state made constant
efforts to maintain and strengthen a centralized economy even in the
face of private expansion.101 As the royal domains were connected to the
Temple of Ptah and to the palace, their income reinforced royal ideology
by supporting two of the major endeavors of the Old Kingdom govern-
ment: the continuance of the royal funerary cult and the maintenance of
the cult of at least one major state deity.102 However, for the most part the
royal domains do not dominate distribution networks in the few admin-
istrative papyri now extant. Provisioning in the Abu Sir papyri appears to
have been dominated by the r-š-kꜣkꜣἰ and the palace; these institutions
presumably consolidated and distributed goods produced by the unmen-
tioned royal domains.103 There is evidence that the Temple of Ptah further
reverted offerings to select private cults.104
On the whole, royal domains seem to have been largely located in the
Nile Delta throughout the Old Kingdom, though this could simply be a
reflection of the limited sources available to us.105 This clustering, com-
bined with the lack of high administrative titles in provincial Lower Egypt
throughout the Old Kingdom,106 led J. C. Moreno García to argue that the
royal house directly administered Lower Egypt and portions of Middle
Egypt without bureaucratic middle men.107 Were the crown directly in
control of these regions of Egypt, however, one would expect them not to
just be economically related, but also culturally very similar. Style of goods
should be almost the same between capital and the nomes of Lower and
Middle Egypt. However, certain stylistic markers show difference between
the capital and these nearby provinces. Innovative royal styles like the
Second Style are only sporadically attested outside of major Memphite
101 Papazian, “Domain of the Pharaoh,” 111.

102 For more on royal support of state deities, see Goedicke, “Cult-Temple and ‘State’.”
103 Posener-Kriéger, “Les papyrus d’Abousir et l’économie,” 143–144.
104 Papazian, “Contacts between Memphite Centers,” 137–139, 143, 148.
105 Jacquet-Gordon, Domaines funéraires, 107, fig. G. M. I. Khaled, “A Visitor at the
Causeway of Sahura at Abusir,” in Abusir and Saqqara in the Year 2010, vol. 2, ed. M. Bárta,
F. Coppens, and J. Krejčí (Prague: Czech Institute of Egyptology, Faculty of Arts, Charles
University in Prague, 2011), 513. Recent Egyptian excavations in this causeway have uncov-
ered 5 blocks of relief depicting domain processions. All the domains which appear are
in Lower Egypt (147 total). However, these new reliefs all come from the north wall of the
causeway and therefore should be expected to orient with northern domains. It is not
unlikely that the south wall of the causeway was complimented by images of southern
domains.
106 Fischer, Dendera in the Third Millennium B.C., 9–10, 65–77.
107 Moreno García, Ḥwt et le milieu rural égyptien, 243–245, 253.
sites, and sometimes provinces adopted local variations of the central

style, showing local identities and agency.108 Royal styles were never nec-
essarily all-pervasive and did not overwhelm or eliminate local artistic
tradition. Even in the ceramic record, where a uniform corpus appears
to characterize the country, study of the Meidum bowl has shown the
metrics of the bowl varied by region. The result for many sites, including
those in Lower and Middle Egypt, was a local version of the Meidum bowl
differing from Memphite exemplars.109 The crown’s influence appears to
have been less pervasive than expected under direct state control in these
regions.110 Perhaps the state was more present in Lower and Middle Egypt;
however, presence does not correlate with control of their populations or
economic structures.
The domain system, like the system of taxation, is not all-expansive
and cannot be used to explain the whole of the Egyptian economy. How-
ever, unlike taxation, the domains present a system which appears to be
regular and definable, even through changes over time. Their economic
influence would have been very important to the royal house and the
elite whose job it was to manage the domains.111 Income from the royal
domains supported royal institutions and endeavors such as royal mor-
tuary cults, the cult of state deities, and royal expeditions. This is not a
systematic redistribution of wealth throughout the country. Rather, the
structure is limited to the royal house. Domains provided an economic
basis for elite activities and monument building, which are predictably
centralized. A grey area exists in those circumstances where the goods
from domains entered private cults through reversion from the Memphite
temple of Ptah. These moments are limited and constrained to elite mor-
tuary contexts. They show points of contact between royal and private
economic concerns, points of complexity which remind one that the state
108 E. Russmann, “A Second Style in Egyptian Art of the Old Kingdom,” MDAIK 51
(1995): 276–277. See also E. Brovarski, “A Second Style in Egyptian Relief of the Old King-
dom,” in Egypt and Beyond: Essays Presented to Leonard H. Lesko upon his Retirement from
the Wilbour Chair of Egyptology at Brown University, June 2005, ed. S. E. Thompson and
P. der Manuelian (Providence: Department of Egyptology and Ancient Western Asian
Studies, Brown University, 2008), 49–89.
109 S. L. Sterling, “Social Complexity in Ancient Egypt: Functional Differentiation as
Reflected in the Distribution of Apparently Standardized Ceramics” (PhD diss., University
of Washington, 2004), 153–155, 166–167.
110 Ibid.
111 J. C. Moreno García, “L’organisation sociale de l’agriculture dans l’Egypte phara-
onique pendant l’ancien empire (2650–2150 avant j.-c.),” JESHO 44, no. 4 (2001): 437–441;
Moreno García, “State and Organization,” 322–327.
242 chapter seven
was not absent from the economy of Egypt though at the same time the
state did not define the economy. Rather, the state was one economic
agent of many, but one which had great ideological power. Domains are
not evidence of a highly centralized general economy in which all classes
interacted and were subjugated to the economic concerns of the state.
The power of the royal treasury and its acquisition of wealth was neither
expansive nor systematic.
Conclusion
The economic system of Old Kingdom Egypt is difficult to define in part

because details of state finance are extraordinarily elusive in the textual
record. The central government clearly had control over a large amount
of resources, a fact made obvious by the state’s ability to maintain both
large building projects and high-consumption cults of kings and important
divinities. However, where the king’s control of land, mineral wealth, and
other commodities began and ended is a question for which texts pro-
vide no explicit answer. Strong central governments typically garner funds
through taxation, as numerous examples from the ancient and modern
worlds illustrate. However, central taxation in the Old Kingdom seems to
have been unsystematic and weak. Texts poorly define the Following of
Horus (šmsw ḥr), the institution to which scholars frequently attribute a
crucial role in the assessing and collecting of wealth from throughout the
country. Its ritual role and ritual relationship to the Pharaoh is evident,
but administrative power is apparently absent. Neither was the Census
(ṯnwt) likely to have either provided stable funds for the government or to
have supported a state-wide system of redistribution. The frequency with
which the ṯnwt was held is uncertain; it seems to have occurred often,
though at seemingly changeable intervals.112 The awkward pattern sug-
gests the Census was rather another ritual entangled in royal ideology and
calendrical dating.
There can be no doubt that the crown had access to a plethora of
resources and occasionally accessed wealth from the provinces. The major-
ity of royal funds, however, appear to have come from royal domains that
were established throughout the country. These domains provided agri-
cultural goods for state-sponsored cults of pharaohs and the gods. The
112 Nolan, “Original Lunar Calendar,” 81.
goods from royal domains seem to have been exclusively linked to state
foundations. The central government cannot have dominated the econ-
omy of the state, much less the lives of Egyptians throughout the country,
without a solid framework for large-scale taxation or another apparatus
for regular large-scale collection.113 How strongly the needs of the royal
treasury would have impacted and imposed upon private wealth and pro-
vincial authority remains unknown, though that impact was likely low.
The state appears to have needed to control the provinces far less than
has been tacitly assumed; as a result, state and provincial realities were
likely often independent, interacting more in the world of ideology than
the world of economic transactions.
113 K. Polanyi, The Livelihood of Man (New York: Academic Press, 1977), 40.

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Chapter SEVEN

Placing Royal Administration and State Revenue

Old Kingdom Egypt is commonly assumed to have functioned as a state-

Royal Administration and the Provinces

Evidence of provincial administration at the dawn of the Old Kingdom, in

Perhaps the strongest case of government involvement in a provincial

located at the pyramid workman’s village of Heit el-Ghurob in order to

26 Kanawati, Governmental Reforms, 2.

titles relating them to the Memphite court and considered themselves

1997), 341, 344–345.

37 Ibid., 177–209, Tab. E1–E3.

45 L. Habachi, Tell Basta (Cairo: IFAO, 1957): 11–32.

Kingdom. Corpus Antiquitatum Aegyptiacarum. Loose-Leaf Catalogue of Egyptian Antiq-

complete government economic control do not offer suggestions on how

The Economic Powers of the State

within the state bureaucracy but to understand the economic relationship

also ­delivered mineral wealth to the central government.65 Large scale

A, Pepi I states: “I have ordered the exemption of this kꜣ chapel . . . nor

The ṯnwt—‘Count’ or ‘Census’—might at first glance be a more likely can-

that existed perhaps as early as the Second Dynasty.92 These estates

93 J. C. Moreno García, “Estates (Old Kingdom),” In UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptol-

101 Papazian, “Domain of the Pharaoh,” 111.

sites, and sometimes provinces adopted local variations of the central

The economic system of Old Kingdom Egypt is difficult to define in part

112 Nolan, “Original Lunar Calendar,” 81.

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also delivered mineral wealth to the central government.65 Large scale