built a smoky fi re to indicate their arrival and withdrew to a
safe distance. Th e locals came down to the beach, inspected
the goods, and then left behind a quantity of gold that they
thought represented a fair price. Th e Carthaginians returned,
and if they thought the price was fair, they took the gold and
left ; if not, they again withdrew and the locals could leave be-
hind a greater quantity of gold if they wished. Th is process
continued until a price had been reached, the Carthagin-
ians accepted the gold and left , and the locals carried off the
goods.
Th e Carthaginian economy was a command economy,
directed by the ruling dynasty in Carthage. Th is dynasty was
an oligarchy of prominent families. Transactions were taxed,
creating a royal treasury used to fi nance the military and nu-
merous public works projects.
MONEY
Th e development of money in Africa, as well as in other parts
of the world, was closely related to taxation. Money, as op-
posed to coins and currency, is an abstraction. Money is de-
fi ned in a number of ways: a medium of exchange, a store of
value, a standard of value, a unit of account, and a means of
payment. In modern life people store value by opening bank
accounts or contributing to retirement accounts. In this way
they can store resources for the future, when they can convert
savings into groceries and other commodities. But while the
modern world thinks of money as coins and currency, virtu-
a l ly any t hing can ser ve as money, as long as ot hers accept it as
money, it cannot be easily counterfeited, it is relatively scarce,
and it holds its value over time.
In ancient Africa tangible goods were the primary form
of money. Objects were priced relative to one another, so
that a certain quantity of salt, for example, was regarded as
equivalent in value to a certain amount of gold. African trad-
ers who formed the marketplace for goods were adept at de-
termining these relative values. Th ey served as middlemen
who exchanged the commodities and collected a surplus that
was their payment for brokering the transaction. Similarly, a
cow could serve all the purposes of money, and objects were
“priced” relative to cattle. In some cultures a person could pay
for something with a cow and receive “change” in the form of
a sheep or goat or perhaps some other commodity, such as a
sheepskin. Th e English word pecuniary, referring to money,
comes from the Latin word pecus, meaning “cattle,” and the
English words cattle, chattel (any goods or tangible property),
and capital (in the economic sense of assets) all have the same
linguistic origin. Interestingly, the modern world has simi-
lar fi nancial instruments. While cattle are not used much as
money, certain intangible things are. In 1997 the pop music
star David Bowie introduced “Bowie bonds,” a form of money
that gave owners of the bonds a claim on future royalties from
his music. While the form has changed, the basic concept of
providing something of value in exchange for something else,
rather than exchanging coins and currency, is little diff erent
from the practices of ancient Africa.
Th e problem was that the taxing authorities could use
only so much salt or so many heads of cattle. Accordingly,
systems of coinage developed primarily as a way to pay taxes
and not as a way to facilitate barter, as is commonly believed.
Secondarily, coinage was a more convenient way to pay such
obligations as fi nes, bride-prices, and tribute to foreign con-
querors; the word pay comes from the Latin pacere, meaning
to “appease” or “make peace with.” In ancient Africa coins
were not minted out of precious metals for these purposes.
Th e most common form of “coinage” was the cowrie shell,
a brightly colored shell from warm-water gastropods (mol-
lusks, for example) that had value because they were brightly
colored and thus were used in luxury goods such as jewelry.
At various times, though, other similar items were used as
coinage, including feathers, metal tools, and ivory. Th e later
Carthaginians minted coins and also used gold as a means of
payment.EGYPT
BY PANAGIOTIS I. M. KOUSOULIS
Th e inner structure of the ancient Egyptian state was based
on three factors: economy, religion, and political ideology.
Th ese factors were closely connected in a variety of modes
and expressions. Th e pharaoh was regarded as the earthly
manifestation of the divine and the guarantor of the fertility
of the land and the fecundity of the stock. Th e Egyptian lands
were the exclusive property of the king, who divided them
into agricultural domains and placed them under the control
of the temple or political administration.
Although there was no word equivalent to economy in
the vocabulary of the ancient Egyptians and nor was there a
planned economic framework, the transition from a nomadic
to an economic culture, the unifi cation of Upper (South) and
Lower (North) Egypt, and the formation of the political state
and administration gradually led to the development and in-
stitutionalization of a working economic system.
Economic transactions and practices are documented
in a variety of sources. Even from the inauguration of Egyp-
tian political history there is evidence, from the end of the
fourth and the beginning of the third millennium b.c.e., of
the tripartite nature of Egyptian society (religious, political,
economic) and the role of economy in it. For example, on
the mace head (a ceremonial staff ) of the mythological king
Scorpion (Dynasty 0, ca. 3050 b.c.e.) the central scenes de-
pict the king’s eff orts to render the land agriculturally valu-
able through the exploitation of certain techniques (seeding,
harvest, tree plantings) and ritual actions (presentations to
divinities).
Sources of economic information can be categorized
into two principal groups. Th e fi rst group includes monu-
mental inscriptions and pictorial representations that cover
almost two millennia, from the Old Kingdom through the
New Kingdom (ca. 2575–1070 b.c.e.). Th e evidence from the
Old and Middle Kingdoms is scanty and becomes much more346 economy: Egypt