Skip to content
where news meets its scholarly match
  • Newsletters
  • 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
  • About JSTOR Daily
  • 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 July 11, 2018
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.
archeologyEgypttaxesHistorical 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. The Physics of Karate
    2. Slavery in a Free State: The Case of California
    3. The Punk Rock Linguistics of Cottagecore
    4. Herbs & Verbs: How to Do Witchcraft for Real
    5. The Devastation of Black Wall Street

    More Stories

    Photograph: Pro-Trump protesters gather in front of the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC

Source: Getty
    Social Sciences

    Was the Capitol Attack Part of a New Wave of Terrorism?

    A political scientist suggests that the right-wing violence of recent years might be a new current in a longer history.
    Schoolchildren in Soweto, South Africa
    Education

    Kids’ Games in South Africa

    Formal education in language and music is important for children, but as one scholar found, so is their own play involving gesture, slang, and pop songs.
    The 135th St Branch of the New York Public Library
    Language & Literature

    JSTOR Companion to the Schomburg Center’s Black Liberation Reading List

    JSTOR has created an open library to support readers seeking to engage with BIPOC+Q-authored reading lists like the one developed by the New York Public Library.
    A man displays a Ku Klux Klan cross tattooed onto his arm
    Social Sciences

    How White Supremacy Is Like a Drug

    Four researchers found that identifying with a hate group can produce pleasurable sensations in the brain.

    Recent Posts

    1. Extreme Cold and Public Opinion on Climate Change
    2. Why Black Women Activists Started Wearing Denim
    3. Preserving the History of Coronavirus in Queens
    4. How the Media Can Define Terrorism
    5. Celebrating Women’s History Month

    Support JSTOR Daily

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

    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
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Masthead
    • Newsletters
    • About Us
    • RSS
    • Support JSTOR Daily
    • JSTOR.org
    • Terms and Conditions of Use
    • Privacy Policy
    • Cookie Policy
    • 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.