Figure 1.--Here we see a sccene from the burial chamber of Menna, the king's scribe, workers on the threshing floor. It is not enirtely clear just what share of the crop harvested by the largely landless peasantry that the pesant farmers were allowed to keep. Many sources describe a half or more, but we are not entirely sure about that.

Egypt developed as what is the Sahara Desert began to form. the Nile River Valley was the only reliable source of water over a vast area. In ancient Egypt most land was came to be owned by the Pharaoh, the royal family, and the temples (3000 BC). As in Sumer, the land was seen to be owned by the gods, but Pharaoh was the god's human representative. Until recently it was largely believed that slavery was widespread in Egypt and provided the agricultural work force as well as workers for major projects like budding the pyramids. We now know that this was not the case. Landdownership and taxition patterns varied over time so it is not possible to to alks about one single system. We note chidren references that peasants may have paid half of their crop or more to Phraoh or other landowners. And peasants not only paid a share of the crp, but a host of other taxes as well as required labor on state projects. And there were some private landowners, All of this varied over time. Also important to understand. Unlike modern farmers who can produce food for 200-300 popole. The basic technilogy of anent farmes meant that produed food for onlky a smallnnymber of peple beyd their subsistence needs Actualy percentage figures are difficult to come by. A rare perid source is the Bible. Joseph interpreted Pharoah's dreams as predicting 7 years of plenty followed by 7 years of famine. 【Genesis 41】 . In verse 34, Joseph recommends a 20 percent ax on grain during the good years to provide food during the bad years: "Let Pharaoh appoint commissioners over the land to take a fifth of the harvest of Egypt during the seven years of abundance." Which would mean a lower percentage during the bad years. But remember that th crp share is just part f the tax burden. Agricultural workers were mostly landless peasants. Workers for major projects may have been conscripted peasants, but they were paid wages. There was some private land ownership. One author writes, "Pharaonic Egypt provides some evidence about private possession of land in which markets and a business-oriented mentality operated in a social and economic environment rational but alien to modern capitalist values. Kinship ties limited the emergence of individualist interests, but kings promoted such behavior in an attempt to curve down the power of noble families. Yet individualist strategies remained limited because institutions (particularly temples and the crown) were crucial in the formation of private land portfolios and narrowed the possibilities for the emergence of a significant market of land." 【Morena Garcia】 Unlike Mesopotamia there was no formation of numerous competing successor states, but a steady string of dynasties with a considerable degree of cultural continuity. And the general land ownership pattern in ancient Egypt, was a centralization of land ownership toward pharaoh and the royal family. This is not to suggest that there was no change. One source suggests that were periods, most notably the New Kingdom (16th-11th century BC), where private land ownership was of some importance. The general pattern, even during the New Kingdom was, however, that the land was owned by Pharaoh, the royal family, aristocrats, and temple priests. One source describes the Egyptian pattern as, "The king [pharaoh] had ultimate control over the land and allocated it to various officials, temples, and nobles. The land was cultivated by peasants, who worked the fields and paid a portion of their produce as rent or taxes to the landowner. Additionally, some land could be privately owned by individuals, although the state maintained control over the overall land distribution." The overarching underpinning of Egyptian land ownership pattern was that the land belonged to the gods. And Pharaoh was the living manifestation of Horus--the most significant of the Egyptian gods through millennia of Egyptian history. (The eye of Horus even appears ion the American dollar bill.) Thus the primary right to the land was vested in Pharaoh, the omnipotent human authority for the the gods and land administration was one of his most important functions. But Pharaoh did not convey actual ownership in the modern sense--merely usufructuary rights. Thus is the the legal right of enjoying the use of land to a person. This means the rights to not only possess and occupy, but to exclude. And most importantly, entitles to to a substantial share of the income derives from that land. 【Ramsey, et. al. 】 The final, Ptolemaic Dynasty may be more a relection of Greek than Egyptian land ownership practices. A reader reports thatb Cleopatra was teaching Ceasar about trusts and landownership.

Sources

Hudson, Michael and Baruch Levin. eds. Urbanization and Land Ownership in the Ancient Near East.

Kaiser, Walter C. "Ownership and property in the Old Testament economy," Faith Work & Economics (September 12, 2012).

Linklater, Andro. Owning the Earth: The Transforming History of Land Ownership.

Mazoyer, M. and L. Roudart. A History of World Agriculture from the Neolithic Age to the Current Crisis (Roudart: London, 2006), 512 p.

Morena Garcia, Juan Carlos. "Property and markets: The uses of land in Pharaonic Egypt beyond redistributive and neoliberal approaches," Frontiers in Economic History, in: Stefanos Gimatzidis and Reinhard Jung (ed.). The Critique of Archaeological Economy (Springer: 2021), pp. 117-37,.

Ramsey, Christopher Bronk, Michael W. Dee, Joanne M. Rowland, Thomas F. G. Higham, Stephen AHarris, Fionna Brock, Anita Quiles, Eva M. Wild, Ezra S. Marcus, and Andrew J. Shortland. (2010). "Radiocarbon-based chronology for Dynastic Egypt."Science. Vol. 328, No. 5985 2010), pp. 1554–57..

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