Accounting and redistribution: The palace and mortuary cult in the Middle Kingdom, ancient Egypt

Accounting Historians Journal, The,  Jun 2002  by Ezzamel, Mahmoud

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First, the Middle Kingdom was preceded by the chaotic First Intermediate Period that had a profound impact upon the social and political fabric of life in ancient Egypt. Literary sources offer unique insights into the traumas experienced by the ordinary Egyptian during the First Intermediate Period, which resulted in significant revisions in the relationship between ruler and ruled once the Middle Kingdom began. Socially, this change was manifest in greater emphasis upon social justice as reflected in the concept of Maat, whereby the Pharaoh was expected to observe and uphold justice in the land even more so than during the Old Kingdom. Administratively, this change was reflected in the emergence of relatively more decentralized governments, compared to the highly centralized administration of both the Old and New Kingdoms. Through inscribed accounts and the visibility that this created, superiors could demonstrate most clearly to their subordinates that justice was being observed. The determination and inscription of precise rations for individuals of varying rank or those undertaking different tasks was a manifestation of doing Maat. Once these rations were determined and then applied consistently, it would have been easy to demonstrate through this consistency that Maat was being observed. These inscribed accounts also provided the means for subordinates to demonstrate to their superiors and peers, their integrity, responsibility, efficiency, and trust-worthiness, the very qualities frequently celebrated in tomb reliefs and autobiographies.

The second major discontinuity occurred from the Twelfth Dynasty onwards, and in particular during the reign of Sesostris III, with the advent of military expansions in the South (Nubia).

These military campaigns provided the conditions of possibility for a massive expansion of state bureaucracy, a significant increase in administrative titles, and greater refinement in the nature of tasks, all of which were formalized through inscriptions. This was accompanied by greater emphasis on bookkeeping and accounting. The scribes attended to the increased power of the central authority by providing more detailed recording of activities that made it possible for state administrators to trace out and monitor the flow of resources into the state coffers and out again in the form of redistribution. The summary daily accounts of Papyrus Bulaq 18 examined in this paper provide one example of this urge to record economic transactions in much greater detail and over shorter intervals compared to the typical accounting practices employed during the Old Kingdom.

An intricate web of accounting practices was developed and used to trace the levying and collection of taxes in kind, the storage of these goods in state granaries, the monitoring of granary inventories, and the subsequent redistribution of goods to the various recipients in accordance with the pre-determined rations. In each of these stages, the intervention of accounting was all too evident. To provide guidelines against which actual crops could be assessed, estimates of the crop were made using a variety of indicators (such as the size of the land, the canals, lakes, wells, and trees). The actual tax levy was based upon the crops produced, but one suspects that measures of the actual crops were contrasted against those estimated, as well as the possibility that tax estimates underpinned the state's planning system. When the crop was of the same type, tax liability was quantified in terms of so many capacity measures (say khar) of that crop. When taxable produce was of different types, a money of account was used as a common denominator, such as the Setduck in the case of the Kahun papyri. The tax yield was stored in state storehouses where the scribes ensured their careful recording both in terms of incoming stocks and stocks issued to various denominated users. All these activities were reported upon regularly to high officials, ending with the office of the Vizier, who in turn reported to the Pharaoh. What is evident here is that a carefully articulated set of accounting and control practices were developed to underpin Egypt's redistributive economy.