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

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

The discontinuity occurred when Senusret III embarked on his Nubian campaign. Seeking to secure Egypt's southern borders, he had a channel cut at the First Cataract (near Egypt's southern borders with Nubia) to allow navigation during low Nile levels. This led effectively to the "creation of a new Egypt in the form of a navigable Nile from the Second Cataract to the Mediterranean." [ibid., pp. 2-3]. But such extension of the Egyptian borders was not only of political significance; it also had strong economic implications, for it rendered easier the development and monitoring of economic activities throughout Egypt.

As Quirke [ibid., p. 2] has put it "Although invisible, the order of economic relations and patterns of transport and communication are transformed at a profound level by the Nubian policy of Senusret III. The policy may be considered both a product of the trend towards greater precision and a major factor for change."

This decisive break was accompanied by major administrative changes. Although some of these changes may have their genesis in the early Twelfth's Dynasty, they took more definitive forms during the reign of Senusret III. Many tasks became defined in more concrete terms, as reflected in new administrative titles and expressions for permanent official positions. Previous titles with fairly broad mandates became far more specific, and some completely new title designations were invented. Indeed, James [ 1985, p.51] has argued that "during the Twelfth Dynasty a complete reorganization of provincial administration was under-taken by King Sesostris [Senusret] III. As a result, the old system of hereditary nomarchs was destroyed and replaced by a bureaucratic machinery, the operators of which owed their allegiance to the king in his residence". Even though Quirke [ibid., p. 31 is probably correct in stating that "The innovations may not amount to new methods of operation so much as represent a more exact embodiment of existing practice", the critical point here is the formalization of such practices into specific, carefully defined titles. What looms large here is the visible hand of the administration reproducing and reaffirming itself through the further writing and pro a ation of administrative titles.

The scope of the current paper does not permit a full analysis of the formalisation of refined, more specific administrative titles in late Middle Kingdom [see Quike, 1990]. Suffice it to list some examples of these titles: Interior Overseer of the Inner Palace; Scribe of the Outer Palace; Scribe of the Fields; Treasurer; Deputy Treasurer; Trusted Sealer; and Servant of the Treasury Steward. The use of these, and other titles, was an addition to titles inherited from the early Middle Kingdom and the Old Kingdom, such as Vizier; Deputy Vizier; and Mayor.

However, while such delineation of narrower definitions of tasks and titles promoted a much clearer distinction, specialization, and clarification of lines of responsibility and accountability, one major limitation is the potential increase in administrative rigidity. As Quirke [1990, pp. 80-81] has observed, to minimize this limitation, the senior administrators of the late Middle Kingdom also made use of non-specific titles. We will witness some of this administrative genius in relation to different types of titles when the summary accounts of Papyrus Boulaq 18 are examined later. Below, however, I intend to explore the roles of the palace and the temple in the redistributive economy of the Middle Kingdom. At this point, it will suffice to say that this `administrative revolution' has been interpreted by James [1985, pp. 136; see also Ezzamel, 1994] as the main cause underlying the massive expansion in the number of scribes during the Middle Kingdom: