Taxation

From at least the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 Bc) onwards, the government of Egypt revolved mainly around the collection of taxes by the central and provincial administrators. It is important, however, to try to distinguish between tax and rent and between regular and (1(1 hoc taxes. The pai. i;rmo. stone and other surviving documents suggest that there were biennial censuses of agricultural produce so that the ‘treasury’ could assess the amount of tax to be paid by individuals (although even these censuses may have actually taken place at irregular intervals). Because of the nonmonetary economy that operated for almost

Detail of (I fragment of wall-painting from the tomb-chapel of Nehamitn, showing cattle being paraded in front of a scribe (at the extreme left of the upper register) so that a tax assessment can be made. 18lh Dynasty, c. HOO DC, painted plaster from Thebes, it. 58.S cm. (ti i37976)

The whole of the Pharaonic period, taxes were paid in kind. 'Fhe surviving scenes of daily life in private tombs show that scribes were sent out to measure the precise areas of land under cultivation and to calculate meticulously the numbers of livestock from geese to cattle.

The seriousness with which this system w-as enforced is indicated by such evidence as the .scene depicted in the 6th-Dynasty masiaua tomb of the vizier Khentika at Saqqara (f.2300 Bc), showing five men in the process of being punished for corruption in the collection of taxes. A painting in the tomb chapel of Menna, dating to the reign of Thutmose iv (1400-1390 Bc), shows a stock scene of the asse. ss-ment of produce and collection of taxes by .SCRIBES, and the subsequent beating of a farmer who has not paid his tax, while Papyrus Lansing, a well-know'n 20th-Dynasty text (now in the British Museum), describes the severe penalties suffered by a defaulting farmer and his family, despite their failed harvest. The tomb of an 18th-Dynasty vizier called REKILMIRA (r. l425 bc) is decorated with a portrayal of the reception of taxes on behalf of the king, including detailed descriptions of specific amounts of such products as cakes, barley, honey, reed mats, gold ingots and linen. It is interesting to note that the scribes themselves usually seem to have been exempt from taxation, although it has been pointed out that the tax was generally levied on agricultural produce, which the non-farming scribes would rarely have owned in the first place. ‘Exemption decrees’ could be issued to individuals and institutions; these are our chief source of knowdedge of taxation.

.. H. Gardiner, ‘A protest against unjustified tax dcmand. s’, RdEA-, (1951), 115-24.

B. J. Kj:.ip, Ancient Egypt: anatomy of'a civilization (London, 1989), 234-8.