Early Dynastic Egypt (24 page)

BOOK: Early Dynastic Egypt

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In discussing the composition of Egyptian administration at any period, it is important to be precise in our use of vocabulary, to avoid imposing on the ancient record modern distinctions which the ancient Egyptians themselves would not have recognised (Quirke, personal communication). Particular care must be taken with the use of the word ‘title’,

since there is a tendency to describe any appellation of officialdom or administrative authority as a title. Strictly speaking, the word ‘title’ should be applied only to terms which indicate rank or distinction; by contrast, most of the ‘titles’ found in the Early Dynastic sources were probably mere descriptive terms, indicating membership of the ruling élite or a particular branch of the administration. (Compare, for example, the terms ‘civil servant’ and ‘First Secretary’, both used to designate members of the present-day British administration; strictly speaking, only the latter is a title.) However, in the absence of sufficient evidence to distinguish between the two categories, the word ‘title’ is applied in the following discussion to all appellations of office, except those few terms which were clearly used as general descriptive labels. A second point to bear in mind concerns Egyptologists’ use of the term ‘ranking title’. There has been a tendency to apply this label to terms whose significance is not properly understood, suggesting that they were used solely to designate relative status within the administrative hierarchy rather than particular offices. This may be misguided, reflecting more on our own imperfect understanding of the Egyptian language than on the ancient Egyptian administrative system. ‘Titles’ are well represented on the surviving Early Dynastic administrative documents, and they even allow the management structure of some government departments to be analysed. Specific titles relating to particular duties will be discussed under their appropriate heading. Here we will restrict ourselves to the more general designations of administrative competence.

At the most basic level, all officials employed by the administration would have required a certain degree of literacy. The use of writing as a means of political control has been described as ‘the key factor in the administration of Early Dynastic Egypt’ (Shaw and Nicholson 1995:15). Moreover, the very origins of writing in Egypt can be linked to a nascent national administration. Supervision and control of the economy on a national scale required detailed accounting, which could only be achieved by means of the written record (Postgate
et al.
1995). Hence, all administrators were scribes, and the designation ‘scribe’
(zh )
seems to have been borne by certain individuals whose low rank in the government did not permit them the use of a grander title but who were, none the less, members of the literate élite. A good example is Metjen’s father, Inpuemankh, who must have lived in the second-half of the Third Dynasty. He is described by two designations,
z3b
and
zh ,
‘noble, official’ and ‘scribe’ (Goedicke 1966). (The transliteration
zh
for ‘scribe’ is generally preferred by modern philologists; note, however, a late Second or early Third Dynasty seal-impression from the Shunet ez-Zebib which gives a phonetic spelling
zš
[Newberry 1909: pl. XXV.XVII].) The meaning of the first, not attested before the Third Dynasty, is not entirely clear. It probably indicated membership of the administrative class. The second term indicates Inpuemankh’s status as a literate administrator, but does not tell us any more about his actual responsibilities. The designation ‘scribe’ is first attested at the end of the First Dynasty on a private stela from Abydos dating to the reign of Semerkhet or Qaa (Petrie 1900: pl. XXXI.43). Further examples of the term occur in the reigns of Peribsen and Netjerikhet (Petrie 1901: pl. XXII.189; Lacau and Lauer 1965:60, no. 144, respectively). Other general administrative terms attested from the Early Dynastic period include
ỉn -hr,
‘counsellor’ (Petrie 1900: pl. XXII.30; Emery 1958: pl. 106.4);
ỉmỉ-h nt,
‘he who is at the front’ (Lacau and Lauer 1965:17, no. 23); and two connected but obscure terms from the reign of Netjerikhet,
wn-
and
h rp wn- ,
perhaps meaning ‘assistant’ and ‘controller of assistants’ (Lacau and

Lauer 1959:9, 76). The designation
ỉrỉ-h t,
‘functionary’, attested on sealings of Hetepsekhemwy and Nebra (Kaplony 1963, III: figs 294, 295; Dreyer 1993b: 11; Dreyer
et al.
1996:72, fig. 25, pl. 14.a), appears more frequently in the form
ỉrỉ-h t-nswt,
‘concerned with the king’s property’ (Weill 1908:220, 226, 256, 257–9; Junker 1939; Goedicke 1966). The precise nature of the office is not clear (for the transliteration of the title see Wood 1978:15; contra Junker 1939:70; cf. Goedicke 1966:62). The term may have designated someone with particular responsibility for palace income or property, or may simply have reflected access to the ultimate source of power.

THE ECONOMY

Two different spheres of economic administration are discernible in the Early Dynastic sources. The first involves the exploitation of Egypt’s agricultural resources, achieved by means of an organised network of royal foundations throughout the country. These land- holdings seem to have acted both as primary producers of agricultural income for the court and as collection points for the taxation levied by the state on all production in Egypt. They were thus the structural backbone of the economic system. The second sphere was concerned with the processing of government revenue and its redistribution to the various state operations which were funded in this way. These operations were carried out by the treasury, the government department with overall responsibility for the management of the economy. We shall examine each of these two administrative spheres in turn.

Royal foundations

Ostensibly, a new royal foundation was established by each king to support his mortuary cult. Seal-impressions from the royal and élite tombs of the Early Dynastic period name many of these foundations, most of which can be linked to a particular ruler. Whilst each king seems to have established a new mortuary foundation, it is clear that the foundations of earlier kings were frequently maintained. Hence, an estate founded by Huni was maintained as late as the Fifth Dynasty, while Netjerikhet’s foundation was still recognised in the Nineteenth Dynasty. As we have seen, the surviving sources for Early Dynastic administration are undoubtedly biased, and the emphasis they give to royal foundations should be regarded with caution. None the less, royal estates clearly played an important part in the apparatus of the early state, through their primary economic role in production and collection (Helck 1954:131). The gradual increase in the number of royal foundations must have brought a larger swathe of agricultural land directly under court control. The income from these land-holdings would probably have exceeded what was required to maintain the royal cult, and any surplus could have been used to support other government activities. The ideological justification for the creation of royal foundations remained divine kingship and its central importance to Egyptian civilisation. Just as the governing Egyptians in New Kingdom Nubia used state temples as agents of economic exploitation, so in Early Dynastic Egypt the victorious kings of the First Dynasty and their successors used the royal cult in the same way (Seidlmayer 1996b: 124–6). This method of imposing effective economic management on the country is

another example of the early state’s adeptness in fashioning mechanisms of rule inextricably interwoven with ideology.

In the First and Second Dynasties, most, if not all, of the royal foundations may have been located in the Delta—where they were to form the backbone for the administration of the region as a whole—and more specifically in the western half. As well as being one of the most extensive fertile areas in Egypt, it is possible that the western Delta was less densely populated and politically developed than the eastern Delta in late Predynastic times. Hence, it may have been regarded by Egypt’s new rulers as ‘conquered territory’, ripe for annexation and economic exploitation (Wilkinson 1996b: 96). Although the deity closely associated with royal foundations on Early Dynastic sealings is Ash, in later times a local god of the western desert oases, it is unlikely that royal estates would have been located in the oases themselves (contra Helck 1954:83).

Towards the end of the Third Dynasty, royal land-holdings seem to have been distributed more widely. We may discern the beginnings of the Old Kingdom’s nome- based economic system in the distribution of the small step pyramids—markers of the royal cult—erected by Huni and his successor throughout Egypt. ‘Constructing these monuments throughout the country could have served to make explicit and intelligible the ideological background of the economic demands of the state on a local level’ (Seidlmayer 1996b: 122). Recent excavations in the vicinity of one of these small pyramids, at Elephantine, have revealed an administrative building of the Third Dynasty (Seidlmayer 1996a; 1996b: 121–2). Seal-impressions from the site indicate that the building was connected with the administration of the
pr-nswt
(see below), and that it employed bureaucrats with the general titles ‘scribe’
(zh )
and ‘functionary’
(ỉrỉ-h t).
The pottery assemblage is noteworthy for its huge numbers of bread moulds and beer jars, indicating that the complex prepared and distributed basic rations to a large number of people. Both the architecture of the building and its associated artefacts point to an economic role, and more specifically to involvement in the administration of the royal estate. The complex was ideally located for such a role, being close to the river—for the loading and unloading of commodities—and near an area of cultivable land which may have belonged to the
pr-nswt.

In addition to the
pr-nswt,
which seems to have supported the royal household directly, the Early Dynastic sources distinguish two different types of land-holding associated with the maintenance of the royal cult. The first type is denoted by a crenellated oval frame enclosing the name of the foundation. The second type is indicated by a rectangular enclosure with a small building in one corner which forms the hieroglyph
hwt.
For convenience, these two types of foundation will be referred to as
domains
and
estates
respectively (Figures 4.1 and 4.2). The precise difference between the two is difficult to establish from the fragmentary sources, but there are some indications that domains and estates differed in both size and function, although both contributed income to support the royal cult and other state projects. Each
domain
was established by a particular king, above all to guarantee the maintenance of his mortuary cult. The oval frame probably represents the totality of the institution in question: its land, work-force and administrative apparatus. We may envisage domains as substantial, though not necessarily contiguous, areas of farming land in the Delta, each with its dependent communities and each served by its own bureaucracy. In contrast, an
estate (hwt)
seems to have designated a more specific institution, either a particular locality or a

foundation supplying a particular commodity. To confuse matters, the royal palace and royal tomb also seem to have been denoted by the term
hwt.
As the larger and more general economic foundations, it is domains that are attested more frequently in the inscriptions.

Figure 4.1
Royal domains. Names of royal foundations preserved on Early Dynastic seal-impressions from Abydos and Saqqara: (1)
Hr-sh ntỉ- w
(after Petrie 1901: pl. XIX.153); (2)
W3 -Hr
(after

Petrie 1900: pl. XVIII.5); (3)
tpỉ-t-w
(after Petrie 1900: pl. XXI.22); (4)
Hr-tpỉ-h t
(after Petrie 1901: pl. XVIII.139); (5)
Hr- sb3-h t
(after Petrie 1900: pl. XXVI.63);