350 economy: The Middle East Foreign lands were also obliged to contribute to the annual levy if they were regarded as proper Egyptian cities after their conquest or surrender to the Egyptian authorities They paid their taxes through gifts or tributes to the pharaoh and the state, which might consist of precious metals (gold, silver, lapis lazuli), chariots, horses, cattle, and people to labor as servants or serfs RECIPROCITY AND FOREIGN TRIBUTES One characteristic aspect of the trade economy in ancient Egypt was the gift exchange It existed in two forms: as gifts between the king and his populace and as diplomatic tributes from allies and foreign parties to the pharaoh and the Egyptian state, especially during the Middle Kingdom (ca 2040–1640 b.c.e.) and New Kingdom (ca 1550–1070 b.c.e.) Donations from the Egyptian populace to the pharaoh were conceived as tributes to both the divine and political status of the king The Egyptians offered precious objects and commodities to receive internal peace and stability from the king This practice can be traced as far back as the Old Kingdom For example, in the step pyramid of the king Djoser (ca 2630–ca 2611 b.c.e.) at Saqqara—the first monumental structure constructed exclusively from stone—several inscribed jars were found that attested to the continued practice of giving gifts to the king Gift giving has been recorded in account papyri from the mortuary temple of the pharaoh Sesostris II (ca 1897–ca 1878 b.c.e.) at el-Lahun, as well as from the papyrus Abusir and historical texts from the New Kingdom The gift exchange was reciprocal The king honored the offerings and repaid the donors with equally valuable gifts For example, one Egyptian source refers to the king’s gifts to his liegemen and locates the ritual at which they were distributed at the forecourt of the palace Diplomatic gifts were offered to the pharaoh from foreign rulers as evidence of existing or prospective allies A diplomatic gift tended to convey social connotations rather than economic value It was received with special care by the Egyptian authorities on a specific day of the year, and the whole process was ritualized and closely connected with the celebration of the New Year’s festival The first evidence of such foreign “tribute scenes” is recorded on the walls of the funerary complex of Khnumhotep, a monarch in the region of Beni Hasan (Lower Egypt) at the beginning of the second millennium b.c.e A caravan of Levantine men and women are shown offering to the pharaoh a special lead ore that was used by the Egyptians as eye paint The custom of the diplomatic gift reached its peak during the New Kingdom, when the foreign expeditions of the pharaohs led to increasing contacts with foreign lands, from Libya in the west to Nubia in the south and territories in the Near East This aspect of economic practice is best documented in the royal correspondence between the Egyptian king and the rulers of the Near East, the so-called Amarna Letters These are clay tablets that were found in the city of Tel el-Amarna (Upper Egypt), the ancient site of the palace of King Amenhotep IV (better known as Akhenaten) The collection consists of about 350 letters from the mid-14th century b.c.e between the Egyptian state of the Eighteenth Dynasty and the rulers of the ancient territories in the Near East The clay letters were inscribed in cuneiform script—the writing system used throughout western Asia at the time— and mostly in the language of Akkadian (Babylonian), the common language of international relations The correspondence dealt with a variety of issues: alliance, strategic cases, trade, dynastic marriage, foreign gifts and tributes, quarrels between vassals, and legal and diplomatic issues Foreign tributes could include precious items or commodities that could not be found in the Egyptian territory They were not just economic transactions but had diplomatic connotations, where the pharaoh was acclaimed as the major delineator of the action on behalf of the Egyptian society and in a superior position to the foreign representatives In many cases these foreign tributes were combined with diplomatic marriages between members of the foreign and Egyptian courts Thus, in Amarna Letter 22, the king of the Near Eastern kingdom of Mittani, Tushratta, gave his daughter to the king of Egypt to be his wife, together with precious gifts and various commodities THE MIDDLE EAST BY J AMES A CORRICK There was no one single economy in the ancient Near East Still, there were several factors that were commonplace For the most part Near Eastern societies were agricultural in nature, and thus the growing of crops and the raising of animals were important economic activities Equally common were other economic elements such as taxation, trade, and tribute from war Prior to the fourth millennium b.c.e., however, except for agriculture, other economic pursuits were of little importance, as small farming communities were fairly selfsufficient, with their residents providing most of what they needed themselves With the appearance of the first cities, more complex economies emerged SUMER Around 3500 b.c.e southern Mesopotamia came under the control of the Sumerians and became the site of several independent city-states, the largest being Uruk Each of these Sumerian states had a distributive economy, one in which a central authority collected food and other goods, stored these collections, and then redistributed them according to the people’s social positions or needs The collection of food and goods was a form of taxation In each Sumerian city administrators—priests and bureaucrats—required that each household pay this tax Accordingly, part of what a household (which could be either a nuclear or extended family) grew, raised, or made was turned over to the city’s temple and its palace, the headquarters of the secular authorities Sumerians paid taxes on their crops and livestock, on boats they