20 



tomer about the cloth's quahty, the high price is 

 understandable. Certainly, in terms of the average 

 worker's pay in grain at the village of Deir el-Medinah 

 in the New Kingdom Period, this cloth was costly. ' So 

 it is not surprising to see that the buyer is a portly, bald- 

 ing man. In the Old Kingdom Period, a paunch indi- 

 cated wealth and high status. 



From the discussion it is clear that the market- 

 place of Ny-ankh-Khnum and Khnum-hotep is a 

 unique relief and document. Other fragments of Old 

 Kingdom market scenes are known, or else small selec- 

 tions of several scenes at most, but nowhere else do we 

 find a full set of market scenes, complete with adjunct 

 scenes such as this one. New Kingdom scenes are 

 known, but they do not have the all-important bits of 

 conversation that this market has. Further, while the 

 practice of evaluating commodities in terms of copper, 

 silver, and gold are well attested from the New King- 

 dom Period and even from the Middle Kingdom, this is 

 the first evidence of such a system from the Old King- 

 dom Period. It shows that the Egyptians early in their 

 history went beyond simple barter and adopted a sys- 

 tem of evaluating commodities in terms of copper, sil- 

 ver, and gold to carry out transactions. These same 

 metals have formed the basis for most economies, 

 including our own until 1933. Only coinage and bank- 

 ing were lacking in the ancient Egyptian model. These 

 appeared in Egypt after 405 B.C. , when large companies 

 of Greek mercenaries serving in Egypt demanded their 

 pay in gold coins. Banking was developed in the 

 Ptolemaic Period. Yet, the earlier Egyptians came as 

 close to coinage as possible without calling it coinage. 

 In the Heka-nakht archive of Dynasty XI (referred to 

 above), Heka-nakht in one document mentions hav- 

 ing sent 24 copper debens to his associates at Thebes for 

 the renting of some land. From the writing, he can only 

 mean 24 pieces of copper, each weighing a deben. This 



reference may be added to other evidence already cited 

 by Jaroslav Cerny, who likewise suggested that the 

 Egyptians had come very close to actual coinage. '' 



Just how valuable the marketplace scene is for ex- 

 plaining the workings of the ancient Egyptian economy 

 is evident not only from this discussion, but from the 

 exhibit scenes it has led to. Grain measuring standards, 

 weights, measures, evidence of copper, silver, and gold 

 as metals underlying the economy, already in the Old 

 Kingdom Period, are all very important evidence. 

 Moreover, the different levels of society shown indi- 

 cate that this is a village market, not the market of a 

 large town or city. So, it shows that this economic sys- 

 tem was known to, and used by a fairly wide societal 

 base in ancient Egypt. For the exhibit "Inside Ancient 

 Egypt," the marketplace is a crucial component in the 

 layout of the daily life of the ancient Egyptians. Its 

 discovery in 1975, publication in 1977, and utilization 

 in this exhibit in 1988 form a fortunate set of circum- 

 stances. FM 



1. Moussa, Ahmed, and Hartwig Altenmuller. Das Grab des 

 Nianchchnum und Chnumhotep. Archaologische Ver- 

 offentlichungen 21. Deutsches Archaologisches Institut 

 Abteilung Kairo. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 

 1977, pp. 79-85; Tatel 24 and 27. 



2. The ancient Egyptians had a 12-month calendar, with months 

 of 30 days each; each month was divided into three weeks of 1 

 days each. 



3. The average worker received at most about four sacks of grain, 

 emmer wheat, per month, worth from one to four deben in copper 

 per sack. But they also received supplements in payment, such 



as fish, firewood, and fresh vegetables, or oils. In the reign of 

 Ramesses 11 (1279-1213 B.C.) 10 deben of copper equalled one kit^ 

 of silver. Thus, the grain wages worth a total of 4 to 16 deben of 

 copper equalled from -A to 1 and V^ kite of silver, at best a third of 

 the value of a shirt of fine linen, worth 5 kite. See further, Jaroslav 

 Cerny, "Prices and Wages in Egypt in the Ramesside Period," 

 Cahiers d'Histoire Mondia/e. Paris: Libraire de Meridiens, 1954, 

 pp. 903-921. 



4. See note 3, Cerny, "Prices and Wages," 91 1-912. 



