History of Money, Banking, and Trade
A historical look at the development and evolution of money, banking, and trade. From the ancient civilizations to the present.
History of Money, Banking, and Trade
Navigating the Nile: Ancient Egypt's Mythology, Engineering, and the Art of Economic Power
Embark on a time-traveling adventure back to ancient Egypt, a land shrouded in myth yet foundational in developing economic systems that resonate through ages. Our exploration is not a mere recount of history but a revelation of how mythology and political power entwined to sculpt a civilization's approach to trade and governance. From the saga of gods like Osiris, Set, and Horus to the enigmatic ruler Menes, we uncover the narrative threads that bound the Upper and Lower kingdoms into a single economic powerhouse.
As we sail down the Nile, the ingenuity of Egyptian engineering unfolds before us. Marvel at the precision of their dams, the bounty of their crops, and the prowess of their trading vessels—all testaments to a society where elite control and technological advancements went hand in hand. Yet, beyond the physical marvels lies an intricate web of hieroglyphs, a language of power wielded by scribes to document triumphs and transactions alike. We dissect the role of this ancient script in both bolstering trade and reinforcing social hierarchies, while also peering into the meticulous world of Egyptian weights and measures, the unsung heroes of economic stability.
Concluding our odyssey, the spotlight turns to Egypt's economic structures—the debon as a unit of trade, the rare use of barter, and the emergence of credit systems. Through the lens of the ages, from the introduction of silver to the redistribution system akin to early Sumerian economy, we trace the evolution of Egyptian wealth and power. Join us as we not only recount but critically analyze this bygone era's legacy, unveiling insights into a civilization whose echoes can still be heard in our own financial and trade practices today.
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Welcome Podcast Listener. I am Mike D and this is the History of Money, banking and Trade Podcast. My goal is to expand your knowledge of the history and evolution of trade, along with money, banking and credit, from ancient civilizations all the way to the present. I truly hope you find these episodes to be informative and entertaining. In the last show we discussed much of ancient Egypt prior to unification. As part of the discussion, we went through the earliest civilizations and followed it right through to almost Dynasty Zero. Now these episodes are a bit challenging at times because Egypt never really felt the need to develop the vast trade networks and proto-money like we saw in Mesopotamia, and this is due to the fact that Egypt was very much self-sufficient. Now this self-sufficiency was viewed as wealth from an outside perspective. The reason being was Egypt could grow so much cereals that other civilizations would have been completely envious and wished they could have had access to that much foodstuffs. And in ancient civilizations having a lot of food meant having a lot of money. You kind of equate the two together.
Speaker 1:Now, before we get into the unification of Egypt, I thought it would be a good time to give you some kind of understanding of the mythology that Egypt was kind of built upon. Now, egypt, like a lot of other ancient societies, had their own mythological origin story, and for Egypt, they would have noted that they were once ruled by Osiris Osiris now. He was born shortly after the world had been created. Osiris was made of the earth and married his sister, isis. Isis was the goddess of magic and healing and fertility. Now, before I get into mythology a little bit, it's important to note that the Egyptians believed that their god married their sister, and this is precisely why it was so common for pharaohs to marry their sisters, because if it's good for the gods, then obviously it's good for the pharaohs and, of course, the royals as well. But getting back to mythology, one of the most important gods was Osiris's brother, set, the god of chaos. It was said that Set created a coffin which was secretly made to fit only Osiris. Set was then able to trick Osiris into lying down inside the coffin and once he did, set immediately sealed it shut and then threw the coffin into the Nile River. So now Osiris is out of the way and Set was able to rule as the pharaoh and he was able to bring chaos to Egypt. Now you have Isis, who was Osiris's wife and was also the sister of both of them. Now she was completely grief stricken and she wept tears for years. And as the years passed, her tears built up so much that it led to the flooding of the Nile. So now Osiris left behind Isis and the son, oris, who was to carry on with his new calling as the lord of the underworld and judge of the dead, isis. Now she is fearing for her son's safety, so she hid Horus and isolated him in a swamp land until he was old enough to vie for the throne.
Speaker 1:Since Set had plunged Egypt into chaos, the lands of Egypt were not unified. War and fighting dominated the land, with peace being a thing of the past. Horus, seeing Egypt in chaos, decided it was time to take Set on for the throne. The battle between the two gods was referred to as the contendings of Horus and Set. Horus was eventually able to defeat Set, but some claim that Horus did not kill Set, but spared his life and drove him from the land of Egypt. Horus was able to bring peace and stability back to Egypt, but he was also able to unify Egypt into one kingdom. Order was restored. The people welcomed Horus as their new king. So that is the origin story for Egypt according to the mythology.
Speaker 1:Now, what is interesting is, the Egyptologists kind of believed that the story was created to mirror the real unification of Egypt sometime around 3150 BCE, and prior to unification, egypt was essentially two different countries in one. So you have upper and lower Egypt. Each would have basically been its own little country, and prior to that, egypt was a lot more fragmented, where you would have had different battles and different local kings and warlords, and they would go at it with the village over or whatever, but there was a lot of little battles and just things basically slowly get unified over the years until you end up with Egypt, one gigantic country that was ruled over by one king. Now, according to Maneth, though, who was an Egyptian priest who lived in the Talomaic kingdom of the 3rd century BCE, egypt well, according to him, it was unified by a king who went by the name of Menes. Now he was believed to have ruled upper and lower Egypt for over 60 years, until he was killed by a hippopotamus. Now that feels somewhat surprising that a king would get killed by a wild animal, but I guess that would make a lot of sense, because the hippopotamus are extremely aggressive animals. In fact, I've seen a video where a baby hippo was basically towing with a large crocodile, so that kind of really says all you need to know about how aggressive and strong these animals are.
Speaker 1:But anyway, the idea of Menes being the first king that unified Egypt, well, it's a very controversial topic, to be honest with you. Some say he was nothing more than just a myth, considering the archaeological evidence is basically lacking at this point. The fact is, the inscriptions that were left were contradictory to what Maneth, though, had originally stated, because the name that kept coming up was not Menes, but instead was a southern king in upper Egypt known as Narmur. Some believe Narmur and Menes may actually be the same person, so maybe we're getting the correct story, but somehow the names got mixed up or whatever, or maybe Narmur was known as something else prior to this.
Speaker 1:Either way, though, the story seems to be that Narmur was able to march towards the north and launch his invasion into lower Egypt, of which he told his army that they needed to fight for in order to control the valuable trade routes that bring wood, wine and incense to southern Egypt or upper Egypt. The Narmur palates states that Narmur successfully united the lands of Egypt, therefore crowning himself as the first pharaoh of lower and upper Egypt in the process. It isn't 100% clear if the invasion resulted in the north fighting or peacefully giving up, but it appears that it was most likely a peaceful process, but honestly, we're not 100% certain at this point. Anyway, there was an inscription on the tomb of Narmur that shows a dignitary from the Levant, who stopped to pay homage before the Egyptian king. The reason was, at the time, egypt and Levant were busy engaging in quite a bit of trade, so, in reality, narmur was able to bring stability into the region, as he was able to secure its borders and, with it, bring hegemony over the Nile Valley, and he was also able to increase trade links.
Speaker 1:As such, the early Egyptian state witnessed a discernible rise in overall prosperity, but unfortunately, this wasn't evenly spread across the population. We know this because the cemeteries that were built in this time show a stark difference between the rich and the poor, as the poor essentially had nothing, whereas the rich would have a lot of objects buried with them that they could use in their afterlife. The greatest beneficiary by far was the state itself, and when I say state, I mean the palace and all the land that was controlled by the royals. Now, all the while, the individuals in the communities continued to farm their land as they had done before, but now they found themselves with the landlord who expected rent in return for the use of his property. Now, toby Wilkinson wrote a great book called the Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt, and what he basically said was to be successful over the long run, a regime must also exercise effective economic control to reinforce its claims of its legitimacy. So without effective economic policies, ancient societies, just like modern ones, could easily collapse.
Speaker 1:Homer and his immediate successors were faced with the challenge of ruling a vast realm by the close of the early dynastic period. The government presided over a centrally controlled command economy where the producers of the goods would have their economic output redistributed back to the people. In addition, the palace would be responsible for the royal financing of building projects on an absolutely huge scale. You have to think about that, that some of the pyramids that were built and would become the largest structures in the world for literally thousands of years afterward, like, for example, the Great Pyramid of Giza, which was at a height of 165 meters or 481 feet well, that was the tallest building in the world for over 3800 years and it wouldn't get surpassed until the year 1311, when the Lincoln Cathedral was built in England. But it's important to note that in order to build on such a grand scale, you cannot do this unless you have a strong central planning authority or you have advanced engineering skills and, more importantly, you got to have strong economic output in order to fund these projects.
Speaker 1:So initially, the economy was essentially run by the kings or the kings relatives, but eventually the economy grew to the point that the king could no longer rely on family to competently run in the ever growing Egyptian economy. Therefore, a bureaucracy was needed and it grew, and this would have grown into non-family and basically non-clan or tribal individuals who demonstrated the ability for such activities that were drawn into the administration of academic and economic and even political activities on behalf of the king. Now, of course, this wasn't something that happened overnight. Instead, it was something that would have been developed over several kingdoms after Narmor and it wouldn't really be fully pronounced until the 4th dynasty, which would have started around 2600 BCE. So let's not forget where we are in the story. Egypt was recently unified, so it was able to finally obtain economies of scale and therefore became an economic and military powerhouse in the region.
Speaker 1:Now, in a weird way, early Egypt has kind of like an early American feel to it with regards to trade arrangements because, like in the United States, early agricultural surpluses of the south were often traded for manufactured goods that were made up north. Now this is a completely over simplification of it and I understand that, but what I'm getting at is the different regions of Egypt would have kind of specialized in certain goods that they were able to produce and sort of like with the United States as well. Now, additionally, since Egypt was now unified and they were becoming a military powerhouse, they also wanted to increase its trade. They would have also looked to the south, towards Nubia as well. But this is ancient Egypt, so it wasn't like they were going to go into Nubia and set up these great trade agreements. No, I said it was more alright, they got stuff we need, let's go down there and take it, let's go plunder. So they would have sent military campaigns down south into Nubia. So, as I kind of previously mentioned, or at least alluded to prior, they would have also set up a northeastern trading route that would have flourished with the Levant. So Egypt was increasing its trade to the south and also to the northeast, and I would say trade to the south, that might be a little bit generous. They did set up trade agreements, but it was initially kind of more like military campaigns, but eventually it turned into good trading routes as well.
Speaker 1:So while this is all going on, the Sahara Desert is continuing to slowly encroach upon the Egyptians. It was a gradual change, so it's possible that no one really noticed this. Climate change meant that the Nile would become more unpredictable in many aspects than it was before. So the Egyptians needed the gods to step in and pacify nature, and they would have done this through various offerings to their gods. In doing so, the Pharaoh would become the one true priest, or the high priest, and the other priests would become key components and they would have placed themselves as the unifying force around which continued economic success depended upon from the gods. So, in other words, religion and economic forces kind of coalesced to basically enrich the kingdom.
Speaker 1:And If you recall from the discussions we had regarding Sumer, the relationship between religion and finance, well, it was vital, and it's vital with Egypt as well, and Just like in Mesopotamia, the temples well, that was where most of the commercial documents were created and housed there. So you have a lot of similarities between what was going on in ancient Egypt and also what was going on in Mesopotamia. Now, it's quite possible that the reason why you see a lot of similarities in this respect is because it's quite possible that a Lot of information was being crisscrossed across each other and, you know, someone comes up with a good idea in Mesopotamia, it gets passed off to the Egyptians and vice versa. So it's quite possible that the Egyptians learned from the people of Mesopotamia that the temple is the perfect place to run a bank or administrative office. Now, outside of the religious aspect, it was also during this time period that Egypt's engineering feats were really kind of what made Egypt Egypt and what separated Egypt's economy and civilizations from others, and really was set on a path that quickly surpassed nearly every civilization.
Speaker 1:Up to that point, egypt, like the people of Sumer at the time, relied heavily on the flooding of their rivers, the Nile's annual flood, which was really known as the inundation. While it was really what makes the Egyptian civilization even possible, just like in Mesopotamia, its muddy settlement was what provided the rich farmland. However, the Egyptians still needed to find a way to harvest the river and Manage their agriculture in an easy way. That was also simple but effective. But in reality, a lot of ancient Egyptians really owe a huge thanks to its aquatic engineers, as they were the ones that really figured out how to control the Nile, and this first step was Pretty much the most basic thing that you could think of. They would have built these huge dams around the cities, and the first city dam was built around Memphis around 3000 BCE. Now, these dams were designed to essentially be a barrier that would have protected the whole entire city. So this first dam would have protected Memphis and Would have kept it dry During the floods but, more importantly, allowed the people of Memphis, along with the other cities and towns, to control the water supply. So when the Nile flooded, the city would be protected, as the water would just basically be diverted around the city. In addition, the ancient engineers of Egypt also designed and Built a vast canal system that would have provided irrigation to the farms itself.
Speaker 1:As Such, the ancient Egyptians were able to cultivate and consume wheat, flags, papyrus and other crops around the Nile. But, probably just as important, these excess commodities were produced in such large numbers that they were able to trade the excess amounts within Egypt and Also trade partners in foreign lands. Disability to trade these much needed commodities really helped secure Egypt's hegemony and trading relationships with other countries and Probably and more importantly, would have contributed to the economic and political stability within Egypt. This rich soil of the Nile Valley allowed wheat to grow faster than anywhere else in the world, producing enough grain to feed an estimated one million people at the time of Dynasty Zero. In addition, egypt, and especially Nubia well, they had large natural reserves of gold, which was highly coveted in the death industry of Egypt, along with its trade partners. Also, the inundation brought the much needed mud that was the material used to make the mud bricks that were ultimately used for the building materials of their homes and temples and even palaces in. In addition, the marshy Nile allowed for the growth of papyrus, which was the raw material for paper.
Speaker 1:Now I personally have mixed feelings about this because, while I understand the papyrus is ultimately better for written language, it also degrades much easier than, say, clay tablets. In Mesopotamia, therefore, a lot of great information was lost due to this degradation. But degradation wasn't really the main concern. Really, on a honesty, the main concern was fire. So if fire were to hit a Library that was filled with papyrus scrolls, well, that's it, they're done, they're gone. But if fire were to hit a temple that house clay tablets, well it's quite possible that there would be kind of minimal damage done to them. So what I'm ultimately getting at is it's a lot easier to lose great information that was written on papyrus as compared to the clay tablets in Mesopotamia.
Speaker 1:So the Nile was responsible for the Egyptians' ability to farm the land and build houses and temples and the palaces, but it was also a great major highway used for trade. But in order to effectively use the Nile, the Egyptians had to design boats that can move up and down the Nile, from Lower Egypt to Upper Egypt, from Nubia in the south to the Mediterranean, to the north and even beyond. And that doesn't even include the fact that if you go into Eastern Egypt, you can use the Red Sea as a means of transportation and trade. So ultimately, the ability to engineer quality boats would have been very vital and the boat building process obviously evolved over the years. The original boats were nothing more than reed boats that were essentially bundles of reeds and they would tie them together and they would essentially make a boat out of it. They weren't very sturdy and strong, but they were effective for moving small amounts of people or very minimal amount of goods up and down the Nile, but honestly, it was not very effective for trade. So ultimately, the Egyptians had to design and build a boat that would be much sturdier and would be able to carry much larger loads, because the reed boats just weren't cutting it. Therefore, the Egyptians kind of figured out that you could take timber and put it together with reeds acting almost like ropes that would tie the pieces of timber together, and this resulted in a more modern looking wooden boat that was very much capable of hauling goods up and down the Nile.
Speaker 1:Now, in order to get the boats to be built, they needed to import timber. For that they would trade with people of modern day Lebanon, as they had huge cedar trees and abundance up there. So what the Egyptians did was they would import cedar from the Levant. So the timber is flowing in from the north and the Egyptians are using this raw material to make much larger and sturdier boats. So the Egyptians would then go to the south and upper Egypt and even in the Nubia and export raw materials such as gold and ivory and incense and ship it up to the Levant or even out to Libya, and this is how the basic trade would have worked for the timber industry initially. Now, unfortunately, most of the trade would have basically only benefited the elites and not really the commoners. So it kind of has a modern feel to it, I guess you could say. But it is worth noting that around 3000 BCE that you really start to see cities developing in Egypt, along with other cities in Mesopotamia and even Anatolia, while the while Europe was practically living in the Stone Age, as they still had very small, fragmented settlements and haven't really even closely approached the cities that you see in Egypt and Mesopotamia by this point.
Speaker 1:Now, the one thing that really separated Egypt out from the other ancient civilizations at this time was the fact that they were so close to the Sahara Desert. That meant that they were a little bit more isolated from other civilizations. So, for example, the Babylonians had to contend with the Assyrians and the Samarians and the Hittites and even the Elamites, because all those civilizations were close by, relatively speaking. Another thing is, egypt was a lot more self-sufficient in comparison to those other civilizations that I just mentioned. The reason why those other civilizations were often resource poor in whatever they needed, where Egypt typically had an abundance of a lot of the resources that they required. But the biggest thing that they had is they had access to a lot of foodstuffs. So when you're not starving, you might not be as desperate as compared to other civilizations might be.
Speaker 1:So trade may not have been as important to the Egyptians as it was, to say, the people in Mesopotamia because, like I said, they didn't have a lot of natural resources, so they had to basically import all the goods that they really needed that could have been used for finished products. They did have good, rich, luvial soil, but they didn't have a means to basically control their rivers the way the Egyptians were able to do it. But I don't want to come across as basically saying trade didn't mean anything to the Egyptians, because of course it meant a lot to Egyptians. They still needed to import a lot of materials that they didn't have. I just talked about the importation of timber. They didn't have access to raw timber.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, trade was definitely needed, but I get the sense that trade was a lot more important for the people in Mesopotamia than, say, it was in Egypt and in part, it could be not just the lack of raw materials. It's also the fact that they had the two rivers, the Adir-Fredes and the Tigris, and getting goods up and down may have been a little easier, considering the fact that other civilizations were closer by and Egypt was a little bit more isolated than the other civilizations. But in the end I mean by the end of the first dynasty of Egypt trade was able to increase, in large part due to the fact that Egypt was now a more centralized bureaucracy. Its biggest trade partners were its neighbors who were in the Levant, which would have been the Northeast, and then you have Nubia to the south, you have Libya to the west of it and, as for the Levant, egypt had established trade colonies in Canaan, along with trade colonies in Syria. In addition, egypt had established overland trade routes from the Nile to the Red Sea by using what kind of the Mesopotamians had done, where they would have used a large number of donkeys, and they would have traveled overland by using that, because they're a good pack of animals that could carry a lot of goods, not as strong as camels, but donkeys are still effective nonetheless. Most of these trade agreements were made on peaceful terms.
Speaker 1:However, there were some that were made through military campaigns. Specifically, the Egyptians led campaigns into Nubia around 3000 BCE, of which I kind of alluded to previously. The thing about Nubia was they had tremendous natural resources, with gold being the most coveted. In fact, egypt always seemed to have a presence on the border of Nubia, even if they had good or bad relations with them. Now it's speculated that Egypt always wanted a military presence near Nubia so that they couldn't ensure the safety of trade, especially if it was gold being extracted from Nubia. In fact, if Nubia rejected or rebelled against the Egyptians, there would almost certainly be a military campaign led into Nubia to secure the trade centers. So you could tell Nubia was very important to the Egyptians ability to get gold, which was very important in the death industry, but also their neighbors coveted it, so it was a great trade piece.
Speaker 1:A lot of what is known about trade comes directly from the tomb inscriptions and other texts. The Egyptian word for riverbank Mert is often used with the same meaning as marketplace, so that gives you a good idea where trade was happening. Also, tomb paintings and inscriptions verify that such places were located on the banks of rivers. The boots depicted in the scene show men as well as women that were trading. The reasons why we saw both men and women is because women had a lot more freedoms in Egypt as compared to other societies like that in the Levant, and sadly, egyptian women probably had more freedoms than some women in certain societies today. So it kind of took a step backwards.
Speaker 1:At certain places they didn't have a standard currency, but then again no one did around 3000 BCE. They certainly didn't have any coins, because coins won't be developed for another 2500 years. So during this time period workers tended to be paid in kind, which meant they would have been paid in some kind of foodstuffs or drink or oil or even other goods and services. In fact, sheep were kind of an early form of currency. Sometimes they would find gold pieces that have been found that are shaped like sheep. So you can see how important sheep were right. If gold is important and sheep are important, why you combine them together and you have golden sheep that you can pass off as some kind of currency or something you can trade with. So we're talking the first dynasty, dynasty Zero, and this would have been around 3000 BCE. And really it's during this time period that kind of separated Sumer from all the other ancient civilizations, because this was the time when Sumer had created their cuneiform writing. Now, if you recall, written language was essentially designed to facilitate business transactions and was an early ledger system, so that would have had a huge impact on trade.
Speaker 1:Egypt had an advance their writing systems as far as the Sumerians had during their first few dynasties, but instead what Egypt used were simple seal impressions and other hieroglyphs. An example of early writing were labels found on jars of imported goods from the Levant and Anatolia. In sites found in the Levant, archaeologists have found pottery stamped with the cipher of Narmur, along with seal impressions with hieroglyphs that testify to the presence of Egyptian officials outside of Egypt and into this local region. The thought was that the Samarians had influenced Egypt, as writing was swiftly embraced by Egypt's early rulers, who recognized its potential, not least for accounting transactions, like the Samarians, though, but it could have been the other way around. It's possible that the Egyptian influence was on Sumer. Either way. No one is really sure. When hieroglyphs were developed, the earliest writings to be discovered in Egypt were on bone labels from about 150 years before Narmur.
Speaker 1:The biggest difference was in Sumer, writing was an accounting tool, where, as in Egypt, the accounting aspect may not have been as important, but the king still viewed this writing as an economic management tool, as they could show ownership over certain goods, especially when they're commuting this to foreign kings. Therefore, any good that would have entered or left the royal treasury would have been stamped with the king's cipher, which was his horrors name. Furthermore, these objects would have been stamped with important details such as the amount of particular good or where it is to be sent to. So, in other words, if certain items were destined to be in the king's tomb, it would be labeled as such and, just like in Sumer, a scribe class would have been developed, which would have been from the elite class, and in Egypt's case, literacy was only for a very small percentage of the population, since it would have been just elites.
Speaker 1:Now, I went over this briefly when I was talking about Sumer, and it makes a lot of sense why it would have been kind of an elitist profession, because you would have had to go to school to learn how to read and write, and the only people that can afford to send their kids to school for years would have been people that had the means to do it. So it makes a lot of sense that, in order to become a scribe, you would have to come from an elite background, but either way, even if Egypt only had a small percentage of people that can read and write, it still would have transformed the Egyptians' local and international trade, just like writing had done in Sumer and Mesopotamia. Also, the development of Egyptian hieroglyphs really helped archaeologists and anthropologists catalog good, such as pottery, that were Egyptian in origin but were found in foreign lands, such as in the Levant. Therefore, these archaeologists could determine that there was a vast amount of trade between Egypt and other Near Eastern kingdoms due to the fact that the writings from Egypt could essentially tell the specific details, including the fact that the pottery found was not locally made pottery but was acquired in trade. In addition, certain seals of high government officials would also indicate that Egypt would be the governmental presence in the lands outside of Egypt. So, for example, by reading certain inscriptions in Gaza, archaeologists are able to tell that the Egyptian court officials had established its own supply center, for which the Egyptian caravans would have used en route to their other destinations in the Levant or even Mesopotamia, or up into Anatolia and beyond, and this would be the same thing for other ancient societies that developed writing as well.
Speaker 1:Now, moving away from the writing aspect, one of the most important objects that was discovered was that of the Palermo stone. Now, this stone would have recorded the height of the annual inundation of the Nile every single year. So each year the scribe would write down how high or low the Nile was for that year. This was very important to the king because the height of the inundation would have given the palace an idea as to what was expected as far as crop yields go. So obviously, crop yields meant that the population would be fed, but from an administrative standpoint, understanding what the potential crop yields meant would have given the palace an appropriate level of taxation.
Speaker 1:But also, the early Egyptian rulers quickly adapted to the idea of using hieroglyphs as a tool for propaganda purposes. So, for example, there would be an inscription showing a foreign dignitary kneeling at the feet of an Egyptian king, as if foreigners were all well below Egyptians, and therefore Egyptian chirogriffs would show these foreigners as almost less than human. So, in other words, when people look at these inscriptions, they can basically show that the Egyptians of our higher status are more important than these foreign dignitaries who are beneath them. But despite the fact that these foreigners are not as good as us, they still would have established good trade relations between Ethiopia and their foreign counterparts. So in other words, the Egyptian hieroglyphs often kind of had a xenophobic feel to them, despite the fact that Egypt would have relied upon foreigners for trade.
Speaker 1:So ultimately, what I'm kind of getting at is the Egyptian hieroglyphs were often written so that Egypt could be seen in a certain way, but it often didn't show how it really was. So that's sort of like pop music, right, these pop singers are flashing all this money and chains and gold and it's all rented. So it's not really what it is. It's all an illusion, it's all smoke and mirrors. But in the end the Egyptian hieroglyphs would go through various development stages and phases and would eventually developed into a writing system used for monumental inscriptions in the classical language of the Middle Kingdom period, which was from 2040 BCE to 1782 BC. So during this period the system used about 900 distinct signs. But the thing is, the first full sentences were actually discovered on seal impressions that were dated around 2800 BCE. But these hieroglyphs would be used all the way through the Roman period and they wouldn't be decipherable until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone.
Speaker 1:Now, switching gears, I wanted to kind of get into the standardized weights and measures that would have been used around Dynasty Zero. Much like you see, in Mesopotamia at the time there wasn't a standardized currency, so grains would often have to be used as a default medium of exchange. The good thing about grains is that you have an easily storable good that can be used later, especially during a bad harvest, and they also had a standardized measurement for metals and this would have been referred to as a debon, a center debon or a debon I'm not really sure if I'm pronouncing it correctly. Now. This debon appears to have evolved over the years. I've been reading some conflicting information, but it appears that in the Old Kingdom so we're talking about early on in Egypt, after it was unified a debon was around 12 to 14 grams. However, this unit of measurement changed around 1500 BCE, as the debon then equated to about 91 to 92 grams of metal such as gold, silver or mostly copper. But this would make sense, since human civilizations is moving into the Bronze Age around this time, and copper was the largest component of bronze, along with tin, but that's a big difference in amount, so I'm not really 100% sure. Anyway, they used other standards for smaller units, such as a kite, which was one debon, which would have been divided into 10, so it would have been around 9.1 grams per kite. Usually it was precious metals that were usually available in smaller amounts. They also measured down to the decimal, making it much more accurate.
Speaker 1:So in the end, this would have made trade much more efficient because you can price things in debon and you could make trade much easier if you were able to price things accordingly to the underlying commodity in debon. So, for example, if you know that a scroll of papyrus costs a debon and sandals cost about a debon, you could facilitate trade. And maybe, if you don't have an underlying commodity to exchange, you could use this as a credit tool and you would know that. So and so owes me one debon from the papyrus trade that we just did. Or someone owes me three debon for some kind of metal that was changed and we could keep this on some sort of ledger or system that tracks how much would be exchanged at a later date, because this was the most common way the trade was done. And the idea of, let's say, barter, for example, because most people would say well, this is the classic instance where you can have a barter, trade, re-trading one good for another. The fact is there really isn't a lot of historical evidence that this even existed, so it's more likely the fact that this debon would have been used as a tool to know how much one person owes to another that people could settle up at a later date. In addition, beyond the fact that you could measure goods in debon, you can also measure labor. So you can look and say how much is one's labor worth and you can measure that in debon. So if an item costs a certain amount of debon, then one could be paid to an equal amount of debon it would take to purchase a particular good for a day's worth of labor.
Speaker 1:And before I move on, I just wanted to pause. And I'm taking a pause here because, if you recall from the Mesopotamian episodes, silver was quickly becoming a medium of exchange and when I say quickly I'm saying over a few hundred years, so it's not really that quickly now that I think about it. But Silver was replacing certain grains as a means to exchange goods and services. Now with Silver in Egypt this may have been completely unknown at this point and the reason we say this is because the earliest Egyptian language lacked a word for Silver. If you don't have a word for Silver, you probably don't know what it is. In fact, it was known by the Egyptians as white metal, and the obvious reason being is because there wasn't any Silver naturally deposited in Egypt. So therefore, egypt would have focused more on gold and Silver, because they just didn't really know what Silver was. And in the southern part of Egypt, which would have been Upper Egypt, there were some reserves of gold, but mostly gold would have been in the Eastern Desert and in Nubia.
Speaker 1:Now, since this is the case and we know basic supply and demand, that would indicate that if you have a supply of gold and you don't have a supply of Silver, then Silver would become more valuable than gold. And that's exactly what happened in the early days of Egypt, when Silver started flowing into Egypt. It would have been cheaper to acquire gold, which in hindsight, would have made for a great arbitrage. Another clue to Silver's value would have been the fact that jewelry made out of Silver was typically more thinner than jewelry made out of gold, and that would be because Silver was less common. Now I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit here, but by the time we get to the middle kingdom of the Egyptian society, the typical market that we all know would have kind of balanced itself out, whereas gold would eventually become more valuable than Silver. And by the time we get to the 12th dynasty we see a consistent price, with Silver typically being about half of the value of gold and copper, which would have been 1,100th of Silver. And by the time we get to King Tut you'll notice that there is very little Silver in his tomb, which would most likely mean that Silver was so abundant by this time that it was no longer a precious metal the way it was in the previous past.
Speaker 1:Now, getting back to the standard, weights and measures that I was talking about earlier got off track. There was another standard called the Higet, which was a volume measurement, which often would have been used for things like beer or wine and would have been the equivalent of 4.8 liters or just a tad over a gallon. So that's an early form of weights and measures that was used by the Egyptians, and I always like to talk about weights and measures because it's something that a lot of people don't realize how important it is for trade. People see certain things that are weighed or measured and we just kind of say, oh, it's a mile away, or it's a kilometer away, or it weighs a pound or an ounce or whatever you wanna measure something in, and we kind of really don't think about it too much. But the fact is is having standardized weights and measures make trade much, much easier.
Speaker 1:So, in theory, the king was the sovereign. Therefore he, and sometimes she, would have owned all the land and everything it produced. So there really weren't any incentives to really increase trade because private ownership was essentially non-existent. The reason being was the king was ordained by the gods who had created everything, and also the king would have been the middleman between the people and the gods. This was what would have been portrayed by the people. However, some of the priests of certain cults, especially the cult of Amun, own large tracts of land. Just as in like modern America, those tracts of land were tax exempt. In addition, there weren't really any specific laws that prohibited priests from engaging in trade, and all the profit went to the temple instead of the crown, because they were exempt from the taxes. Therefore, these priests often lived as comfortable as royalty. But when it comes to the production from the farms on the Nile, this would have been considered the property of the king and this production would have been sent to the capital, where it would have been part of the redistribution system, sort of like the early Sumerian economy, where the temple and the palace would have controlled the means of production and figured out a way to distribute it back to the people and any excesses could be used for trade.
Speaker 1:Now, if you listened to my earlier episode regarding the temple workshops in Sumer, you'll recognize a lot of what Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson writes about it when he explains that agricultural produce collected as a government revenue was treated in one of two ways. A certain proportion went directly to the state workshops for the manufacture of secondary products and for example, these products would have been, say, leather from cattle or pork from pigs, linen from flax, beer, bread and baskets from grains. Some of these value added products were then traded and exchanged at a profit, producing further government income. Others were redistributed as payment to state employees, thereby funding the court and its projects. The remaining portion of the agricultural produce, which were mostly grain, was put into storage in government grainries Probably would have been located throughout Egypt and important regional centers. Some of the stored grain was used in its raw state to finance core activities, but a significant share was put aside as emergency stock to be used in the event of a poor harvest to help prevent widespread famine. So if you compare that to what I talked about in Sumer, it sounds very similar to how the temple and the palace would have controlled the means of production and how they would have distributed it back to the people Very similar process. And it makes sense because they were probably exchanging ideas between each other because there was trade and when you have trade you have exchange of ideas.
Speaker 1:Now, since everything essentially fell onto the king, it was his responsibility to look out for the population's welfare, which meant he was responsible for the land and whatever it produced. So if the land produced enough for the population or, even better, had a surplus, the king was regarded as having been successful in the eye of the gods. If, on the other hand, there was a low inundation and food production was lacking, the priests would intervene to determine what had gone wrong and what steps needed to be taken to regain the goodwill of the gods. Luckily for the Egyptians, these early dynastic periods were going relatively smoothly, as they had transitions from one king to another. Each of the early kings would really keep their eye to the south, they would gaze towards Nubia. The trade and military expeditions would be done frequently. Some of the early kings had great success in hegemony over at Southern neighbor, while other kings didn't fare as well.
Speaker 1:Over a period of the first few centuries, egypt would grow and change somewhat gradually. The one thing that we do see is more and more local districts that were established for new trade networks, which really helps spur Egypt's flourishing economy and society. Agricultural activities were starting to get economies of scale since Dynasties Zero. In addition, we see the Egyptian writing systems also go through some tremendous growth spurred as well, and of course that'd make a lot of sense because the economy and trade were growing and it kind of goes hand in hand, especially in ancient societies. Whereas when trade grows your writing ability also grows as well, because you need to keep up with the trade. In order to keep up with the trade you need to be able to track this information. So writing has to keep up with trade. And it wasn't quite on the level of Sumer, but the ancient Egyptian writing still needed to have an ability to be used for accounting and trade needs. So if business is booming, you kind of had to expect writing systems to grow along with it. But it wasn't just writing, it was basically everything. Ancient Egypt was growing, it was becoming more powerful, and this was just the very beginning.
Speaker 1:I wanna thank you for taking the time to listen to episode two of Ancient Egypt. I hope you found this to be very enjoyable and, more importantly, I hope you got a chance to learn something new. If you like what you hear and wanna donate to the show, you can visit us at patreoncom slash history of money banking trade, or you can visit our website at moneybankintradecom. Also, you can help out the show a ton by leaving a five-star review and telling your friends about it. Thank you very much. Talk to you soon. Thank you.
