Ancient Egyptian Economy

Paper Summary:

This essay investigates such egyptology techniques and disciplines as historiography, chronology, philolgy, palaeography, lexigraphy, papyrology, epigraphy, anthropology and ethno-archaeology that can be employed to understand the ancient egyptian economy ranging from such topics as trade activities, importance of particular materials such as gold and silver, bureaucracy, the non-monetary economy and foreign trade relations.

From the Paper:

"There are many methodologies and techniques that could be employed to reconstruct and analyze the past in order to better understand the ancient Egyptian economy. Historiography is one such methodology that could be of use because history writing encompasses many different aspects of society and culture. A concise history of Egypt would be particularly beneficial in understanding the ancient Egyptian economy because it would provide an insight into how the economy developed over time, perhaps illustrating the different trade activities that emerged or the gradual increase in free enterprise and markets for example. However historians and Egyptologists are reluctant to write an Egyptian history and instead concentrate on such aspects as cataloguing and labelling (Morkot 2003). Understandably there are a number of difficulties in attempting to write a concise Egyptian history including the sheer amounts of data available, as well as the increased specialization of Egyptologists who focus on one area of study, causing problems for the writing of an overall Egyptian history. Therefore using the methodology of historiography, although would provide a valuable insight into the ancient Egyptian economy, is currently lacking in its availability. Along with this there is also a scarcity of evidence in terms of surviving texts from Egypt that attempt to tell accounts of Egyptian history and this to provides problematic when attempting to use historiography to interpret the ancient Egyptian economy."

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