Skip to content
where news meets its scholarly match
  • Newsletters
  • About JSTOR Daily
  • Arts & Culture
    • Art & Art History
    • Film & Media
    • Language & Literature
    • Performing Arts
  • Business & Economics
    • Business
    • Economics
  • Politics & History
    • Politics & Government
    • U.S. History
    • World History
    • Social History
    • Quirky History
  • Science & Technology
    • Health
    • Natural Science
    • Plants & Animals
    • Sustainability & The Environment
    • Technology
  • Education & Society
    • Education
    • Lifestyle
    • Religion
    • Social Sciences
  • Newsletters
  • Contact The Editors
  • Support JSTOR Daily
Education & Society

Tax Day in Ancient Egypt

A newly-analyzed papyrus fragment from Ancient Egypt revealed a truly whopping tax bill

By: James MacDonald
April 15, 2015 March 10, 2021
2 minutes
Share Tweet Email Print

A newly-analyzed papyrus fragment from Ancient Egypt revealed a truly whopping tax bill. The receipt, for a land transfer tax, was paid in more than 100 kilograms worth of bronze coins, plus a fee for the middleman charged with actually delivering the taxes to the treasury plus an additional penalty for using bronze. And you thought that the IRS was particular.

Ancient Egypt was very organized when to came to tax collection. As a 2002 article by Mahmoud Ezzamel points out, taxes were paid in grain and were literally redistributed. Grain was needed for government administration, the construction and functioning of temples, for offerings on festival days, and for a government-mandated grain surplus that was set aside for draught years.

Life in ancient Egypt revolved around the annual Nile floods, and every year at the flood, the tax man was waiting. Tax assessments were of dubious accuracy, based as they were on the predicted flood height and the number of canals and trees on a property.

Filling out the 1040 might be a chore but it sure beats baking 10,000 loaves of bread.

After the floods receded, the authorities sent out a team of assessors to refine the estimated tax, known as the “holder of the cord,” and the “stretcher of the cord.” These two literally stretched a line to measure the size of a crop, while a third guy took notes. A standard assessment was approximately 10% of the crop, measured in standardized containers developed for the purpose.

For a wealthy family, the bill might be a bit higher: “precise measures of new wheat (150 hekat-measures, about 4.5 litres), malted barley (one double hekat-measure), 10,000 loaves of ter-bread and an able- bodied slave girl.”

With the Roman conquest of Egypt, a new system of “tax farmers” was employed. Tax farmers were contractors who bid on the taxes of a given area, and were compensated based on how much tax they collected. Base rates were high, and the overall rates were subject to a tax-farmer’s whims; a confident tax farmer could and did set exorbitant rates.

The only limit was a farmer’s ability to pay, as determined by the tax farmer. More efficient land use almost certainly meant more taxes. This system was so unpopular that there is evidence it led directly to political instability and revolt.

So have some perspective this tax season. At least tax rates are fixed based on standardized principles, not the subjective whim of the tax collector or the vagaries of the annual flood. The cord-holding team made their measurements before the crop was harvested, and it is not clear if allowances were made for disasters, such as a swarm of locusts, that occurred after the field was measured. Filling out the 1040 might be a chore but it sure beats baking 10,000 loaves of bread.

 

Share Tweet Email Print
Have a correction or comment about this article?
Please contact us.
archaeologyEgypttaxesHistorical Social Research / Historische SozialforschungThe Accounting Historians Journal
JSTOR logo

Resources

JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. JSTOR Daily readers can access the original research behind our articles for free on JSTOR.

ACCOUNTING AND REDISTRIBUTION: THE PALACE AND MORTUARY CULT IN THE MIDDLE KINGDOM, ANCIENT EGYPT
By: Mahmoud Ezzamel
The Accounting Historians Journal, Vol. 29, No. 1 (June 2002), pp. 61-103

The Academy of Accounting Historians
Rule and Revenue in Egypt and Rome: Political Stability and Fiscal Institutions
By: Andrew Monson
Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung, Vol. 32, No. 4 (122), Neue Politische Ökonomie in der Geschichte / New Political Economy in History (2007), pp. 252-274
GESIS - Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences, Center for Historical Social Research

Join Our Newsletter

    Get your fix of JSTOR Daily’s best stories in your inbox each Thursday.

    Privacy Policy   Contact Us
    You may unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the provided link on any marketing message.

    Read this next

    Happy couple walking while guests throwing confetti on them during wedding ceremony. Horizontal shot.
    Education & Society

    Is Marriage a Solution to Poverty?

    Is marriage a solution to poverty?

    Trending Posts

    1. All Male Cats Are Named Tom: Or, the Uneasy Symbiosis between T. S. Eliot and Groucho Marx
    2. Why Does the Bible Forbid Tattoos?
    3. Who Is Santa Muerte?
    4. Herbs & Verbs: How to Do Witchcraft for Real
    5. Rednecks: A Brief History

    More Stories

    Print shows men and women riding bicycles and tricycles to a fair, 1819
    Lifestyle

    Celebrating the Bicycle

    JSTOR Daily editors pick their favorite stories for National Bike Month.
    Turkish women waiting outside a mosque for friends before going in to pray, 1920
    Religion

    Mosques of Their Own

    The long, little-known history of Muslim women in communal religious life.
    Essential Quality #14, ridden by Luis Saez, heads to the first turn during the 147th running of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs on May 01, 2021 in Louisville, Kentucky.
    Social Sciences

    Betting on the Longshot

    Researchers consistently observe that longshot horses are overvalued by bettors at the racetrack. Why are they willing to risk it all?
    Anna May Wong
    Social Sciences

    Celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

    Our best stories about the vast histories and cultures of Americans with ancestry in Asia and the Pacific.

    Recent Posts

    1. Racing to Respectability
    2. Skipping School for Harvest Camp
    3. The Chinese Exclusion Act: Annotated
    4. Reading Aloud in the Early Republic
    5. All Male Cats Are Named Tom: Or, the Uneasy Symbiosis between T. S. Eliot and Groucho Marx

    Support JSTOR Daily

    Help us keep publishing stories that provide scholarly context to the news.
    Become a member

    About Us

    JSTOR Daily provides context for current events using scholarship found in JSTOR, a digital library of academic journals, books, and other material. We publish articles grounded in peer-reviewed research and provide free access to that research for all of our readers.

    • Contact The Editors
    • Masthead
    • Newsletters
    • About Us
    • Submission Guidelines
    • RSS
    • About the American Prison Newspapers Collection
    • Submissions: American Prison Newspapers Collection
    • Support JSTOR Daily
    • JSTOR.org
    • Terms and Conditions of Use
    • Privacy Policy
    • Cookie Policy
    • Cookie Settings
    • Accessibility
    logo

    JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization helping the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways.

    © ITHAKA. All Rights Reserved. JSTOR®, the JSTOR logo, and ITHAKA® are registered trademarks of ITHAKA.

    Sign up for our weekly newsletter

      Get your fix of JSTOR Daily’s best stories in your inbox each Thursday.

      Privacy Policy   Contact Us
      You may unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the provided link on any marketing message.