Accounting and redistribution: The palace and mortuary cult in the Middle Kingdom, ancient Egypt

Accounting Historians Journal, The, Jun 2002 by Ezzamel, Mahmoud

Hence, responsibility for civil government during the Middle Kingdom cascaded gradually down a clearly defined hierarchy [Kemp, 1983]. The stable periods of the Middle Kingdom were characterized by a quest for structure and order effected through careful planning [David, 1986; Kemp, 1989]. Residences in large towns were redistributive sub-centers, upon which a significant proportion of the town population depended. A basic modular organization of society, where the population was divided into several distinct groups was used to spread urbanism and bureaucratic control into various parts of the country; despite the decentralized form of government, this model: ... reflects the prevailing mentality of the Middle Kingdom, which tended towards an extreme structured view of society, apparent both in an inclination to devise arithmetic calculations for every facet of economic life, and in the attempts to control human behaviour and property by means of a strict bureaucratic framework [Kemp, 1989, p. 155].

The economy of ancient Egypt was a combination of two spheres: a local subsistence and a nation-wide redistributive system. For the majority of ancient Egyptians, a household economy, or oikos, developed at the local level where one produced mainly for oneself. Ancient Egypt also developed an elaborate redistributive system. At the end of the production or trade cycle subjects delivered the crop to government centers (if they were working for the state) or paid direct taxes (if they were working for themselves). Although the bureaucracy was aimed at supporting and reproducing the monarchy, the social system in ancient Egypt exhibited clear elements of a patriarchy that was perceived to ensure the protection of its subjects.

These administrative arrangements echo those identified by Polanyi [1944, 1947, 1977] as characteristic of redistributive economies. Although trading in local markets existed [Janssen, 1975] no market price mechanism was developed; rather, the economy was regulated in the main via the administrative machinery. A significant measure of centricity (i.e. goods flowing into the center and out of it again) was established to facilitate the operation of state bureaucracy, but the system was not monolithic. The palace played a major role in administering the economy, but it was supported by a complex network of pious foundations or religious institutions. Each of these foundations enjoyed a quasi-autonomous status, and each was involved in collecting and storing revenues, and in distributing them in the form of rations or wages [Kemp, 1989]. In summary the economic resources of ancient Egypt divided into three domains: the Crown, the temple, and the private.

It would be misleading to suggest that the Middle Kingdom was a monolithic period with essentially the same economic, political and social attributes. Because of diversity within each of these domains, Egyptologists have divided this period into an `early phase', beginning with the start of the Middle Kingdom in 2050 B.C. to the end of the reign of Senusret 11 around 1878 B.C., and a"late phase' beginning with the reign of his successor Senusret III to the end of the Middle Kingdom at about 1780 B.C. This discontinuity corresponds to the latter half of the Twelfth Dynasty onwards, which is the era from which is drawn most of the historical material examined in this paper. That such division is important has been underscored by Quirke [1990, p. 21: "The division of the Middle Kingdom into 'early' and 'late' phases covers material culture and textual expression, and therefore represents a substantial change in which political motives need not have played a primary role."