Encyclopedia of Society and Culture in the Ancient World

Foreign lands were also obliged to contribute to the an- nual levy if they were regarded as proper Egyptian cities aft er their ...

owned, on fi sh they caught, and even on burials of the dead. Merchants also paid import and export duties. Sumerians, however, ...

contributed to increased production effi ciency. Such centers, for example, appeared toward the end of the fourth millen- nium b ...

weights of silver were used to determine the value of goods. Th e corvée still operated, though labor obligations were eased by ...

there was little arable land for agriculture. Importing food became a top priority of the Phoenicians in order to sustain the po ...

Eastern economies retained much that had emerged from the Sumerian cities of the fourth millennium b.c.e. ASIA AND THE PACIFIC B ...

Th e Yellow River people were actually several diff erent cul- tures when the Shang united them through military conquest. Th e ...

cording to the government’s Confucian philosophy, and low- ering taxes gave millions of Chinese the chance to improve their live ...

took the form of exports; grain was traded to the Near East in exchange for consumer goods such as cookware as well as for luxur ...

with the Roman Empire, because the Roman Empire had be- come an important source of wealth, sending literally tons of gold and s ...

cattle), elk, and hare. Many Mesolithic communities made great use of shellfi sh along the coasts of northern Europe. Agricultur ...

during the Neolithic Period were similar to those of earlier times, with one signifi cant innovation. Axes made by grind- ing on ...

to display their status and wealth. Trade continued in espe- cially fi ne fl int, as well as in some manufactured implements suc ...

some bureaucratic records on clay tablets. For the so-called dark ages that followed, there are only archaeological re- mains, m ...

dowry—payment from the family of the bride to the groom— and bride-gift s—payment from the groom to the family of the bride. Th ...

sense that her status determined the status of her children: To be a citizen of Athens during the fi ft h century b.c.e., one ha ...

PUBLIC FINANCE Greek city-states did not, as a rule, regularly tax their citi- zens. Th ey did regularly impose duties on import ...

taxation, confi scation, and enslavement. Th ey developed highly effi cient systems of taxation but also of redistribution to ga ...

(r. 69–79 c.e.) even imposed a tax on Rome’s urinals, since urine was sold to fullers for use in the washing of clothes. Th e go ...

ends, such as building roads or feeding the sacred geese on the Capitoline Hill. One of the main jobs of the censors was to let ...