Social life in ancient Egypt / by W.M. Flinders Petrie.

  • Flinders Petrie
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Social life in ancient Egypt / by W.M. Flinders Petrie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    prehistoric age, then united dominion became possible. Values were reckoned in copper down to Ptolemaic times. The same was the case in other countries, and Italy retained the fiction of weighing copper, as the legalising of a sale, long after silver and gold were the currency. The next stage of the growth of power depends on a free supply of silver, a more port¬ able form of capital, which allows of tribute and payment over a wide area. Silver was not much used in Egypt, as the supply had to come from a distance, and silver and gold together became fairly usual about the XVIIIth dynasty. Then we see the immense expansion of Egypt, when tribute could be levied in precious metal, and army supplies thus kept up. In Mesopotamia, the turning point of silver coming in is given on the obelisk of Manishtusu (equivalent to the IXth dynasty), when land is valued both in corn and in silver, the old corn unit just giving way to metal. A century later came the first great unification by Naram-sin. In Greece, silver gave the power of union of states under Athens, the joint treasure of silver being kept at Delos. Such sufficed for a united Greece to work upon ; but yet Persia, the power with gold, could not be touched. When Philip started a great gold cur¬ rency, it was then that sufficient fluid capital
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