Ancient Empires and Pharaonic Egypt An PDF

Journal of Egyptian History 7 (2014) 203240
brill.com/jeh
Ancient States and Pharaonic Egypt: An Agenda

for Future Research
Juan Carlos Moreno Garca
cnrsFrance
jcmorenogarcia@hotmail.com
Abstract
Comparative history on ancient empires has seen a flourishing renewal in recent years.
Many studies are devoted either to the study of a particular aspect (or aspects) in many
societies of the past, or to the analysis of selected characteristics present in two ancient
states, usually China and Rome. However, pre-Ptolemaic Egypt is conspicuously absent
in such discussions despite the considerable wealth of Pharaonic sources and archaeological evidence. Therefore, several paths for prospective comparative research are proposed, from the organization of agriculture and productive activities in general to the
ways in which ancient states promoted and captured flows of wealth through trade,
imperialism, and taxation; from the reproduction of power and authority in the long run
to the integration of different actors with their own (and often diverging) interests into
a single political entity. The final aim is to contribute to a theory of ancient states where
long-lived monarchies like ancient China and Pharaonic Egypt could play a leading role.
Keywords
Comparative history ancient states tributary states taxation agriculture and
irrigation ancient trade
Introduction
One of the most significant trends in recent historiography is the boom of
comparative non-Eurocentric research, which seeks to explore the dynamics
of historical transformation in an alternative way to those more traditional
koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 4|doi 10.1163/18741665-12340018
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interpretations that are based on narratives about the relentless rise of the
West from its Graeco-Roman roots. Books like Edward Saids Orientalism
have convincingly exposed the ideological biases underlying old views about
the alleged contrast between a historically progressive, economically innovative, socially democratic, and culturally triumphant Western world against the
background of a stagnant, backward, despotic, and pre-rational Orient. Other
works have questioned the Western historical uniqueness, in some cases by
exploring how Europe departed, beginning in late Roman times, from a tributary basis common to other societies of the past; in other cases, by searching
for traces of modernity in non-European societies, like large-scale industry,
complex banking, or rational-minded enterprise.1 These works might be interpreted as particular expressions of a larger postmodern perspective, whereby
former meta-narratives centered on the idea of Western continual progress
and historical exceptionalism have gradually given way to more qualified ones,
emphasizing the role played by alternative actors and regions, by different
but neglected pathways of historical change, and by aspects relegated to the
margins of historical narratives. In this vein, Christopher Baylys seminal
book The birth of the modern world or Kirti Chaudhuris Asia before Europe,
among many others, might be regarded as significant proof of the increasing
importance of global history. Their emphasis on common patterns of historical development, and even on contemporarily similar economic, social,
and cultural dynamics in quite disparate areas of the world, downplays the
apparent singularity of the West while stressing the importance of contact,
exchange, and circulation.2 Thus, integrative patterns emerge through vast
regions of the world and provide more sophisticated frameworks for explaining interaction than old-fashioned diffusionism or the supposed desire to emulate Western achievements. Models based on concepts like center-periphery,
world-system, and colonial encounters are probably the best illustrations of
such patterns.3 Another tendency becomes increasingly visible in the field
of ancient economics. Its goal is to explore the validity of modern economic
1 Wickham, The uniqueness of the East; Haldon, The State and the Tributary Mode of
Production; Bang, Rome and the comparative study of tributary empires; Goody, The Theft
of History and The East in the West; Pomeranz, The Great Divergence; Islamolu and Perdue,
Shared Histories of Modernity.
2 Maurel, Manuel dhistoire globale; Hunt, Writing History in the Global Era.
3 Rowlands, Larsen, and Kristiansen, Centre and Periphery in the Ancient World; G. Stein,
Introduction: the comparative archaeology of colonial encounters; Hall, Kardulias, and
Chase-Dunn, World-systems analysis and archaeology; Parkinson and Galaty, Archaic State
Interaction; T.C. Wilkinson, Sherratt, and Bennet, Interweaving Worlds.
Ancient States and Pharaonic Egypt
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concepts (e.g., market, capital, rationalism, enterprise) for ancient and

traditional societies and to find economic mechanismsat least in some sectors and periods in the pastcomparable to those prevailing in present times.
In this way, local traditions and particularities in the organization of work,
production, and exchanges could finally be subsumed under larger, comparable economic structures and contribute to a dialogue between ancient and
modern economics. The final aim should be the analysis of long-term trends
in economic growth, regional integration, and the global division of labour
and specialization.4 Finally, exploring the different historical dynamics followed by, apparently, similar societies raises two crucial questions: how did
variability in power organization produce such distinctive dynamics?5 And
why did precocious forms of capitalism in non-European societies (like merchant capitalism) not lead in the end to capitalism and industrial revolutions
in other parts of the world? Rethinking the very basis of state and economic
organization is thus stimulating a new impetus in comparative research on
pre-industrial states.
Ancient history has not escaped from this movement, and similar concerns
underlie the rapid development of comparative studies on ancient societies, in
some cases overcoming the traditional terms under which such research has
been carried out.6 Thus, for instance, ancient Rome is not only studied against
the background of Hellenistic monarchies, but also, and increasingly, in contrast with ancient China, while historians of Roman economy do not hesitate
to use the tools provided by modern economics in order to detect patterns
of growth, investment, rationality, and economic integration.7 On a different
level, the growing body of historical and archaeological evidence in Central
4 Manning and Morris, The Ancient Economy; Bang, Ikeguchi, and Ziche, Ancient Economies
Modern Methodologies; Bowman and Wilson, Quantifying the Roman Economy and The
Roman Agricultural Economy; Jursa, Aspects of the Economic History of Babylonia; van Bavel,
Emerging and Declining Markets for Land, Labour and Capital; Landes, Mokyr, and Baumol,
The Invention of Enterprise; van der Spek, van Zanden, and van Leeuwen, A History of Market
Performance; Neal and Williamson, The Cambridge History of Capitalism.
5 Mann, The Sources of Social Power; Bourdieu, Sur ltat.
6 Bang and Bayly, Tributary Empires in Global History; Bang and Kolodziejczyk, Universal
Empire; Bang and Scheidel, The Oxford Handbook of the State.
7 Examples range from models inspired by neo-institutionalism to those based in neoclassic economics and marxism: Banaji, Agrarian Change in Late Antiquity; de Blois and
Rich, The Transformation of Economic Life under the Roman Empire; Scheidel, Morris, and
Saller, The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World; Bowman and Wilson,
Quantifying the Roman Economy; Scheidel, The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy; Temin, The Roman Market Economy.
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Asia also makes it possible to surpass the apparent gulf between the ancient
Mediterranean world (including the Near East) and East Asian societies.8
Recent research on ancient trade routes and pathways of diffusion of plants,
animals, goods, and techniques across the northern Indian Ocean provides
additional clues about long-distance exchanges, which were capable of linking
together vast areas of the world, and not necessarily sponsored by states or by
powerful institutions like temples.9 In fact, a new emphasis is put on commercial diasporas and informal actors (e.g., itinerant traders, mobile populations,
fishermen, etc.) as significant players in such contacts.10
Under these conditions, it comes as no surprise that Hellenistic and Roman
Egypt have succeeded in integrating themselves into these new patterns of
comparative research, and their contributions to studies of ancient economy
and state organization are quite relevant. The vast amounts of preserved
Graeco-Roman inscriptions and papyri make this period of ancient Egypt a
unique candidate for creating economic and social models on an acceptably
quantitative basis. But this is not the only reason. Egypts location at the crossroads of Eastern Africa, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Near East,
combined with its early implication in Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman politics, and the use of Greek in administrative, economic, and legal matters since
Ptolemaic times, places at the disposal of scholars from neighbouring disciplines a considerable mass of documents relevant to their own work.
However, accessibility to previous periods of Egyptian history (say, pharaonic times) has been obscured both by the intricate writing systems then
employed (hieroglyphic, hieratic, demotic), and the relative scarcity of economic and administrative documents. In addition, the harmful but extended
myth of an alleged Egyptian exceptionalism, whereby pharaonic Egypt
8 Kohl, The Making of Bronze Age Eurasia; Hanks and Linduff, Social Complexity in
Prehistoric Eurasia; Mair and Hickman, Reconfiguring the Silk Road; T.C. Wilkinson, Tying
the Threads of Eurasia.
9 Boivin and Fuller, Shell middens, ships and seeds; Fuller and Boivin, Crops, cattle and
commensals across the Indian Ocean; Fuller, Boivin, Hoogervorst, and Allaby, Across the
Indian Ocean; T.C. Wilkinson, Tying the Threads of Eurasia.
10 Just to add some examples to those quoted in the previous note: Holladay, Toward a new
paradigmatic understanding of long-distance trade in the ancient Near East; G. Stein,
The political economy of Mesopotamian colonial encounters; Morrison and Junker,
Forager-Traders in South and South-East Asia; Sherratt and Sherratt, Technological
change in the East Mediterranean Bronze Age; Sherratt, Sea Peoples and the economic
structure of the late Second Millennium in the Eastern Mediterranean, Circulation of
metals and the end of the Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean, Potemkin palaces
and route-based economies, and The Mediterranean economy.
207
stands as a unique case of monarchic continuity and immutable governmental

structures for millennia, has been frequently invoked by Egyptologists to justify the excessive insularity of their discipline, their lack of interest in African
and Near Eastern history, and their reluctance to theorize or, simply, to build
interpretative models about the society they study.11 As a result, it has been difficult for pharaonic Egypt to become fully integrated in comparative research,
even with other Near Eastern societies.12 Furthermore, the traditional emphasis of Egyptology on philology, religion, funerary beliefs, and (descriptive) art
history hardly helps overcome the current image of the land of the Pharaohs
as an incomprehensible and somewhat ahistorical world. Fortunately, this outdated exceptionalism is no longer tenable and cannot ignore, for instance,
recent archaeological work in Sudanese archaeology, African palaeobotany,
and Eurasian exchange networks that challenges both the alleged uniqueness
of pharaonic Egypt and its supposed isolationism. What is more, archaeology
helps overcome simplistic narratives of Egyptian history based on a surprisingly restricted set of evidence (official inscriptions, elite monuments, and
high quality art) as well as on nave methodologies, as if texts and works of art
could speak directly by themselves, without any serious historical criticism.
Archaeology and more refined models of historical analysis are contributing
at last to renew current agendas of research, where production, exchanges,
and social power become the main axis for future investigation and promising comparative studies.13 Economics, politics, and social history should thus
become central issues in the study of ancient Egypt, and lead Egyptology to its
final normalization among social sciences.14
11 Moreno Garca, From Dracula to Rostovtzeff and Penser lconomie pharaonique.

12 Cf. the marginal role of pharaonic Egypt in recent works like Yoffee, Myths of the Archaic
State and Routledge, Archaeology and State Theory. Or its complete absence (not GraecoRoman Egypt) in Feinman and Nichols, Archaeological Perspectives on Political Economies;
Manning and Morris, The Ancient Economy; Bang, Ikeguchi, and Ziche, Ancient Economies
Modern Methodologies; Landes, Mokyr, and Baumol, The Invention of Enterprise; van
der Spek, van Zanden, and van Leeuwen, A History of Market Performance; Neal and
Williamson, The Cambridge History of Capitalism. Promising paths have been opened by
Wengrow (Wengrow, The voyages of Europa) and, especially, Baines (Civilization and
empires and with Yoffee, Order, Legitimacy and Wealth), and have inspired further discussion: Richards and van Buren, Order, Legitimacy and Wealth.
13 Some of the best and most innovative examples are Trigger, Kemp, OConnor, and Lloyd,
Ancient Egypt: A Social History and Kemp, Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization.
14 Cf. the preceding note as well as Weeks, Egyptology and the Social Sciences; Lustig,
Anthropology and Egyptology; Moreno Garca, Penser lconomie pharaonique.
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A final aspect is the need of de-orientalizing historical narratives where

the East represents a sort of negative of the West.15 Perhaps one of the most
enduring topics in this respect is the still current assumption that many
oriental states (both ancient and modern) were in fact powerful despotic
monarchies, ruled by an absolute sovereign, assisted by an all-encompassing
bureaucracy, and aiming for a rigid centralisation of political and economic
decision-taking. Oriental states were thus represented since antiquity as
impersonal constrictive power machines, where individuals were crushed
between the demands of the state and duty towards their kin, and where politics was simply non-existent, with the only exception being Court conspiracies
and intrigues. However, a growing body of evidence shows a different reality
hidden underneath the glitter of palatial culture and royal monuments. The
very stability of states depended on pacts and on their flexibility to adapt
themselves to the changing balance of power between different sectors of the
elite, whose interests did not always coincide with each other, or with those
of the king. It also depended on the patterns of circulation of wealth (both
internal and external), the success (or failure) in capturing significant parts of
it, and the political and geopolitical conditions inspired by such patterns: taxation, feudalism, military expansion, and colonialism, among many other factors, are implicit in the organization of power inside and between states; they
also open new paths for comparative research aiming to build a true theory
of tributary states, both Western and oriental.16 Also in this vein, the weight
of informal actors, wrongfully labeled as marginal, opens further venues for
reflection about the structure and endurance of ancient states, while local
chiefs and assemblies of elders reveal the existence of poles of authority to
be considered by the state.17 The cycles of urbanization and de-urbanization
visible in the Levant, northern Syria, and Lower Egypt, among many other
places, suggest subtle changes in the strategies of production followed by local
populations where pastoralism was a vital element.18 Piracy also had a heavy
impact on international trade and on the reactivity of ancient states, and it
15 Morrison, States of theory and states of Asia; Davies, Wittfogels dilemma.
16 Haldon, The State and the Tributary Mode of Production; Yoffee, Myths of the Archaic State;
Moreno Garca, Introduction. lites et tats tributaires; Banaji, Theory as History.
17 Barjamovic, Civic institutions and self-government in Southern Mesopotamia; Seri,
Local Power in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia; Kogan, Koslova, Loesov, and Tischenko, City
Administration in the Ancient Near East.
18 Ur, Cycles of civilization in Northern Mesopotamia; Szuchman, Nomads, Tribes, and
the State in the Ancient Near East; Moreno Garca, La gestion des aires marginales and
Invaders or just herders?; Porten, Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Eastern
Civilizations.
209
would not be extravagant to consider together, in a comparative perspective,

phenomena such as Late Bronze Sea Peoples, Middle Age Vikings, or piracy in
the southern coast of China in Tang-Ming times. Finally, itinerant traders and
commercial diaspora developed exchange networks sometimes complementary, sometimes alternative, to those controlled by states.

Comparing What? With Whom?
To begin with, the evaluation of some recent publications devoted to comparative research on ancient empires might show the potential, but also the risks,
of such enterprise. The first issue to consider is that, in some cases, comparison is usually restricted to a simple juxtaposition of case studies with no real
in-depth analysis of common aspects to be dealt with. The chapters in multivolume works of this nature really consist of short introductions to the history
of a specific society, or brief descriptions of a particular aspect shared by many
cultures of the past.19 Not surprisingly, volumes produced on this basis have,
in fact, the format of a traditional universal history, even when the subject of
the study deals with very precise periods (say, antiquity) and specific regions
of the world (e.g., China and the Mediterranean). In other cases, a topic with
the potential for broad comparison is selected and analyzed in many different
societies of the past; in some cases the results reveal common patterns that
went unnoticed until then, or the fact that, under apparently similar starting
conditions, historical trajectories rapidly diverged because of the particular
social, political, environmental, or economic circumstances affecting each
case study.20 However, in other cases, the result mostly consists, once more, in
a succession of chapters, each one locked within the limits and idiosyncrasy
(methodology, types of sources, scholarly traditions, etc.) of its own discipline,
thus making true comparison almost impossible in the absence of a previous
19 Alcock, DAltroy, Morrison, and Sinopoli, Empires; Morris and Scheidel, The Dynamics
of Ancient Empires; Bang and Scheidel, The Oxford Handbook of the State; Arnason and
Raaflaub, The Roman Empire in Context; Burbank and Cooper, Empires in World History.
20 Some examples from different fields of research: Barnard and Wendrich, The Archaeology
of Mobility; Garraty and Stark, Archaeological Approaches to Market Exchange in Ancient
Societies; Houston, The First Writing; Marcus and Sabloff, The Ancient City; McAnany and
Yoffee, Questioning Collapse; Raaflaub, Thinking, Recording, and Writing History in the
Ancient World; Schwartz and Nichols, After Collapse. The Regeneration of Complex Societes;
M.E. Smith, The Comparative Archaeology of Complex Societies; Falconer and Redman,
Polities and Power; Tvedt and Coopey, A History of Water; Bang and Bayly, Tributary Empires
in Global History; Hill, Jones, and Morales, Experiencing Power, Generating Authority.
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well-defined agenda for common research.21 Finally, there are cases where the
purpose of the research is to deal with specific topics, but only for a very limited set of societies. Each topic is then treated by specialists in order to produce
narratives rooted in a solid comparable basis. However, a current problem with
this approach is that the unequal weight of different types of sources (historical,
administrative, economic, political, ritual, etc.), plus their uneven distribution
in time and space, even within a given society (especially in plurimillenary
China and Egypt), makes effective comparison a quite difficult task. In fact
these circumstances impose serious limits on each specialists approach, as it
is determined by the sources available in his own domain of study. One can
think, for instance, of the abundance of papyri in Graeco-Roman Egypt; however, as they mainly come from Upper Egypt and the Fayum, this means that
some of the most dynamic regions of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt, and even
of the Mediterranean (Lower Egypt, Alexandria), remain quite shadowy in the
papyrological record. Another example is the apparent wealth of economic
documents from Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid Mesopotamia; however,
these texts consist mainly of clay tablets written in Neo-Babylonian, while the
administrative language of both empires was Aramaic, written on perishable
materials like leather and papyrus. This explains why Aramaic documents
are exceedingly rarer than cuneiform ones and remain under-represented in
the written record.
Recent attempts to produce partial comparative studies between ancient
Rome and China reveal the possibilities, but also the limits, of such initiatives
and might illustrate the problems just evoked.22 Such is the case of the book
edited by Walter Scheidel, which stems from an ambitious research project aiming to analyze the economic, political, and social structures of ancient
Rome and China. The volume considered is, in fact, a first preliminary step.
Organized around a limited set of topics (military and state formation, law,
imperial courts, tribute, gift circulation and monetary systems), each one of
them is studied in both societies by the same scholar, usually a specialist either
in Roman or Chinese history. Quite naturally, this method implies that the
authors, not being proficient in both political formations, can provide insightful analysis on their own domains of competence, but only general approximations on the other society, given the difficulty in dealing with original sources
or with current developments in the archaeology, history, literature, etc., of that
21 Eisenstadt, The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations; Areshian, Empires and
Diversity.
22 Mutschler and Mittag, Conceiving the Empire: China and Rome Compared; Scheidel, Rome
and China. Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires.
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area. In the end, the chapters thus produced might appear quite unbalanced.
Fritz-Heiner Mutschler and Achim Mittag, editors of the second volume, sought to overcome these difficulties by choosing a very specific topic
capable of stimulating a fruitful dialogue between classicists and sinologists.
The focus of their study is the formation and the development of the concept
of empire, and select manifestations of it (in arts, ancient historiography, representations of the world, philosophy, etc.) are simultaneously dealt with by
two scholars, one a specialist in ancient Rome, the other in ancient China. The
result is a well-written and ground-breaking volume providing state-of-the-art
research on the concept of empire and the cultural aspects related to it in two
distant societies. Finally, works like that edited by Richard King and Dennis
Schilling stand half-way between those of Scheidel and Mustchler/
Mittag.23 It addresses a very specific topic (the discussion of ethics in ancient
China and the Graeco-Roman world), but the method of study consists of a
general introduction (with two chapters) devoted to methodological and theoretical considerations followed by several essays grouped in three sections
(China, Greece-Rome, and comparisons).
The comparative studies mentioned above constitute a useful background
against which Egyptologists should think about our limited knowledge on crucial aspects of ancient Egypt. They also provide insight into the most promising
paths for achieving a more balanced and complete picture of pharaonic society, evaluating the particularities and commonalities of Egypt with its neighbours, and determining its role in a complex world where geopolitics, exchange
networks, and wealth flows left their mark on the organization of power, society, and economy. Among the most important issues limiting a broader, and
better, understanding of all facets of ancient Egypt, one must mention the
still insufficient use of archaeology in the study of, for example, the changing
organization of the landscape,24 the impact of productive strategies on it, the
different sub-regions resulting from land use and human density and, lastly,
the network and hierarchy of settlements and the fiscal geography created
in order to concentrate, make circulate, and control flows of wealth (roads,
harbours, customs, trade facilities, work and stock centres, etc.). Another area
where the contribution of archaeology is indispensable is in the analysis of
entire sectors of Egyptian society that remain poorly documented in official
23 King and Schilling, How Should One Live? Comparisons in other cultural aspects like
history writing know a recent flourishing thanks to the work, among others, of Martin,
Herodotus and Sima Qian and F.-H. Mutschler.
24 Cf. Wilson, The West Nile Delta Regional Survey; Moreno Garca, La gestion des aires
marginales.
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sources; not only a peasantry more diversified than the biased image provided
by literary and administrative documents, but also mobile populations, people
involved in the exploitation of natural resources (fishermen, gatherers, etc.),
itinerant traders, and other occupations whose contribution was pivotal in the
circulation of goods, information, and techniques.25 The cultural manifestations of all these populations and the complex interactions and combinations
between high and low, domestic and public, palatial and provincial culture
also deserve careful attention in order to detect how social cohesion was built
up in the longue dure. This naturally leads to the analysis of the construction of power relations between competing sectors of the elite and how they
affected the stability and transmission of authority, from Pharaoh at the top of
the social pyramid to local potentates and village chiefs at the bottom. Finally,
the characterization of ancient Egypt within the framework of state theory and
tributary states remains a promising field of research. Much has been written about the alleged absolute authority of the Pharaoh. However, under the
apparent continuity of regalia, iconography, titles, and symbols over millennia,
the actual fabric of the monarchy varied with time; it depended on concrete
relations of power, which were constantly changing and subject to thorough
revisions and rebuilding after the recurrent periods of crisis within the central
power. Yet the reluctance of Egyptologists to engage in a dialogue with social
scientists means that ancient Egypt is too often absent from discussions on the
construction of social power, authority, and statehood in the ancient world,
with the exception of the usual clichs about the absolute power of Pharaohs
that, in fact, completely neglect how authority was truly created in ancient
Egypt.26 Recent developments on state theory, and on the concept of tributary
state and empire, invite these subjects to become nevertheless a promising
area for comparative research in Egyptology.27
These observations provide a fertile ground for a better understanding of
the pharaonic state in the light of ancient states, and will be further developed
25 Moreno Garca, The limits of Pharaonic administration, Penser lconomie pharaonique, and Lorganisation sociale de lagriculture pharaonique.
26 Some exceptions are Baines and Yoffee, Order, Legitimacy and Wealth in Ancient Egypt;
Campagno, El modo de produccin tributario y el antiguo Egipto; Moreno Garca,
Introduction. lites et tats tributaires and The other administration.
27 Some examples from different theoretical perspectives, ranging from marxism to neoinstitutionalism are Banaji, Theory as History; Bourdieu, Sur ltat; Haldon, The State and
the Tributary Mode of Production; North, Wallis, and Weingast, Violence and Social Orders;
Bang and Bayly, Tributary Empires in Global History.
213
in the next section of this article. This obviously leads to a simple question:
which are the best candidates for such an intellectual enterprise?
The cultural, environmental, and socio-economic affinities found among
the great monarchies of the ancient Near East suggest many paths of research
still to be explored. Contacts between the Near East and the Nile Valley are
well attested since Predynastic times and they possibly exerted an influence
on the historical trajectories of both areas that cannot be reduced to old diffusionist models. They contributed to, or stimulated, depending on the circumstances, certain internal forces that finally led to the distinctive particularities
of each region. Yet such contacts also intensified in the course of centuries
and triggered deep changes. One can think, for instance, of the growth of
commercial flows since the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age, and the
subsequent consolidation of states/empires encompassing substantial territories and involved in an unprecedented rivalry for their control. Chariotry,
a new military ethos but also a shared pattern of artistic symbols, diplomatic
language, technical skills, and poetical conventions, left its mark on very different societies.28 One can also think of the role of temples as social and economic stabilizers that provided institutional continuity and security to the
elites, which possessed huge amounts of land, resources, workers, and precious
metals, and which played an autonomous role in the creation of wealth and in
the development of economic circuits. Even periods of political disruption or
short-lived monarchies offer many possibilities for a comparative analysis of
distinctive trajectories in the Nile Valley and Mesopotamia. And, on the contrary, periods of exceptional monarchic continuity in Near Eastern history, like
the Kassite period, still await an in-depth analysis against the more volatile and
short-lived background of many other Mesopotamian states.29
In terms of historical continuity and state structures, ancient China provides
striking parallels.30 The discovery of thousands of bamboo slips with invaluable
information about administration, legal matters, taxes levied on households,
etc., opens new venues of inquiry about the centralization of power (sometimes ephemeral) concomitant with massive architectural achievements and
highly elaborate Court rituals. Some regions of the country also remained as
28 Liverani, Prestige and Interest and The Near East: The Bronze Age; Aruz, Benzel, and
Evans, Beyond Babylon; Aruz, Graff, and Rakic, Cultures in Contact; Sauvage, Routes maritimes et systmes dchanges internationaux; Monroe, Scales of Fate.
29 Paulus, Babylonien in der 2. Hlfte des 2 Jts. v. Chr.(K)ein imperium?.
30 Baines, Civilization and empires; Pines, Shelach, von Falkenhausen, and Yates, Birth
of An Empire; Campbell, Erligang. A tale of two civilizations and Archaeology of the
Chinese Bronze Age.
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reserves of statehood during periods of political division, from which centralized monarchies emerged, expanded and reunified the country again. The creation of a bureaucracy as well as a corpus of classic texts used in the formation
of administrators offers fertile ground for comparative research with Egypt; so
too the particularities of the balance of power between mighty regional lords
and the central government. The absence of a true feudal system in periods of
monarchic crisis, as well as the recurrent recovery of central power after them,
offer further parallels with pharaonic Egypt which should be explored.31 The
management of irrigation, the role played by households in the organization
of production, or the complex interaction between central power and mobile
populations living on the borders of the kingdom, could cast some light on
both societies, Egyptian and Chinese, as well as on the particular ways that
expansionist policies abroad were achieved by both powers. In the long term,
the historical trajectories of the two most long-lasting states in history could
provide exciting points of comparison.32
With regard to geographical proximity, states appeared in the East-African
Saharan-Sahelian region that provide a fascinating glimpse into alternative
paths of state formation and socio-economic organization. The discoveries in
Nubia reveal that, far from common assumptions about backward Nubians
forced to emulate Egypt in order to build their own forms of state, things
appear quite different. Nubian political organization seems more flexible,
capable of integrating populations dispersed over vast distances encompassing
both the Nile Valley and the deserts around it. What is more, a distinctive pattern of cereal production and consumption (porridge and beer-like alcoholic
beverages) was rooted in particular forms of commensality that expressed
and cemented group identities, their autonomy, and their social cohesion.33
Moreover, Nubians appear to have been involved in long-range commercial
activities that were autonomous and alternative to the circuits controlled by
Egyptians. It is quite possible that trade played a key role in the formation of
states that developed sophisticated forms of water collecting for their agricultural, housing, and herding needs in this harsh environment, from Libyans in
the north to Nubians, Garamantes, and others in the East-African SaharanSahelian belt.34
31 Wickham, The uniqueness of the East. Cf. Also Pines, Shelach, von Falkenhausen, and
Yates, Birth of An Empire; Campbell, Archaeology of the Chinese Bronze Age and Erligang.
A tale of two civilizations; Kthay, Feudalisms of Egyptology.
32 Shelach and Jaffe, The earliest states in China: a long-term trajectory approach.
33 Pope, Epigraphic evidence for a porridge-and-pot tradition.
34 Liverani, Looking for the southern frontier of the Garamantes; Manzo, A. From the sea
to the deserts and back and Nubians and the others on the Red Sea; Pope, The Double
215
In examining the use of writing as a means of expression of elite self-identity

and royal historical consciousness, ancient Mesoamerica and, more particularly, the Mayan world, offer fascinating parallels. Noteworthy for comparison
are the construction of genealogies and the choice of building activities, ritual,
and war as topics that best conveyed the social and divine role played by the
monarchy. The fact that writing first appeared in Egypt and the Mayan world
not as a primary administrative device but as a symbolic, ritual, and decorative
tool, provides further points of contact between both cultural areas.35
Finally, and on a more general, theoretical perspective, it is the very concept
of the tributary state that should prove its operability and heuristic viability
through the comparative analysis of selected case studies. The contribution of
ancient Near Eastern societies, including pharaonic Egypt, would be crucial in
this respect, thus continuing and deepening the promising paths opened by
Mario Liverani and Carlo Zaccagnini, among others, in the 1970s and
1980s and, more recently, by John Baines and Norman Yoffee.36

Ancient Empires and Pharaonic Egypt

Land Use, Agro-Pastoral Diversity and Productive Alternatives
Several topics offer a fertile ground for comparative research. The first one is
the study of the very basis of production and, especially, of agriculture and
irrigation. Usually considered as the quintessential paradigm of a despotic
centralized hydraulic civilization, the pioneering work by Karl Butzer,
Ghislaine Alleaume, and others stressed the fact that centralization and
state-sponsored large-scale works played a minor role, if any, in the organization of irrigation in ancient Egypt.37 In this line, subsequent studies based on
the analysis of pharaonic titles and administrative documents, or on ethnographic studies, revealed that irrigation management was usually an internal
community affair, and that the role of the state was often limited to calculating the expected amount of taxes based on the level of the seasonal flood.
Kingdom under Taharqo; Wilson, Saharan trade in the Roman period; Wilson and
Mattingly, Irrigation technologies.
35 Houston, The First Writing; Piquette and Whitehouse, Writing as Material Practice;
Raaflaub, Thinking, Recording, and Writing History in the Ancient World; Vernus, Naissance
des hiroglyphes.
36 Cf. Moscati, Lalba della civilt; Zaccagnini, Modo di produzione asiatico e Vicino Oriente
antico; Baines and Yofee, Order, Legitimacy and Wealth; Yoffee, Myths of the Archaic
State.
37 Moreno Garca, Introduction: nouvelles recherches sur lagriculture institutionnelle et
domestique, 4550 with bibliography.
216
Moreno Garca
Sometimes the state promoted irrigation works, but only on a limited scale
and restricted to very specific areas (like the Fayum in the Ptolemaic period).
And what was considereduntil recentlyas traditional irrigation systems
and practices surviving almost intact since pharaonic times (like basin irrigation), a more attentive analysis has revealed that, in fact, they were introduced
in the 19th century ce as part of a vast reorganization of the irrigation network, the agricultural landscape, and the crops grown in order to cope with
the financial needs of ambitious rulers like Muhammad Ali. Yet the distinctiveness of early landscape structures, their regional variations depending both on
environmental conditions and on complementary and/or competing land uses
(agriculture, pastoralism, woodland, swampy areas, etc.), and even their transformations over time (foundation and abandonment of settlements, changes in
the course of the Nile, etc.), still deserve much more in-depth attention. While
promising paths have been opened by researchers like Alleaume, Andrew
Wilson, Joshua Trampier and others, Egyptology is still far from producing a well-informed synthesis like that of Tony Wilkinsons Archaeological
Landscapes of the Near East. Central issues such as the impact of production
activities, taxation, and settlement structures on the organization of pharaonic landscape, irrigation systems, and economic practices are just beginning
to be addressed by some scholars. It is to be expected that the advances and
the experience accumulated in neighboring disciplines can help Egyptologists
develop more sophisticated models for examining the relationship between
environment, production and historical landscapes.38
Such influence would be particularly welcome in the study of pharaonic
agriculture. Egyptologists still consider pre-Ptolemaic agriculture as a somewhat undifferentiated activity, where techniques and organization remained
substantially unchanged for millennia. In this view, peasants are supposed to
have producedquite naturallycrops like cereals and flax (which, by the
way, happened to be of the highest fiscal interest for the monarchy), raised cattle, and worked extensive domains belonging to temples and the royal palace;
these institutions, in turn, provided for the needs of peasants and their own
workforce through a redistributive system. The pernicious effects of such simplistic assumptions, not supported by the documentary evidence, still hamper
the comprehension of pharaonic agriculture. More sophisticated alternative models have been proposed in recent years, but much still remains to be
38 Cf. the preceding note, as well as Moreno Garca, Lorganisation sociale de lagriculture
pharaonique and Recent developments, 49.
217
done.39 Models of agricultural production based on the integration of many

diverse variables might help to understand how production was organized,
and should certainly reveal local differences, from soil quality to crop rotation,
from pasture and wooded areas to agricultural fields, from networks of channels to roads, from consumption patterns and storage facilities to the interaction between peasants, gatherers, and mobile populations. Of course the basis
of such models should be archaeological projects aiming to produce representative sets of selected case-studies, thus inspiring an archaeology more attentive to the study of settlement and landscape structures. The potential of such
models is becoming increasingly evident in Mesopotamian and New World
archaeology,40 but has been only timidly applied to pharaonic Egypt.41
Two aspects are intimately related to these considerations: on the one hand,
the actual autonomy of peasants in the organization of their work and in their
production choices (crops, husbandry, gathering, occasional transporting and
craft activities, etc.), which depended on the impact of royal taxation; and, on
the other hand, the resistance to, and alternatives developed against, this tax
system. As stated before, it has been long assumed as natural that peasants
preferred to produce cereals and flax instead of, say, more diversified and balanced forms of production combining cereal cultivation, horticulture, gathering, fishing, and extensive herding. Less dependent on a single crop and on
the uncertainties of the annual flood, such diversified patterns of production
could ensure a more reliable and regular supply of food. However, tax systems
seek for easily storable, marketable and durable agricultural produce, usually
exigent in terms of labour, investment and care, like cereals, oil and wine. As
for flax, it was the favorite textile fibre in elite garment production. The imposition of taxes in cereals and flax obviously had an impact on how peasants
organized their work, their fields, and their relationship with the environment
and its resources, not to mention their choice of crops and the techniques to
be used (like the use of a plough instead of a hoe, etc.). Far from being natural
choices, taxation had a deep impact on everyday activities, reduced mobility,
and provoked economic uncertainty not justified by the alleged high returns
39 For a general overview, cf. Moreno Garca, Lorganisation sociale de lagriculture pharaonique; Eyre, The water regime for orchards and plantations in pharaonic Egypt, How
relevant was personal status to the functioning of the rural economy in pharaonic Egypt?
and The village economy in Pharaonic Egypt.
40 Kohler and van der Leeuw, The Model-Based Archaeology of Socionatural Systems;
T.J. Wilkinson, McGuire Gibson, and Widell, Models of Mesopotamian Landscapes.
41 Symons and Raine, Agent-based models of ancient Egypt.
218
Moreno Garca
of cereals.42 That is why in periods of political crisis, the dislocation of the tax
system was often followed by a return to more diversified forms of production,
where fishing, gathering and extensive pastoralism went hand-in-hand with
mobility and rebelliousness, thus making fiscal control even more difficult.
The historical consequences are essential for a better understanding of the
interaction between sedentary and pastoral/nomadic populations, the succession of periods of sedentarization and of a return to more mobile lifestyles, or
the conflicts arising out of the use of pasturage areas. Whereas such interaction has been well studied in other regions of the world, it still remains subsumed in Egyptology under nave narratives where nomads are conspicuously
depicted as invaders.43 However, an increasing body of evidence shows the
existence of a vast area within Egyptian borders where pastoralism remained
an important activity both for Egyptian and foreign populations (Nubians,
Libyans, Canaanites), and where porous borders were crossed by populations
circulating between the Nile Valley and its neighboring areas. A related aspect
that still awaits exploration is the role played by wool in the Egyptian economy.
While flax is a crop obviously concomitant with agriculture, sedentary settlement, and high-demanding work, wool was part of pastoral production. The
symbolic role of white linen in elite self-presentation and in luxury garments
(including ritual and funerary uses) probably hides and downplays the role
played by wool, especially if it was associated with foreigners and the humbler
sectors of Egyptian society. The social and economic aspects of the so-called
Egyptian preference for linen instead of wool should be studied in depth and it
cannot be excluded that the contrast between, say, an Egyptian linen civilization and a Mesopotamian wool civilization might turn out to be somewhat
artificial and too dependent on the biased self-representation of the elite in
their monuments. Pork consumption is a good example that reminds us of the
dangers of relying too much on elite and religious texts and cultural choices.44
Resistances and alternative lifestyles are not only visible within Egyptian
society but also in foreign populations, and Nubians represent an excellent
case in point. Recent archaeological research shows that during the 3rd and
early 2nd millennium bce Nubians occupied more than the regions situated
just south of the Egyptian borders. In fact, their presence is well attested over
vast areas of the Western Desert west of the Nile and even within Egypt itself,
domestique, 5066, La gestion des aires marginales, and Invaders or just herders?
43 Moreno Garca, Invaders or just herders? with bibliography.
domestique, 5562.
219
particularly in the area between Thebes and Aswan, but also around Bersheh,
in Middle Egypt, and in the Western oases.45 However, their close contact with
Egyptians did not preclude the abandonment of their culture and dietary customs. Their preference for millet, porridge and alcoholic beverages based on
beer, as well as their pastoral lifestyle, were part of social practices and relations built on values very different to those of Egyptians. Emulation was not
the ultimate destiny of Nubian culture. Quite the reverse, the attachment of
Nubians to a more mobile lifestyle, with extensive networks of alliances and
social solidarity in the absence of an absolutist monarchy, reveals that cereal
cultivation and sedentarization were not the inevitable and exclusive path
leading to progress and civilization. In fact, alternative forms of social and
productive organization (combining agriculture, herding, trade, even seasonal
mining, etc.) were based on different forms of social power that enabled
Nubians to preserve more autonomous and decentralized lifestyles. And these
were in no way incompatible at all with complex urbanism and sophisticated
culture, as recent work at Kerma reveals.46 Similar tensions between China
and its nomadic neighbors offer further ground for comparison,47 as does the
fact that the effective power of emperors within the borders of their territory
was not uniform. In fact, conflicts between northern and southeastern China,
sometimes ending in political division, reveal differentiated socio-economic
and political regional patterns masked by the appearance of a monolithic and
homogeneous state. Finally, East Asian culinary traditions are linked not only
to crop choice, ceramic use and grinding practices but also, as in the case of
Nubians, to particular forms of kinship and social construction cemented by
distinctive cultural practices,48 while the contrast in the use of cotton and silk
clothes was based on social status.

Flows of Wealth, Trade and the Role of States and Empires
Older views on Mesopotamian and Pharaonic trade combined an evolutionary historical perspective with a general interpretation of states as despotic.
Thus, from the very beginning of Near Eastern history, big institutions like
temples (house of the god) and palaces (house of the king) were supposed
45 Forstner-Mller and Rose, Nubian Pottery from Egyptian Cultural Contexts; Nser, Nomads
at the Nile and Structures and realities of Egyptian-Nubian interactions.
46 Bonnet, difices et rites funraires Kerma and La ville de Kerma.
47 Rogers, Inner Asian states and empires.
48 Fuller and Rowlands, Towards a long-term macro-geography of cultural substances;
Rowlands and Fuller, Moudre ou faire bouillir? In general, cf. Prakash Tamang and
Samuel, Dietary cultures and antiquity of fermented foods and beverages.
220
Moreno Garca
to monopolize commercial exchanges with foreign territories and to control

internal flows of wealth mainly consisting in transfers of commodities within
institutions. Under these conditions private trade and the circulation of
money (silver) was considered marginal, as was private property. Only gradually, Mesopotamian states opened some spaces to private business, mainly
because of the weakening of central powers and the instability of monarchies
during the early 2nd millennium bce. As for Egypt, the alleged absolute power
of the king and his governmental apparatus meant that every economic and
commercial activity was promoted and closely monitored by the state.
While such a view still remains alive and well in Egyptology, the publication
of several crucial cuneiform archives has completely transformed the interpretation of trade and commerce in ancient Mesopotamia. The archives of the
Middle Bronze Age Assyrian traders found at Kanesh/Kltepe (Anatolia) or the
documents produced by families deeply involved in commercial operations
(like first millennium Babylonian Murashus and Egibis) have promoted discussions about the role of private traders and entrepreneurs, not necessarily
operating only at the service of temples and palaces but also able to develop
their own business.49 The recent publication of some archives dating from the
3rd millennium has proved that such merchants were not a 2nd and 1st millennium innovation, issued from state-centered trade precedents but, in fact, a
phenomenon already present in Mesopotamia since early times. Furthermore,
silver appears as a common means of exchange and has stimulated an intense
discussion about the role of money and monetization in the Mesopotamian
economy prior to the proper invention of coined money around the middle of
the 1st millennium.50 Although these historiographic developments are mostly
based on the publication and analysis of written documents, archaeology as
well as palaeobotany also reveal that small-scale silent forms of trade made
possible the exchange and circulation of plants, animals, and commodities
over long distances, thus challenging the alleged monopoly of traders and big
49 Wunsch, Neo-Babylonian entrepreneurs.
50 Dercksen, Trade and Finance in Ancient Mesopotamia; Bongenaar, Interdependency of
Institutions and Private Entrepreneurs; van Driel, Elusive Silver; Istituto italiano di numismatica, Per una storia del denaro nel Vicino Oriente antico; Largento nella storia monetaria del Vicino Oriente antico; Abraham, Business and Politics under the Persian Empire;
Steinkeller, Toward a definition of private economic activity; Paoletti, Elusive silver?;
Baker and Jursa, Approaching the Babylonian Economy; Graslin-Thom, Les changes
longue distance en Msopotamie au Ier millnaire; Jursa, Aspects of the Economic History
of Babylonia; Garfinkle, Entrepreneurs and Enterprise in Early Mesopotamia; Ouyang,
Monetary Role of Silver.
221
institutions in the organization of maritime and long-range trade.51 Therefore,

while international trade flourished and stimulated the circulation of goods,
ideas, and artistic styles in some periods of antiquity, usually in the context of
intense diplomatic exchanges between states,52 it is also true that, in fact, they
were preceded and followed by periods when trade relations also flourished in
the absence of powerful monarchies.
From this perspective, the commercial operations promoted by big institutions appear only as part of broader flows of wealth also including independent traders, mobile populations and, quite probably, a modest or popular
demand. In fact, this perception should not come as a surprise. Since the
Neolithic (at least) networks of exchanges made possible the circulation of
obsidian, copper, and other goods across the Near East and its neighboring
areas; so it would appear strange that such networks became suddenly somewhat compressed and limited to the demands of states. This misconception
is probably due to the change of focus of modern scholars, from archaeology
in pre-literate times to written documents (recording institutional activities)
when writing first appeared. However, recent archaeological discoveries also
show the vitality, extent and increase of exchanges during the 3rd and 2nd
millennium bce, when states were both powerful and weak, including the socalled intermediate periods in Egyptian history. States appear then not only
as promoters of trade but, perhaps more accurately, as capturers of lucrative
existing exchange networks, both to control such flows of wealth for their own
profit, to increase their own income, and to avoid competing powers that could
take advantage of them. Archaeology also reveals that such networks connected the Near East to Central Asia, north-eastern Africa, the Mediterranean
and the areas bordering the Indian Ocean.53 Similar flows of wealth had China
and South and Southeast Asia as their main foci,54 and animals and plants
51 G. Stein, Invisible social sectors in Early Mesopotamian state societies; Good, Invisible
exports in Aratta; Wengrow, The voyages of Europa; Boivin and Fuller, Shell middens,
ships and seeds; Fuller and Boivin, Crops, cattle and commensals across the Indian
Ocean; Fuller, Boivin, Hoogervorst, and Allaby, Across the Indian Ocean; M.L. Smith,
The substance and symbolism of long-distance exchange; T.C. Wilkinson, Tying the
Threads of Eurasia.
52 Monroe, Scales of Fate; Sauvage, Routes maritimes et systmes dchanges internationaux; Aruz, Graff, and Rakic, Cultures in Contact; Canepa, Understanding cross-cultural
interaction.
53 Parkinson and Galaty, Archaic State Interaction; Fuller, Boivin, Hoogervorst, and Allaby,
Across the Indian Ocean; T.C. Wilkinson, Tying the Threads of Eurasia; Moreno Garca,
Egypt, Old to New Kingdom (26861069 bc).
54 Mair and Hickman, Reconfiguring the Silk Road.
222
Moreno Garca
spread out from this vast area into the northern Indian Ocean and East Africa.
The use of money and silver presents nevertheless quite distinctive particularities in ancient China when compared to the Graeco-Roman world.55
Another point for comparison is the role played by states in promoting
large-scale industrial production and the consequences of such initiatives.
Recent work in sites like Ramesside Qantir, among others, reveals the importance of craft activities promoted and supported by the state and linked not
only to its military needs but also to the production of luxury items (high quality textiles, glass, ivory, stone vessels, etc.) exchanged between courts or circulating between elites.56 Such activities required the supply of raw materials
not always locally available but, quite often, sought for in distant areas, thus
stimulating activities linked to maritime and overland traffic, to specialized
labor division, to increased merchant operations, etc. These circuits could
finally merge or complement parallel circuits held in independent hands
(nomads, itinerant traders, gatherers, etc.) and stimulate more traffic and new
routes, in some cases circumventing those controlled by central powers. In the
same vein, emulation of the tastes and prestige goods used by the elite could
result in the growth of a new demand, which, though less wealthy, would be
able to sustain important commercial and production activities increasingly
independent from those controlled by the states. The complex interaction of
all these networks of exchanges could finally crystallize in an unstable equilibrium susceptible to unforeseeable developments. Disruption of former trade
circuits (for instance when wars erupted, when traffic was hindered, or when
states invested less resources in craft and trade activities) could thus ignite successive shock waves over broad areas. Seafarer populations might thus turn to
more independent, alternative, and lucrative operations like piracy and settlement in distant areas (like the Sea Peoples and Vikings); new routes could
bypass those traditionally controlled by states and open the path for the emergence of new states (like the ancient South Arabian or Garamantes monarchies), or even for the consolidation of the autonomy enjoyed by others (like
the Phoenicians). An increasing but less wealthy demand could also result in
the consolidation of new techniques of craft production based on cheaper
materials (like iron, or vitreous materials), or in a broader use of substances
formerly reserved to the elite or completely new, from frankincense, perfumes
and oils, to silphium, silk and others. Finally, the reaction of former states could
result first, in their reorganization, and later, in their transformation into impe55 Scheidel, The monetary systems of the Han and Roman empires.
56 Hodgkinson, High status industries; Rehren and Pusch, Alloying and resource management in New Kingdom Egypt.
223
rial powers seeking to control lucrative routes and producer areas over vast
territories (like the Assyrian and Achaemenid empires or the Saite kingdom).
To conclude this section, comparative research on exchanges and flows of
wealth should focus its attention beyond the role played by the states in their
creation, control, and capture. Marginal populations appear increasingly
as important actors whose initiatives, reactivity and adaptive potential were
also essential in promoting, managing, and eventually diverting such flows
when states flourished and collapsed, in collaboration with or in opposition
to them, but always in their own interest. Furthermore, activities like financing and organizing trade or the use of silver, among others, can no longer be
seen as depending almost exclusively on the initiatives implemented by states.
Merchants and entrepreneurs operated alongside or independently from rulers, and their strategies of investment and social elevation affected the way
in which economy and institutions were organized and, consequently, they
altered the balance of power between different sectors of the elite.57 Therefore,
their operations, together with those of mobile populations, are inseparable
from the existence of invisible markets and flows of commodities and materials whose impact on, and complex relations with, states suggest new venues for future research.58 Finally, strictly private affairs and private interests
were also carried out by people bearing court, priestly and administrative
titles. Their governmental connections should not disguise the fact that they
also carried out private business or that they used institutions for their own
profit, for example, as holders of prebends and institutional land, including
Egypt itself.59

Building and Passing on Power: The Fabric of Ancient States
Ancient Near Eastern states were thus far from monopolizing every source of
wealth, from monitoring all the activities of their subjects, and from c ontrolling
57 Bongenaar, Interdependency of Institutions and Private Entrepreneurs; van Driel, Elusive
Silver; Jursa, Aspects of the Economic History of Babylonia; van Bavel, Emerging and
Declining Markets for Land, Labour and Capital; van der Spek, van Zanden, and van
Leeuwen, A History of Market Performance.
58
G. Stein, Invisible social sectors in Early Mesopotamian state societies; Good,
Invisible exports in Aratta; Wengrow, The voyages of Europa; M.L. Smith, The substance and symbolism of long-distance exchange; Holladay, How much is that in...?;
T.C. Wilkinson, Tying the Threads of Eurasia; Moreno Garca, Egypt, Old to New Kingdom
(26861069 bc).
59 Allen, The Heqanakht Papyri; Donker van Heel, Djekhy & Son and Mrs. Tsenhor; Moreno
Garca, Lorganisation sociale de lagriculture pharaonique, 7274.
224
Moreno Garca
all flows of wealth passing through and alongside their borders. However,
monarchies succeeded in consolidating themselves as undisputed centers of
supreme power and wealth in the territories under their authority, in preventing the consolidation of feudal landlords and, apparently, in avoiding the consolidation of significant alternative poles of accumulation of authority and
wealth able to defy their rule.60 To put it another way, cases where trade was
intense and money was used in transactions, at least in some states and periods, did not result in capitalist relations of production, while the existence of
territorial magnates did not lead towards the emergence of feudalism. What is
more, periods when states collapsed or when monetization, markets, investment and even (pre-)capitalist relations seemed to gain in importance hardly
witnessed any evolution towards feudal or capitalist forms of production.
Here lays the main core of the very notion of a tributary state, solid enough to
preclude the consolidation of any durable alternative to its power and resilient
enough to preserve monarchies for long periods of time. Thus, tributary states
succeeded in some way to seal spaces where a class of autonomous landlords
with exclusive, inalienable, and heritable rights over their tenures could have
flourished; or where money-based relations could have finally spread out and
transformed everything into commodities, from land to labor. In fact, limited
forms of merchant and agrarian capitalism, usually restricted to specific economic sectors (like plantations, international trade, or textile production for
export), were common in many pre-industrial societies, without resulting in a
progressive evolution towards capitalist relations of production comparable to
those of modern Europe.61
Taxation appears as the predominant element. In a world where agriculture
was the main source of wealth, power, and income, tributary states managed to
establish a direct and unrivalled relation of extraction of surplus with producers (mainly peasants) through taxation. The obvious implication is that this
system left no room for other modalities of significant surplus extraction, like
rents imposed by feudal landlords over their subjects or tribute privatized
by imperial governors. Therefore potentates, high dignitaries, members of
the court, and nobles depended on revenue granted by the state in order to
keep their standard of living; they also depended on a ceremonial apparatus
made of public rewards, rituals, specific cultural codes and honors bestowed
by the king which conferred prestige and promoted emulation among members of the nobility. However, such state nobility should not be equated with
60 In some dubious cases states appear as confederacies of autonomous rulers who recognized a common sovereign (Potts, Monarchy, factionalism and warlordism).
61 Banaji, Putting theory to work.
225
an independent aristocracy, capable of its own means of living (through land

ownership) and of coercion (private armies, law courts). That is why it is so
difficult to detect significant independent landowners in ancient Near Eastern
societies. Land tenures were usually associated with institutions (temples, the
crown) and extensive kin-groups, while buying and selling rights over institutional land tenures were common practice but never lead to the consolidation
of a land market where land was considered a commodity like any other. Land
was certainly bought and sold among particulars but it seems that this practice
was limited and that, in any case, it never led to the consolidation of a class
of landlords owning extensive private holdings. Social practices (like fictive
adoptions), royal measures (like sporadic cancellations of debts), and dense
networks of reciprocity and social obligation (kinship, village solidarity), further contributed to limit the scope of a land market.62 As for commercial
firms, they appear basically as family enterprises subject to periodic divisions
due to inheritances, marriages, etc., and involved in a diversified set of activities (borrowing and lending money, tax-farming, financing trade operations,
investing in plantations and building land, acquisition of prebends in temples,
etc.), thus making it difficult to transform into durable capitalist firms with
long-term consolidated capitals. Finally, the economic and symbolic resources
at the disposal of the crown provided this institution with an indisputable
authority to manipulate and settle disputes among factions of the ruling class,
as well as to grant wealth and status. While, at the local level, potentates,
chiefs of villages, etc., constituted a largely autonomous sub-elite, the reduced
extent of their authority made them no rivals for the king and his agents. At
a higher level, the wealth and social position of the nobility depended on
their connections to the king and the royal administration. The monarchy
appears thus as indispensable in building an elite aligned with its interests and
concerned with the preservation of an institution to which they owed their
prominent position. Certainly, nobles, favorites, and potentates could usurp
royal prerogatives and income; but such episodes were ephemeral in the long
term, and hardly result in their transformation into feudal landlords. They
manipulated and used for their own benefit the tools put at their disposal by
the state, but their acts were confined nevertheless within the limits of the
state. This explains why, when central authority collapsed, what emerged in
its place was a myriad of micro-states or local powers, each one replicating the
62 Charpin, Les dits de restauration des rois babyloniens; Bellotto, Le adozioni a

Emar. In general, cf. Hudson and van de Mieroop, Debt and Economic Renewal, as well as
Westbrook and Jasnow, Security for Debt.
226
Moreno Garca
g overnmental s tructures and tax system of the disappeared monarchy on a

much more limited territorial sphere.
States managed then to build and model the ruling elite, to integrate it within
the structure of the monarchy, and to prevent the emergence of any serious
rival to its own authority. In some way, states and their institutions could be
considered as highly effective in destroying kin solidarities among the elite and
in transforming kinship networks into a socially dismembered body of individuals depending on the king for their own reproduction as members of the
ruling class. Such depersonalization is apparent in the recruiting methods
applied in many different domains, from bureaucracy to clergy, from eunuchs
to slave/foreign soldiers (mamluks, jenizars): social construction based on kin
links were destroyed and replaced by new ones where titles, specific competences, ceremonies, and rituals recreated alternative forms of re-socialization
of individuals, cemented on intermarriage between members of the elite and
the royal family, formally ignoring the extensive kin in which such individuals
were born. Obviously this does not mean that such people severed all links
with their extended families, or did not try to benefit them through their position and rank (but in competition with other families). However, the mechanisms of reproduction of the whole system were independent of such family
ties and relied on more impersonal ones.
Institutions like temples played a crucial role in such depersonalization
and acted as a kind of socio-economic modulator that helped avoid the consolidation of alternative foci of wealth and authority.63 From a social point of
view, temples opened paths for social promotion and acquisition of wealth
and prestige; and Pharaohs used them to integrate local and palatine elites into
the machinery of the state (as when kings proclaimed that they had recruited
priests from among the members of the elite). Once again one should differentiate between local temples, usually in the hands of the local elite, and national
temples largely dependent on the kings largesse. However, the priesthood also
involved some kind of depersonalization and distance from the rest of society: purity norms, dietary restrictions, literacy competence, highly regulated
sexuality, etc. Whether priests enjoyed considerable temple resources these
remained, nevertheless, inalienable. From an economic standpoint, temples
appear as economic agencies involved in the exploitation of huge amounts of
land, in trade activities, in the transformation of agricultural and craft production (like textiles) into money, and in fueling market activities. But, at the
same time, and contrary to modern enterprises, profits were not reinvested
but largely treasured and transformed into sumptuary consumption, as lists
63 Moreno Garca, Lorganisation sociale de lagriculture pharaonique, 6772.
227
of precious temple statues and equipment reveal. In this way, temples modulated flows of wealth and diverted them from modern forms of accumulation
and reinvestment based on individual initiative. While being important economic actors, the inalienability of their considerable resources (land, precious
metals) detracted them from markets and thus helped prevent the consolidation of significant poles of accumulation of wealth outside the monarchy.
Another way of achieving this goal was through the inalienability of their
patrimony; the patronage of kings and the protection of gods made them ideal
providers of institutional security. Such security could take the form of regular
revenue (prebends, remunerated ritual service, participation in offerings presented to divinities, access to temple land). In other instances it appeared as
inclusion into a protective patronage network, well-linked to potentates, high
dignitaries, even the royal palace itself. Temples thus attracted investments
through the provision of prebends and priestly positions. Another strategy
consisted in attracting donations that further increased their patrimony. It
would be too nave to consider donations simply as pure acts of piety. They
also conformed to specific strategies aiming, particularly, to join a solid institution with extensive networks of influence and power and to benefit from the
security it procured, especially when individual strategies of social promotion
were at stake or when preserving ones patrimony became urgent in periods of
political turmoil. In any case, donations made by individuals further increased
the fragmentation of their kin and their resources.64 Such strategies were common in pre-capitalist societies, including Egypt65 and many regions of Asia.66
To finish this section we should have a final word about the territorial organization of ancient empires. According to modern perceptions about territorial states with well-defined borders and well-delimited and exclusive areas
of sovereignty, historical maps tend to present ancient empires as continuous
territories submitted to the control of a central power. This perspective might
prove to be quite deceptive as populations living in mountainous areas, forests,
swamps, and tribal zones inside their frontiers could enjoy a large autonomy
if not a complete independencebecause of their relative remoteness and
the logistical difficulties for imposing an effective control upon them. In other
64 Moreno Garca, Introduction. lites et tats tributaires and The other administration;
Campagno, El modo de produccin tributario y el antiguo Egipto.
65 A recent discussion can be found in Moreno Garca, Conflicting interests over the possession and transfer of institutional land and Land donations.
66 B. Stein, The economic function of a medieval South Indian temple; Talbot, Temples,
donors, and gifts; Morrison, Trade, urbanism, and agricultural expansion; HauserSchublin, Temple and king and Land donations and the gift of water.
228
Moreno Garca
instances, states took the form of networks of nodes of authority separated by

areas frequented by mobile populations; borders became thus porous and
fluctuating, as did the claims from different polities over a given ill-defined
area.67 Nomadic populations also frequented vast areas, and their control by
central powers was usually problematic, fluctuating between alliances and
collaboration to overt conflict. Finally, marked differences in resources, settlement density, environmental conditions, connectivity, and ritual significance
favored certain areas as potential nodes of power; when several of them coexisted in a single policy, as in the case of Egypt, their durable integration within
the monarchy could pass through the acceptance of their political idiosyncrasies (including the prominent position of their elites), thus paving the way
for future instability and, eventually, the split of the kingdom. Inversely, other
areas appear as reserves of statehood through which monarchies managed to
reconstruct themselves after periods of division, like the Theban area in Egypt,
or northern China.68
All these considerations reveal the existence of many paths for comparative
analysis which should help characterize the particularities of the pharaonic
monarchies, especially in the light of recent discussions about the organization
of tributary states. More generally, they also suggest the areas in which ancient
Egypt could positively contribute to a renewed formulation of a state theory in
the line of prestigious precedents like Michael Manns The Sources of Social
Power or Shmuel Eisentadts The Political Systems of Empires.
Conclusion
This essay certainly does not intend to explore all possible paths for comparative research between ancient Egypt and other pre-industrial societies of the
past. Rather, it aims to suggest some areas where such work could prove stimulating in order to answer crucial questions frequently neglected in Egyptology.
Hence contributions from other pre-industrial societies, under a multidisciplinary perspective, should certainly help reinterpret the pharaonic past
and provide more solid conceptual and heuristic tools in order to achieve this
task. Too often considered the quintessential example of despotic, hydrau67 Liverani, The growth of the Assyrian empire in the Habur/Middle Euphrates area;
M.L. Smith, Networks, territories, and the cartography of ancient states; Ristvet, Legal
and archaeological territories.
68 Wickham, The uniqueness of the East, 55.
229
lic absolute power, sometimes reduced to the condition of a historical anomaly made of conservatism, monarchic continuity, and an astonishing historical
length, Egypt can and should contribute to current debates about how ancient
states were structured and interacted in the longue dure. Furthermore, the
alleged exceptionalism and conservatism ascribed to ancient Egypt are nothing more than outdated vestiges of late nineteenth-century historiography
based on a too literal interpretation of ancient sources. However, the effects of
such notions still hamper the analysis of the pharaonic past. That is why concepts like monarchy, kingdom/empire, intermediate period, unity, centralization, politics, and many others deserve a full reinterpretation before
reintegrating (or rejecting) them as operative tools in a new narrative that, in
the end, should reveal that ancient Egypt was a dynamic and normal node
within a vast network of political entities spread across the ancient world.
Abbreviations
janeh Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History
jesho Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient
kaskal Kaskal. Journal of History, Environment, and Cultures of the Ancient
Near East
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Journal of Egyptian History 7 (2014) 203240

Ancient States and Pharaonic Egypt: An Agenda

koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 4|doi 10.1163/18741665-12340018

Journal of Egyptian History 7 (2014) 203240

Ancient States and Pharaonic Egypt

concepts (e.g., market, capital, rationalism, enterprise) for ancient and

Journal of Egyptian History 7 (2014) 203240

Journal of Egyptian History 7 (2014) 203240

Ancient States and Pharaonic Egypt

stands as a unique case of monarchic continuity and immutable governmental

11 Moreno Garca, From Dracula to Rostovtzeff and Penser lconomie pharaonique.

Journal of Egyptian History 7 (2014) 203240

A final aspect is the need of de-orientalizing historical narratives where

Journal of Egyptian History 7 (2014) 203240

Ancient States and Pharaonic Egypt

would not be extravagant to consider together, in a comparative perspective,

Comparing What? With Whom?

Journal of Egyptian History 7 (2014) 203240

Journal of Egyptian History 7 (2014) 203240

Ancient States and Pharaonic Egypt

Journal of Egyptian History 7 (2014) 203240

Journal of Egyptian History 7 (2014) 203240

Ancient States and Pharaonic Egypt

Journal of Egyptian History 7 (2014) 203240

Journal of Egyptian History 7 (2014) 203240

Ancient States and Pharaonic Egypt

In examining the use of writing as a means of expression of elite self-identity