Trade

Ancient Lgypr did not have a monetary economy until the end of the Late Period (747-332 I3C), and indeed the Egyptians of the Pharaonic period had no word or concept corresponding to the modem category of ‘economy’. The economic aspects of their lives were embedded in the social system as a whole, and trading primarily took a form akin to bartering. The system, however, was very sophisticated, and, at least as early as the New Kingdom (1550-1069 bc), it was related to a definite scale of value based on weights of metal (see xuiASLRE. MKNT). Copper was the main standard for. small transactions, and silver and gold were used for those of higher value. Fragments of the metals themselves were sometimes used in transactions, but not in such a preci. se way as to constitute coinage.

Most of the evidence for trade among ordinary Egyptians of the New Kingdom comes from the workmen’s community at nr. iii i:i.-Mr. DiNA. It seems that each given commodity had a value that could be expressed in terms of numbers of copper deben. Many transactions therefore seem to have taken the form of a calculation of the value of the two sets of goods that were being exchanged, in order to ascertain that each was worth the same amount oi'deben. Some Egyptologists consider that these prices w-ere fairly stable and resulted from traditional usage, whereas others have argued that the prices were fixed much more fluidly through the supply and demand of the market. Whether ancient economies should be subject to ‘formalist’ (market-oriented) or ‘substantivist’ (non-market) analysis is a matter of some controversy in anthropology, particularly where ancient states are concerned, and in Egypt a case can be made for either. Barry Kemp has been able to show that the process of exchange was an accepted part of social relations, and so helps to bring the two schools of thought closer together.

Records of bartering transactions necessarily show the exchange of a number of items of relatively low value in order to buy something of a higher value. Clearly this system would work onlv in a communitv in which people were prepared to be flexible about what they took in exchange, otherwise an enormous chain of smaller exchanges would have been necessary in order to obtain goods purely for the purpose of a transaction, and the wLole system would have become impractical. The vendor usuallv seems to have tried to ensure that some of the goods obtained in exchange could, if necessary, bc bartered again in the future. .Many of the surviving records of transactions at Deir el-Medina list a bed (valued at 20-25 deben) among the items traded; it is unlikely that households would actually have wished to receive and store numerous beds, therefore it is usually assumed that the bed was included in the record of the transaction simply as surety, to fitcilitate the exchange. In this wa, Egyptian economic activity can be seen to be the material expression of social relation. s. fl'he economist Karl Polanyi and the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins have shown that in many societies commodities may have one pricA; for those within the community and another for outsiders; it is possible that such a system operated in Pharaonic Egypt.

Foreign trade probably also operated mainly through barter. The expedition to the African country of punt, which is recorded in the mortuary temple of llatshepsut (147.3-1458 bc) at Deir el-Bahri, seems to depict the operation of ‘silent trade’, whereby each of the parties gradually laid out more or fewer items until both felt satisfied with their return on the deal. This system is particularly likely to have been used when dealing with relatively unsophisticated foreigners, who would have had no knowledge of the prices of objects or goods within Egypt.

Trade with developed states in the Mediterranean and the Near East seems to have taken a different form. Here goods of high value were regularly exchanged by way of diplomatic gifts. The am.. na i. kitkr. s contain lists of goods sent by foreign rulers to Egvpt, and requests by them for gifts such as gold statues. The luxury goods acquired in this way could often be given to loyal courtiers as rewards, serving as marks of status conferred b the king,

Many tomb-paintings in the New Kingdom depict the arrival of trade goods, but thev often portray them as if they were gifts given as tribute. In practice traders from Crete, and elsewhere in the Greek world, visited Egypt to exchange goods, and were no doubt ihem-selves visited by Egyptian traders (or at least traders bearing ligyptian goods such as those found on the Bronze Age shipwrecks at Cape Gelidonya and Ulu Burun). Egyptian traders themselves are not well attested, although the term shwty apears to bc used to refer to merchants. There are also references to the sending of royal trading missions throughout the Pharaonic period; these w'ere usually organized by officials serving as ‘expedition leaders’, from Harkhuf, who travelled to. Africa in the time of Pep> n (2278-2184 bc), to the scmi-ficiional character Wenamun, who was suppo. sed to have been sent to the Syrian port of BVBl. os in the time of iiKRtnoR (r. l070 bc).

When the word shwty was used to identify traders in the New Kingd{)m, they were always state employees. Nevertheless, there seems to have been a level of trade that was intermediate between the international commerce of the highest courtly officials and the local bartering of the workmen. This is demonstrated by numerous finds of Mycenaean pottery at sites such as ei.-am a, wFere its occurrence outside purely royal contexts perhaps indicates that it arrived through Mycenaean merchants or Egyptian middlemen. At any rate, there may well have been unofficial exchanges between Egyptians and members of the retinues of visiting foreign potentatc. s, just as the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski recorded among the peoples of the Pacific.

In the Late Period (747-332 bc) foreign trade was dominated by grf. f.ks, and Egyptian

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In the ;ems to oods ol way of contain Egypu as gold his w;n tiers as nf'erred

Rulers controlled them by confining them to trading cities such as nalkratls. During the 29th Dynasty the first coinage was introduced into Egypt, which was to lead to a full monetary economy in the Ptolemaic period, thus effecti ely beginning the process of integrating the Nile valley into the earl)’ monetary economy of the Mediterranean world.

B. Mai. inow. sk], Argonauts of the Uesteru Pacific (London, 1922).

K. Poi. wvi, ‘The economy as instituted process’, Trade ami mark'd hi the early empires, ed. K. Polanyi, C. Arensberg and II. Pearson (Glencoe, IL, 1957).

D. M. Di(), ‘The transplantation of Punt incense trees in Egypt',./ii i 5.5 (1969), 55-65.

M. S i ii. iNS, Stone age economics (London, 1974). J. J. J Assi-;x, Comminliiy prices from the Ramessid (Leiden, 1975).

M. G. R-ASQIk.!';, ‘Papyrological evidence for Ptolemaic and Roman trade with India’, Proceedings of the Ml International Congress of Papyrologists (London, 1975), 241—6.

S. AlI-..m, ‘Wie dcr Altiigypter in dcr Zeii des Neuen Reiches kaufte und erkaufte’. Das Allertnm 27(1981), 233-40.

J. Padro, ‘Le role dc TEgyptc dans les relations commerciale, s d’Orient el d’Occident au premier milienaire’,,45.fi-71 (1987), 213-22.

B. J. Ke.!P, Ancient Egypt: anatomy of a civilization (London, 1989), 232—60.