For a complex and formal government structure to function properly information on the territories and the people governed had to be readily available. It has already been stated that for the earliest periods of Egyptian history there are no indications of any government interference with local irrigation and agriculture (see Central Administration: the Vizier). On this assumption there is no reason to suppose that records on local agrarian matters were kept by the government, but in a later period
Figure 12.2 The Palermo stone, obverse (Schafer 1902: pl. 1).
The central government was concerned with local matters; for in the Duties of the Vizier it is the vizier who judges any dispute about fields and who consults local authorities and documents for the purpose. So by the time of the late Middle or Early New Kingdom records seem to have been kept on a local or provincial level for the use of the government. This raises the question of whether such records were kept by the central government itself.
Here an important source is the so called Annalistic Inscription, the principal fragments of which are now in Cairo and Palermo (full publication by Schafer 1902; for the entire inscription see e. g. Beckerath 1997: 14-19). It is clear from this text that, as early as the Early Dynastic Period, records on people, land, and cattle were kept by the central government. This inscription records the reigns of individual kings, starting with the period preceding the First Dynasty and ending with the earliest kings of the Fifth. Of the predynastic kings only the names are recorded, and their authenticity is far from certain, but from the First Dynasty onwards the horizontal registers of the inscription are subdivided into small sections representing consecutive regnal years. A specific event is mentioned for every year, and the years were probably named after the events occurring in that year, such as smiting enemies or building a temple. The level of the Nile inundation in cubits, palms, and fingers is also recorded.
An event known as shemsu Hor, ‘‘Following of Horus’’ recurred on alternate years. Its hieroglyphic classifier is the sign of the ship, and so the name may refer to a journey of the king and his entourage through Egypt. From the Second Dynasty onwards, or at least from the reign of Ninetjer, as recorded in the fourth register of the Palermo Stone, the Following of Horus was an event used for ‘‘counting’’ (tjenut), a word which in the Fourth Dynasty annals seems to have replaced the original shemsu Hor. ‘‘Counting’’ became the standard way of numbering regnal years: within a reign ‘‘the year of the nth occasion of counting’’ (e. g. renpet sep n tjenut) would be followed by ‘‘the year after’’ that variable number. This system was abandoned after the Old Kingdom, when regnal years were numbered consecutively, and renpet sep became a seemingly meaningless expression. According to the annals of the Third Dynasty it was gold and fields that were counted, and in those of the Fourth Dynasty it was prisoners and cattle from Nubia and the Libyan Desert (or simply unspecified ‘‘cattle’’). The counting thus seems to have been a biennial inventory of the government’s economic resources and of military spoils from the information gathered during a tour of the country.
Inscriptions from the late Old Kingdom mention the word ipet, another term for counting or inspection. Autobiographies in private tombs of the Sixth Dynasty refer to the inspection of government domains throughout the country, and royal decrees from the same period for the protection of temple estates stipulate that the properties of specific temples would not be subjected to such inspections, clearly a concession of fiscal importance. The word ip (or its causative sip) ‘‘to count’’ is also attested in the Middle and the New Kingdoms (see Valbelle 1987).
One important responsibility of the nomarchs and ‘‘mayors’’ of Egyptian provinces was the fiscal administration of the land and the workforce; for taxes were claimed by the central government from the mayors. Mayors and other officials, such as district councillors, fortress commanders, and scribes, are shown presenting state revenues to the vizier in the Eighteenth Dynasty tomb of Rekhmire. The decree of King Horemheb mentions contributions required from the mayors for the upkeep of royal mooring places along the Nile, places visited by the king on his annual travels to Thebes (Kruchten 1981: 98-9). According to the decree these contributions, instituted by Thutmose III, were no longer an authorized practice and were being demanded from the mayors unjustly. The mooring places are mentioned later in Papyrus Wilbour, an agrarian register from the reign of Ramesses V, and it becomes clear from this text that by this time they were institutions enjoying revenues from their own fields (Gardiner 1948: 18). These mooring places may have survived as landmarks from the ‘‘Following of Horus’’ itineraries in the earliest periods of Egyptian history.
The legal inscription in the tomb of Mose, a scribe of the temple treasury of Ptah in Memphis under Ramesses II (Gaballa 1977: 22-32), provides important information
Figure 12.3 Taxes of Upper Egypt (detail) as depicted in TT 100 (Davies 1943: pl. XXIX).
About the central registration of fields by the residence. Mose was a descendant of the military hero Neshi, who had assisted King Ahmose in the fight against the Hyksos. Neshi had been rewarded for his accomplishments with extensive grants of land, which remained in the family for many generations. But in the reign of Horemheb they had become the subject of a legal dispute. Two branches of the family, one represented by Mose’s grandmother Urnero, the other by the deputy Khay, could not agree about them. Urnero won her case, and the fields duly passed on to her son Huy and his wife Nubnofret, the parents of Mose, but after Huy’s death Khay again challenged his widow’s right to the fields. Nubnofret requested that the Great Council in Heliopolis, which was chaired by the vizier, should consult the registers of the royal treasury and the royal granary in Piramesse. She evidently expected that her name would be mentioned in them as the rightful heir to the disputed fields, but this proved not to be so. Undeterred, her son Mose pursued a claim to the land, declaring that the registers had been altered by Khay, and he was able to appeal to witnesses living on or near the family property. The end of the text is badly damaged so, although it is difficult to prove, it is assumed that Mose was probably successful.
An accompanying scene depicts him as victorious before his judges. It is, in fact, unlikely that Mose would have decorated his tomb with an account of an unsuccessful legal process.
What is significant in this episode is that the land registers of the royal treasury and granary, kept in the residence (Piramesse), were available to be consulted. The same registers are referred to in a Ramesside model letter about land providing fodder for the king’s horses (P. Sallier I. 9. 1-9; Caminos 1954: 325-8). The fact that Nubnofret expected her name to be in the registers suggests that they would have been kept up to date, and Mose’s allegation against Khay shows that tampering with them was not out of the question. Even so it is uncertain whether these registers would have included all the fertile land of Egypt, or only that in which the residence had a specific interest. The king had granted the land to the family of Mose, but it may still have been subject to taxation.
The inspections of temple estates by officials of the royal treasury has already been noted (see Special Sectors of Administration), and inspection and registration by the central government for fiscal purposes can be shown to have existed throughout Pharaonic history. The registers were concerned with royal and temple fields, with cattle and with the workforce, that is to say, only with the assets of the institutions, and perhaps only with a limited number of them. The Wilbour Papyrus mentioned above is concerned only with land subject to claims by royal and temple estates. No ‘‘land-register,’’ which would have covered all institutional and private holdings of land, can be shown to have existed in Pharaonic Egypt. The earliest possible reference to such a register of irrigated land comes from the time of Ptolemy II in 258 bc (Demotic ostracon L. S. 462.4: Bresciani 1983). Ptolemaic administration differed from the earlier pharaonic system in a number of ways, and in the longer term it seems to have aimed at a higher degree of centralization (see Chapter 13).
World History
