When the grain had grown to a certain height, surveyors measured it to assess it for taxation on an estimated yield ([Fig. 30]). It was harvested with sickles, threshed on a circular threshing floor by asses (and later by cattle) who trod out the kernels. As a rule, women did the winnowing by throwing the grain up in a winnowing basket. After that it was stored in barns or in beehive-shaped silos, and the portion due to the king or to the estate-owner was handed over. Large estates, including the royal domains and the temples, had reserves to supplement bad harvests. Seed-corn was lent to the tenants, and teams of oxen and asses for ploughing or carrying were lent or let out, too. There are records of great landowners relieving tenants who could not meet their obligations in difficult years.
But not only the grain harvest was taxed. There was a tax on canals and ponds, on trees and wells. The produce of the home industries and of the spare-time occupations of the people were taxed: they had to turn over some of their textiles, leatherwork, honey, oil, wine, vegetables, some of the catch of the fowler and fisherman, some of the increase of the shepherd’s flock. Genesis xlvii. 24 states that one-fifth of all produce was owed to the government; this may or may not be correct; it is not improbable. Certain people were liable to pay fixed quantities of produce, irrespective of yield.
Again, it is necessary to correct our first reaction to a description of these conditions. In Egypt personal enterprise was made subsidiary to the performance of public duties; and it would seem that under normal conditions sufficient scope for private initiative, in production and in barter, remained. The contents of graves which are best, perhaps, called lower middle class (since of the poorest people no trace survives) show as much. It is likewise revealing that during Egypt’s long history no attempts to overthrow the existing order were made. This shows that the Egyptian experiment of organizing a rural community was, on the whole, successful. The obligation to hand over part of every kind of produce may seem pettifogging to us. But money was unknown; the state could function only if it disposed of all kinds of articles to supply those who were in its service. If officials abused their power and oppressed the people, the peasants had an effective weapon at their disposal: they fled. This was a catastrophe for their owner since he remained liable for the normal dues on his land, which now lay deserted. The case is concisely put in a letter written by a steward to his master who was responsible for the management of a certain royal domain:
Another communication for my Lord’s good pleasure, to the effect that two of the field labourers of the mine land of Pharaoh which is under my Lord’s authority, have fled before the face of the stable-master Neferhotep, he having beaten them. And now, look, the fields of the mine land of Pharaoh which are under my Lord’s authority are abandoned and there is no one to till them. This letter is for my Lord’s information.[164]
A somewhat patriarchal relationship between master and men persists in many rural districts of old countries even to-day. A certain amount of arbitrariness, even of despotism, is taken for granted in the great; it is their privilege, but only if it is counterbalanced by a sense of responsibility for the land and for those who till it.
We may, therefore, accept as inherently probable such statements as the following, made by an Upper Egyptian nomarch who had taken matters in his own hands in the First Intermediate period.
I was one who computed (carefully) the consumption of Lower Egyptian grain.... I made a canal for this town when Upper Egypt was in a bad way, and one did not see any water.... I made high fields into marsh, I made the Nile inundate wasteland.... Whoever needed water got Nile water as he desired.... I was great in Lower Egyptian grain (barley) when the country was in tribulation. I was the one who fed the town with measure and bushel. I made the small man and his wife carry away Lower Egyptian grain and (likewise) the widow and her son. I had all imposts reduced which I found registered (as arrears) from the time of my father.[165]
Another nomarch, at Crocodilopolis in Upper Egypt, south of Thebes, reports:
I fed the “island in the river” (Crocodilopolis) during years of drought when 400 men were (in penury) there. I did not take away a man’s daughter nor his field. I acquired ten flocks of goats with people to take care of them, two herds of cattle and one of asses. I bred small livestock. I obtained thirty boats of one kind and thirty of another and brought Upper Egyptian grain to Hermonthis and Asphynis after Crocodilopolis was taken care of. The nome of Thebes came upstream (i.e. to obtain grain from me), but Crocodilopolis never sent downstream nor upstream (for grain) to another nome.[166]
The last inscription makes much of livestock, and stock-breeding was next in importance to agriculture. We have seen that a special official, “The Master of the King’s Largesse,” was in charge of its supervision. In antiquity, in contrast with now, plenty of marshland was available for grazing in the valley, and the large herds were also sent to the Delta in spring to graze. One official of the Sixth Dynasty lists 1000 head of cattle, 760 asses, 2200 goats, and nearly 1000 sheep as his own.