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
Episode 13. Unveiling the Majesty of the Old Kingdom: Egypt's Economy, Pyramids, and Path to Eternity
Embark on a time-traveling adventure with me, Mike D, as we explore the ancient economy and the enigmatic world of Egypt's Old Kingdom. Uncover the secrets behind the towering pyramids and the meticulous mummification rituals that signified the Egyptians' reverence for the afterlife. Through the lens of history, we'll understand how the Nile's seasonal floods dictated the agricultural cycles and, subsequently, the economic pulse of this early civilization.
From the legendary Imhotep's architectural marvels to the mysterious trade center of Yam, we navigate the economic landscape that supported massive construction projects and international expeditions. We'll discuss the intriguing roles of the vizier and the evolution of governance from nepotism to meritocracy, painting a vivid picture of the society's intricate power dynamics. Witness how fortunes and fate were intertwined with religious beliefs, setting the stage for the empire's grand endeavors and their eventual downfall.
As we wrap up this episode, we reflect on the legacies left by ancient Egypt's luminaries and the lessons drawn from their triumphs and tribulations. Your support and curiosity fuel our journey through the past, and together, we connect the dots between ancient practices and the evolution of money, banking, and trade. Join the conversation and become part of a community that revels in unraveling the mysteries of history.
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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 In these episodes. I truly hope you find them to be informative and entertaining. When we last left off, I was getting into the mythology and early belief systems of Dynasties Zero. From there we went into the writing systems that were developed, along with Egyptian weights and measures which were vital to making trade more efficient. For this episode I wanted to carry forward early Egyptian history and how it ultimately helped develop the Egyptian economy.
Speaker 1:The Old Kingdom was a period in Egyptian history that ran from around, say, 2700 to 2200 BCE. The economy was chiefly agrarian and therefore enormously relying on the Nile. The river inundated the fields along with its banks and provided the fertile silt. Like I've said previously, the Nile was the superhighway, as it enabled a vast amount of its trade. So ultimately, any land that would have been on the banks or near the Nile would have been the most productive and therefore the most valuable land in the kingdom. The issue was, the king was basically Egypt's landlord, as he owned most of the states that cultivated the lands. However, land ownership was also in the hands of various temples, along with other wealthy estate owners who usually had some sort of affiliation to the royal palace. Such estates were often part of the same redistribution network, but they ultimately responded to the king and were to a certain extent relying on the central royal administration. This system was mostly set up as a formal or even an informal network of redistribution and other favors. So ultimately, if you heard my previous episodes on Sumer, you would kind of really see how this feels very similar in nature. So there was a very kind of similar process on how the economy was structured. The biggest difference is in the early Sumer societies the temple was a lot more important and controlled the lands more so than, say, the palace. In this particular case it's kind of the opposite, where the palace is a lot more controlling of the lands, where the temples would have had a lesser place in society and didn't have as much control over how things would be redistributed back. But ultimately the early Sumerians and early Egyptians had a similar kind of economy where the certain goods would have been made and then they would have been redistributed back to the population. So, in other words, the estates were basically the main source of crop production and therefore the income for the Egyptian state during the Old Kingdom. Either the etologists were able to discover a significant amount of preserved sources of estates of institutions such as the temples or even the administrative centers, or even certain state officials, including some members of the royal family. These estates were scattered throughout Egypt with links in a network of royal warehouses and production centers that facilitated the production and storage of agricultural goods that were kept at the disposal of the institutions or the royal administration when needed. In other words, they pool all the assets or the crops together, they store them in a warehouse and then the official, usually like an appointment from the palace, would decide on how things are going to be redistributed back to the population. In general, the estates were an extension of the towns, which formed the basic units of economic and societal organization.
Speaker 1:The king did not tax individuals such as the farmer, and the reason being is they just did not have the bureaucracy in place to handle the detail of taxing people on an individual level. So what they did instead was they would more or less have surveyors go through and put a projection on how much production they would have in the particular region and from there the region would be taxed collectively instead of on an individual basis. And of course, this is very ancient times. This is, you know, 5,000 years ago approximately, so obviously there was not any kind of formal bureaucracy that would have been able to handle this and this wasn't an Egyptian problem. This was also something that would have been done in Mesopotamia as well, and, if you recall, in Mesopotamia, to get around this a lot of times what they did is they would just hire tax farmers and, you know, somebody with a lot of money would put up the the amount of the tax and then turn around and collect it from the individuals. We'll also see this in Rome when we get to that as well, and, like I said prior in, what I'll repeat is that in places like Mesopotamia and Rome, this could be a major problem for the local population, because some of these tax farmers were ultra aggressive and really wanted to make sure they made a nice handsome profit on their little investments.
Speaker 1:But ultimately, egypt did collect taxes differently than we see in Mesopotamia and then Rome when we get to that point, because what they did is they would have set up tax collection that would have been based on a periodic census that was conducted. Individuals, like I said, were not counted, but rather taxable goods such as cattle, sheep and goats. It was also clear that other products were also collected, such as fabrics and other types of handiwork. So, in other words, what they did is they set up a census, they would have some kind of projection that would be paid to the crown and then this whole process would have been redone in a certain time period. So taxes were based on the village's output, not the individual.
Speaker 1:The pharaoh and the priest did not arbitrarily assign tax assessors and collectors, who were essentially scribes, who would meet the village chief, who would assemble the village council to negotiate the tax. And this negotiation was really brought on by a couple different methods. One thing they would have done is they would have called it counting the cattle, where they would just go through and do a survey and count how much cattle is in the region and they can use that to determine the tax assessment. Another thing what they would do is they would measure the height of the annual inundation every other year and from there they could kind of roughly figure out how much the denial would produce. As far as crop production goes, should the village not pay its fair share of taxes, the local chief would get flogged by the scribe.
Speaker 1:The taxes were used to compensate for public work projects, including tomb building and hydraulic engineering, because, like I said in the prior episode, hydraulic engineering was becoming one of the most important engineering feats of the early Egyptian periods because ultimately this engineering feat would have helped control the Nile as much as it possibly could be controlled at this particular time. And when you control the Nile you can control or at least eliminate some risks as far as excessive flooding or not having enough water in the inundation, and in the end you can kind of really smooth out crop production year over year, which ultimately would have affected the tax collection and just the overall health of the local economy and obviously the people as well. And when I say certain engineering feats, it would have included things such as building canals or building dams or repairing dams or expanding certain canal systems that could feed water from the Nile out further into different fields. Now, the workers that were used to build these various projects, such as, you know, the dams or the canals or whatever it may be, these workers were not being paid with money, right, because money hadn't been developed yet. It's not like in Mesopotamia in a thousand years from this point, where people start getting paid in silver. No, instead, during this time period, the Egyptians would have been paid in food and clothing. You basically work on whatever project you're working on, and you don't starve to death.
Speaker 1:That's how taxes worked and how people were paid. Essentially, you paid your share for wheat, for example. The wheat is used to make bread, to pay the worker who helps build an irrigation project or a temple. And let's not forget about the priest class, because the priests would often take an excess of the collection for themselves. Ultimately, the palace or the temple would have maintained detailed records on who owed what and whether they were paying on time or paying enough, and oftentimes they were brutally cracking down on those who didn't pay their fair share. And when I say brutal, I'm talking about publicly flogging people or even up to torturing people to death. Tomb paintings show clerks tallying up crops that were produced at the harvest and then making lists with a reed pen. It was the invention of writing that ultimately helped the Egyptian government become much more efficient at collecting and tracking taxes. The tomb paintings also show clerks monitoring beer breweries, slaughterhouses and other workshops.
Speaker 1:In addition to the portion surplus collected now as taxes, the king also collected royal gifts as form of tribute from foreign populations. All this tax being collected would come from different forms, such as grains or metals or whatever kind of commodity or even finished product that people were producing, and all this collection would have required the development of some sort of elaborate accounting system through which both assessments and payments could be recorded, which basically means that they were going to keep some sort of early record keeping that would have ultimately resulted in some kind of reconciliation system. Also, too, they would have also recorded the royal gifts that would have been kept separate from the taxes itself. And really, what happened was this early economy would have created certain estate chiefs that would have ultimately been extremely wealthy individuals when comparing to the ordinary citizen. Now. They were essentially managers who ensured that their estates ran smoothly and that their workforce was fed, dressed and provided shelter. They would consider these workers as Corvay workforce, meaning they got paid in kind, not in money, because, like I said just a few minutes ago, there wasn't any sort of money to speak of during this time period, and we won't see that for a while in Mesopotamia when people start getting paid in silver. In the pyramid towns of Giza they were often fed prime beef and fish and beer, so you know they pretty well, compared to other populations in other parts of the world.
Speaker 1:For sure, in Upper Egypt an inscription was found that basically said soldiers were conscripted from the same pool of people as the Corvay workers. So a person working on a farm or even a pyramid could be pulled off a job and put into the military, and then they could have also been into mining services as well. So they conscripted soldiers. They would take part in various expeditions to various mineral rich lands bordering on ancient Egypt, and then the raw materials, like copper and hardwoods, would be extracted and brought back to Egypt. In addition, luxury items were also brought back to the Nile Valley, including exotic animals and plants and even other people, for the amusement of the courts. The latter was most likely slaves. So they bring people back and if they had some kind of unique feature about them, they would be brought to the court. And you know it's pretty barbaric from our perspective, but this would have brought them certain kinds of entertainment and then from there they would have probably most likely been put into slavery. Now, like I've said over and over, this is the period known as the Old Kingdom, and this is when Dozier was able to expand Egypt's reach into the region of Sinai.
Speaker 1:Now, sinai was important due to the fact that it held many minerals such as copper and turquoise. Copper was vital because Egypt didn't really have any natural deposits of it, so it needed to import it. The reason why it's so important was copper was the main ingredient in bronze, and this is the Bronze Age. Without bronze, your kingdom is probably going to go overrun by outsiders, and to make bronze it would take a mixture of approximately 88% copper and 12% tin. Tin is another thing. Tin is not native to the region, so you have to import that as well. So I view bronze sort of like oil in today's economy. If you can't get access to oil, your military and your economy will be in deep trouble. And just like if you can't get access to copper and tin and make bronze, you're going to be in deep trouble. But Dozier's claim to fame wasn't the fact that he was able to expand into the Sinai and be able to extract these valuable resources. Instead, his real fame came from the fact that he really embraced architecture and design by commissioning the construction of a wide collection of structures and buildings in the city, including the very first pyramid of Egypt.
Speaker 1:As a little background, before the pyramids, kings and their families were buried underneath mud slabs, known as Mestabas. The way the king is buried was very important to the Egyptians because they believed that the souls of the rulers were thought to have the ability to fly from the heavens to earth. So it was necessary for the deceased to be buried in a significant structure so that their souls can easily recognize their resting place from high above. So an elaborate burial place was necessary so that their souls could find their body from high above. So that's the genesis of building these gigantic pyramids. And in reality, if you ask a hundred people, you say hey, what's the first thing you think of when I say Egypt? I would imagine a very high percentage maybe 99 out of 100, would say pyramids.
Speaker 1:Tomb building really took off during the old kingdom and as such, this era was also known as the age of the pyramid builders. This period saw all the Egyptian tombs really develop into the pyramids. They started out as large tombs which, through essentially engineering trial and error, eventually became the pyramids that we know today, the first king of this period was Dozier. As I mentioned prior, one of the first things he did was to move the royal capital of Egypt to Memphis. Now, this move may have to do with the fact that Memphis already had an elaborate engineering system set in place, where a protective dam was set around the city from the Nile King Dozier's architect in Hoteb. Well, he was basically a true megastar engineer and architect at this time. I mean, he was a straight up rock star is the best way to describe him. It was in Hoteb that was credited with the development of building with stone and his conception of the new architectural form, which became the step pyramid. Now, the step pyramid wasn't necessarily a brand new thing. In fact, it was derived from the previous tombs that were built with mud bricks.
Speaker 1:Much of the building material was not found in Egypt, but instead was found northeast of Egypt, in the Sinai. Therefore, it was easy to conclude that Egypt and Sinai had an active trade partnership. But how did Dozier get the resources to pay the workers? Just like other societies ever since, they used plunder. They would campaign to his neighbor in Nubia in the south and plunder the local region. But Dozier also had to raise taxes in order to pay for his workforce. So it was a combination of the two. You plunder neighboring societies and you raise taxes on people and, like I said, when you raise taxes, you're not raising money. What you're doing You're collecting the commodities or the grains and you're using those to pay the workers, because the workers got paid in essentially, food, shelter and beer, and ultimately, this plunder was very important for the Egyptian royals because I really didn't touch on it, but being buried in a safe location with important items such as gold was a key to the afterlife.
Speaker 1:The first economic golden age was brought on through the building of the pyramids. A whole new economy basically sprung to life based on the death of the pharaoh and, eventually, the death of other important royals and other wealthy people. As such, a new kind of craftsman was needed to build these extravagant preparations for the pharaoh's afterlife. The death of the pharaoh meant a huge economy and really formed the death industry, as it brought new jobs, including digging and shaping the tombs, the building of shrines and statues and sarcophagus and caskets, and all the paraphernalia, including the needed metallurgy, to craft the gold and other metals for the afterlife. Also, this wasn't just for the pharaohs. Like I mentioned, it was also for the elites in society, people that the Egyptologists have been able to uncover, but we know very little of who exactly they were, except that they must have been very wealthy because of the tomb that they're buried in. And another aspect of this death economy would be the fact that a big logistics industry would have also sprung to life out of this, as people would have to source everything from marble to granite, gold and other precious metals and then set up the transport of the goods to the burial site. Essentially, the geology profession was developed as people would create these elaborate maps that mapped out the regions with the various resources that were needed for the afterlife. So, for example, a wealthy woman comes to a contractor to build a tomb. The contractor would get the geologists that can go and source the new raw materials. The craftsmen would then create such items as shrines, statues or even a gold mask, for example. In other words, death was a big business. One death can employ hundreds to even thousands of people at a time, and when you're talking about the pharaohs dying, these enormous building projects could require up to 25,000 laborers. The laborers were organized into divisions of about 20 men.
Speaker 1:I was always led to believe that the pyramids were built entirely as slave labor, but this simply isn't true. While slave labor was an aspect of the overall Egyptian economy, the building of the pyramids was basically done by non-slave Egyptians, because this was, first of all, very hard work and it could last up to 10 hours a day. You're cutting and moving massive line stones of blocks for the pyramids, but also this was too important. This was very important for the pharaohs, very important for the Egyptian society, and you didn't want to leave it up to slave labor, who really doesn't have a skin in the game, where the ordinary citizens of Egypt would have took it upon themselves as a means for their Egyptian pharaoh, who was essentially God in their eyes. So kind of backing up the fact that they are cutting and moving these huge blocks of limestone and other other building materials for the pyramids and, as a result, what happened was a new industry called quarrying would have rose out from the pyramid buildings.
Speaker 1:What this meant was the Egyptians would carve out and extract these enormous blocks that were cut into symmetrical slabs From there. They would have to drag these huge blocks over a very long distance on various sleds that they had used. You might ask yourself why would they not have a system of wheels? Well, egyptians actually had invented wheels, so putting an object on a wheel was not something they didn't know about. It just wasn't useful when you're dragging massive stone slabs on sand. As anyone has ever tried to go to the beach and drag a wheeled cart, you'll know that bringing a wheeled object on a sandy surface is not very efficient, and often using a sled would be much more efficient. So in this particular case, we're not dragging a cool or full beer here. We're dragging multi-ton stones. So this was extremely hard work, and they also used these stones to create obelisks. The obelisks were these beautiful stone structures that had reliefs carved on the sides to tell you some sort of story about the pharaoh or some other major event that happened in Egypt.
Speaker 1:Also, the laborers would have developed a skill that allowed them to craft their own tools as well. So, in other words, the laborers weren't given their tools from the king. They had to go out and do this on their own, and since this was a redistributive economy, the king, in return, would distribute food, beer, clothing, shelter and other commodities to the work leaders, who probably acted more like middle management and they themselves circulated it further down the social ladder. Now, if you were someone that was higher up in the social stratus and maybe you were working closely with these tomb builders in some form or another, you could also be rewarded with a state-sponsored mortuary cult next to the king's tomb. The people building the pyramids were also compensated with certain tax breaks. And also I read from certain sources and I'm not really 100% sure if it is accurate or not but the tomb builders were often accredited with having a higher standard of living in comparison to other laborers in Egypt. But I'm not 100% sure on that, but it sounds kind of right, but it could be incorrect. So what I'm saying is I'm not 100% sure Now.
Speaker 1:The Red Sea coast would have functioned as a port during the Old Kingdom. Papyrus documents have been discovered that give us an insight as to the logistics of pyramid building. These texts contain a log of a ship captain known as Mirror. He was responsible for transporting men and goods for a long distances into and out of Egypt. These particular scrolls indicated that he and his 40 men or so had participated in the construction work of the pyramid by shipping stone from quarries to the construction site of the Great Pyramid of Giza. It is believed that it was really the death economy that really fueled early Egyptian trade and the economy in general. Captain Mirror, along with numerous other state officials, were working for the Royal Construction Department that was responsible for all the major building work in the country and also probably for erecting the large pyramids in Giza and other sites to the south.
Speaker 1:The thing I always noticed about the culture of pyramid building was the fact that the Egyptians believed in investing their surplus into really unproductive assets, if you think about it, because the fact of the matter is the pyramid is beautiful to look at and it is designed so that the king can have a better chance at his afterlife, but the fact remains is it really doesn't have a lot of useful characteristics for the population at large. And in reality, this is the thing that kind of really baffles me in a way and I understand I'm looking at it from a modern lens is the fact that this idea of the death economy and building these pyramids almost functioned as a complete opposite to modern thinking, in that any kind of surplus would be used to develop assets that can be productive in one way or another, whether it's building a factory or plumbing for the internet, or even investing in debt that pays some kind of return on the investments. The pyramid building didn't have any that, once you built it, you pretty much had to move on to the next project, and it really didn't provide much as far as any kind of productive assets in the future. In fact, it's almost worse than that when you think about it, because assets were taken there and buried in the tombs. So it's not like money, like if you print out a lot of money or you invest in some kind of debt and you hope that the money circulates through the economy. Well, in this particular case, that money would have been buried right inside the tomb and you would have had no circulation whatsoever afterward. It's the complete opposite of what we would think of as far as a modern economy goes.
Speaker 1:Now, the interesting thing about this statement I just made was it really wasn't until the Industrial Revolution that we start to see a society that really starts to hone in on the fact that all surplus should be invested into some kind of productive assets. I mean, we did see that a little bit in Assyria and places like that, but for the most part we really didn't have that deep reinvestment back into the companies or whatever kind of productive assets that we won't really see until the Industrial Revolution comes along. But I'm not really saying that this didn't happen at all in the past, because even if you look at Egypt or other ancient societies, they did often use their surplus to invest into productive assets such as irrigation systems. But the biggest difference between now and then is nowadays. If you were going to build something that wasn't going to be productive, people may look at you like you're crazy. Or if you're the CEO of a company, you would get fired because you're not acting as a fiduciary. Of course, fiduciaries nowadays are only concerned with raising the stock price. So there's that. But that's for a whole different program and hopefully we'll get to that down the road sometime.
Speaker 1:So anyway, getting back on track, when the person died, the only organ that was left in the body was the heart. The ancient Egyptians believed that the heart was the nucleus of the person. It was there to get our intelligence, our intellect and our emotions. So in other words, they didn't really understand the concept of the brain as that was seeing nothing more than just a space filler in the skull. The brain removal process involved an embalmer inserting an iron hook into the nostrils until he could feel the softness of the brain, and with the hook he would break the brain into pieces and remove each piece through the nostrils. It's kind of gross, but that's kind of how they did it. All the organs except for the heart would be removed, and these internal organs were stored in limestone jars.
Speaker 1:Now the issue here is the body decays quite rapidly once everything except for the heart is removed. So essentially what happens is the embalmer would have to move quickly by cleaning the body and then put these salt packets inside the body. That would allow it to dry quite rapidly, and then the body would be left entirely covered in these what's called natron salt packets for at least 40 days. When the body dried out completely, the embalmers removed the internal packets and then lightly washed the natron off the body. The result was a very dried out but recognizable form of the person. Now, to make the mummy seem even more lifelike, the sunken areas of the body would have been filled out with linen and other materials, and then false eyes would have been added to ensure the corpse looked like how the person did while they were still alive.
Speaker 1:From there the embalmer would proceed to the final stage of mummification, which would have been wrapping the deceased. They would have used hundreds of yards of linen, and it would have been wrapped very carefully around the corpse until the priest was able to recite all the prayers and spells for the soul of the deceased. When the mummy was finally completed, a mask would be placed over a wrapped head, and these type of masks really would have varied depending on the status of the deceased. Death masks belonged to a wealthy family were often covered in gold, while those of the less fortunate could only afford simple masks, and the same could be said for amulets. The rich would be interned with many amulets made out of various precious stones, while the poor could have only a few amulets made of much cheaper materials. The entire mummification process took 70 days. The final amulet would have been placed on the mummy's chest, and its purpose was to protect the heart of the deceased, since, at the time, the mummy was placed inside a sarcophagus before getting interned into their burial chamber. The entrance would then be sealed shut.
Speaker 1:Egyptians believed even in death was a new form of life. In death, the Egyptians were expected to go through their journey filled with many obstacles and threats before they could finally achieve peace. Another thing that was used would have been known as the Book of the Dead, which was a funerary text that was written on a long piece of papyrus and contained a set of unique spells that had the ability to protect and navigate the deceased after death. The Book of the Dead was prepared by the Egyptians scribes after being commissioned by the relatives of the deceased. Although the Book of the Dead was considered vital to ensure a smooth journey into the afterlife, not everybody had the privilege to have one interned in their tomb. The production of the funerary text was very expensive. Laborers had to save almost half their annual pay to afford the scroll, which was why the Book of the Dead was often included in the tombs of the rich. The best preserved Book of the Dead is a papyrus of Anni, which was a 78 foot scroll According to the manuscript. The journey through the afterlife was daunting. The deceased must first pass through a series of dark caverns, lakes of fire and magical gates, guarded by nothing but the most fearsome of animals.
Speaker 1:Now, I bring all this up because I think it's important to understand what went in to essentially the death economy and everything that was involved in why it was such a central function to the early Egyptian economy. I feel like that now that we have a good understanding a lot of the stuff when we refer to the death economy, going forward will kind of make a little bit more sense as to how expensive it was and the purpose of the different rituals and burial processes. One of the recurring themes in early Egyptian history was invasion and plunder and then opening new trade networks. Seneferu, who came to the throne around 2600 BCE, increased military expeditions into the lands of Nubia and Libya. These campaigns increased the amount of raw materials that were flowing into Egypt, which ultimately increased trade once these raw materials were made into finished goods. Furthermore, seneferu was able to increase Egypt's labor force. Now you might be asking yourself how does one increase the labor force? Was there a massive boom in birds? No, the simple answer is, and you probably already figured out, was slavery. If you recall from a Mazibatamean episode, slavery was a huge aspect of the local economies. Sources claim that, due to the success of his campaigns, seneferu managed to secure a great number of captives, of which a large percent of those would later be put to work in the construction sites of various projects throughout Egypt. These captives would come from different places and regions, but Egypt typically leaned towards Nubia because Nubia was on the Nile, so getting in and leaving with numerous captives would have been logistically a lot easier.
Speaker 1:But, like I said previously, nubia was one of its most important trade partners, of which a particular place in Nubia known as Yam was often referenced in Egyptian texts. Yam in particular was known as a vital trade center that ultimately supplied hardwoods, ivory and especially gold to Egypt. Where Yam is located, no one really knows for sure, but it is believed to be in modern day Sudan. Although we don't know where Yam was located, we do know that it was around for quite a while because it was being referenced all the way into the Middle Kingdom, which would have lasted to about 1780 BCE, and probably the most widely documented expedition into Yam would have come from a tomb of Arkuf, who was a local governor in southern Egypt. Now, apparently, arkuf had made four journeys into Yam under the reign of Pepe, the second, which was like 2278 to 2184 BCE. On Arkuf's most famous journey, he returned with a dancing dwarf which so excited the young king that he had sent word to Arkuf instructing him to keep the dwarf safe at any cost and hurry him to the palace immediately.
Speaker 1:And if you read this letter you can see there's like extreme excitement over this dwarf. I mean, the king makes it clear that he is to be protected at night when he's sleeping, and make sure he doesn't fall into the water, and if someone is nearby they can fish him out quickly, you know, like good swimmers. It's kind of bizarre. I cannot understand it. But then again, I'm looking at it from a modern lens. I'm not looking at it from a perspective of an ancient person who has probably never seen a little person before in the life, and this is quite an exotic thing to see.
Speaker 1:Now I want to switch gears for a bit and kind of really discuss a little bit of the hierarchy in ancient Egypt. Now we obviously know that you have a king and you also have the clergy and the temples, but the next in line in the hierarchy structure was that of the king's vizier, which was probably something like a prime minister. Now, as you can imagine, the early viziers were filled through nepotism, as it usually would have been a member of the royal family. However, this position appears to have evolved over the years and eventually a baritocracy system was formed so that one could get in based on certain experiences and, most importantly, loyalty to the king. These viziers were often tasked with keeping certain trade records and maintaining the government treasury. They were also responsible for maintaining central granaries, which were highly important positions in the ancient world. A vizier was also supported by local nomarchs or provincial governors, and at the time, egypt was divided into 42 provinces.
Speaker 1:Now I had briefly mentioned Pepe II a few moments ago. Now he had ruled Egypt since he was very young. As such, he ruled for a very long time. Some say he ruled for 96 years. However, that seems highly unlikely, as it was probably more like 64 years. But either way, he was on the throne for a very long time. It's also quite possible that he may have been the longest serving monarch in Egyptian history. The one thing he did do was he appointed two viziers instead of the usual one, so in other words, it was like he appointed two prime ministers. At the time, it kind of made sense, as one would monitor Upper Egypt and the other would monitor Lower Egypt. In a weird kind of way, it reminded me of the Roman Empire, when they split between the Eastern and Western halves of the Roman Empire, but this wouldn't be the same, because this was basically two prime ministers overlooking Egypt, not two separate kings looking over separate regions. So when Pepe II died sometime in 2184 BCE, he had basically left Egypt into turmoil. His son, who was quite old by the time he took the throne, probably inherited a kingdom that was essentially beyond saving. The reason being was the local nomads, who were local governors, had increased their local power significantly during Pepe II's reign. The strength of these regional governors had essentially put a huge crack in the central government's powers, thus shaking the Pharaoh's authority. This ultimately ended a period known as the Old Kingdom and ushered in Egypt's first intermediate period, which was also known as Egypt's first dark age.
Speaker 1:This first dark age spanned approximately 125 years and would have lasted from approximately 2180 to 2055 BCE. It was probably triggered by numerous factors. First off, the Nile had been running quite low for some long period of time. Therefore, egypt would have experienced an extended period of low crop yields, which most likely would have resulted in starvation, and there was even reports of cannibalism. The people there were of the belief that the gods had abandoned them and therefore the Pharaoh would have lost his authority and his prestige from the gods. Therefore, the people could not trust the central government because the central government's authority had come from God and have the gods abandoned them. Why should they trust the central government? And, as you can imagine, if the central government goes away, there's a power vacuum that's going to be created and someone's always going to step into it. In this particular case, it was the local warlords who would have appeared throughout Egypt.
Speaker 1:One of the unintended consequences of this was the fact that, without a central bureaucracy, trade would have declined dramatically. But it's quite possible that it wasn't so much the central bureaucracy that was going away that caused a low trade level. It was more likely due to the fact that the decline in trade would have coincided with the fact that there was a severe decline in crop yields. When you have a decline in crop yields, you're going to have less trade, and when you have less trade, you're going to have less goods coming into and out of Egypt. And when you have less goods coming into and out of Egypt, you're going to see the standard of living decline as well. And when you start to see a widespread decline in standard of living, there's going to be some kind of revolt to the central authority. So it could be a kind of a chicken and egg kind of scenario. But ultimately, the fact is is the low Nile inundation would have ultimately been the major factor that would have triggered this first Egypt dark age.
Speaker 1:I want to thank you for taking your time to listen to this episode. This was a relatively brief episode. We covered the old kingdom of Egypt and the next episodes will get into the middle kingdom and into the second intermediary period, which would have been the second dark age. If you like what you hear and want to donate to the show, you can visit us at patreoncom slash history of money banking trade or you can visit our website at moneybankingtradecom. Also, you can help the show out a ton by leaving a five star review and telling your friends about it. Thank you very much. Talk to you soon.
