records were kept of all deliveries and distributions of rations. Tens of
thousands of clay tablets inscribed with such records were found in the
capital Ur itself, in Lagash, Umma… Foreign trade also was carried
out in the name of the central administration.
In Babylonia (c. 1750 B.C.) the law code of Hammurabi fixed wages for
herdsmen and artisans, and the charges to be made by physicians for
operations.
In Egypt under the Ptolemies (323 B.C. – 30 B.C.) the state owned the
soil and managed agriculture: the peasant was told what land to till, what
crops to grow; his harvest was measured and registered by government
scribes, was threshed on royal threshing floors, and was conveyed by a
living chain of fellaheen into the granaries of the king. The government
owned the mines and appropriated the ore. It nationalized the production
and sale of oil, salt, papyrus, and textiles. All commerce was controlled and
regulated by the state; most retail trade was in the hands of state agents
selling state-produced goods. Banking was a government monopoly, but its
operation might be delegated to private firms. Taxes were laid upon every
person, industry, process, product, sale, and legal document. To keep track
of taxable transactions and income, the government maintained a swarm of
scribes and a complex system of personal and property registration. The
revenue of this system made the Ptolemaic the richest state of the time.
Great engineering enterprises were completed, agriculture was improved,
and a large proportion of the profits went to develop and adorn the country
and to finance its cultural life. About 290 B.C. the famous Museum and
Library of Alexandria were founded. Science and literature flourished; at
uncertain dates in this Ptolemaic era some scholars made the “Septuagint”
translation of the Pentateuch into Greek. Soon, however, the pharaohs took
to expensive wars, and after 246 B.C. they gave themselves to drink and
venery, allowing the administration of the state and the economy to fall into
the hands of rascals who ground every possible penny out of the poor.
Generation after generation the government’s exactions grew. Strikes
