Egypt had been occupied just a decade before the conquest by the Persian Empire under Khosrau II (616 to 629 AD). An army of 4,000 Arabs led by Amr Ibn Al-Aas was sent by the Caliph Umar, successor to Muhammad, to spread Islamic rule to the west. These Arabs crossed into Egypt from Palestine in December 639, and advanced rapidly into the Nile Delta. The Imperial garrisons retreated into the walled towns, where they successfully held out for a year or more (although the Arabs were victorious at the Battle of Heliopolis in July 640.[20] But the Arabs sent for reinforcements, In April 641 they captured Alexandria. The Thebaid seems to have surrendered with scarcely any opposition. Most of the Egyptian Christians welcomed their new rulers: the accession of a new regime meant for them the end of the persecutions by the Byzantine state church. The Byzantines assembled a fleet with the aim of recapturing Egypt, and won back Alexandria in 645, but the Muslims retook the city in 646, completing the conquest

Government and economy

Administration and taxation
Scribes were elite, educated members of society who assessed taxes, kept records, and were responsible for administration in ancient Egypt
Scribes were elite, educated members of society who assessed taxes, kept records, and were responsible for administration in ancient Egypt

For administrative purposes, ancient Egypt was divided into districts, referred to by Egyptologists by the Greek term, nomes; they were called sepat in ancient Egyptian. The division into nomes can be traced back to the Predynastic Period (before 3100 BC), when the nomes originally existed as autonomous city-states. The nomes remained in place for more than three millennia, with the area of the individual nomes and their order of numbering remaining remarkably stable. Under the system that prevailed for most of pharaonic Egypt's history, the country was divided into forty-two nomes: twenty comprising Lower Egypt, whilst Upper Egypt was divided into twenty-two. Each nome was governed by a nomarch (Greek for "ruler of the nome",) a provincial governor who held regional authority. The position of the nomarch was at times hereditary, at times appointed by the pharaoh.

The ancient Egyptian government imposed a number of different taxes upon its people. As there was no known form of currency until the latter half of the first millennium BC, taxes were paid for "in kind" (with produce or work). The vizier (ancient Egyptian: tjaty) controlled the taxation system through the departments of state. The departments had to report daily on the amount of stock available and how much was expected in the future. Taxes were paid for depending on a person's craft or duty. Landowners paid their taxes in grain and other produce grown on their property. Artisans paid their taxes with goods they produced. Hunters and fishermen paid their taxes with produce from the river, marshes, and desert. One person from every household was required to pay a corvée or labor tax by doing public work for a few weeks every year, such as digging canals, mining, or serving in the temples. However, the rich could hire poorer people to fulfill their labor taxes.

Legal system

The head of the legal system in ancient Egypt was officially the pharaoh, who was responsible for proclaiming laws, delivering justice, and maintaining law and order, a concept the ancient Egyptians referred to as Ma'at.[4] Though no legal codes from ancient Egypt have survived, the many court documents which have survived show that Egyptian law was based on a common sense view of right and wrong that emphasized reaching agreements and resolution of conflict rather than strict adherence to a complicated set of statues.[21][22]

The ancient Egyptians viewed men and women, and people from all social classes except slaves, as essentially equal under the law, and even the lowliest peasant was entitled to petition the vizier and his court for redress.[21] Both men and women had the right to own and sell property, make contracts, marry and divorce, receive inheritance, and pursue legal disputes in court. Married couples could own property jointly and protect themselves from divorce by agreeing to marriage contracts, which stipulated the financial obligations of the husband to his wife and children should the marriage end.[21]

Local councils of elders, known as Kenbet by the New Kingdom, were responsible for making rulings in court cases involing small claims and minor disputes, though the kenbet's ability to enforce its rulings was limited.[4] Local Kenbets deferred serious or complicated cases involving murder, major land transactions, and tomb robbery to the Great Kenbet, over which the vizier or pharaoh presided. Plaintiffs and defendants were expected to represent themselves in legal matters, and were required to swear an oath to an Egyptian deity that they had told the truth.[23] In cases of tomb robbery or assassination plots, the state took on both the role of prosecutor and judge, and could torture the accused with beatings to obtain a confession and the names of any co-conspirators. Whether the charges were trivial or serious, court scribes documented the complaint, testimony, and verdict of the case for future reference.[22]

Punishment for minor crimes involved either imposition of fines, beatings, facial mutilation, or exile, depending on the severity of the offense. Serious crimes such as murder and tomb robbery were punished by death, which could be carried out by decapitation, drowning, or by impaling the criminal on a stake. Punishment could also be extended to the criminal's family.[4]

From at least the New Kingdom, some legal cases, disputes, and even military or agricultural decisions were resolved by consultation with a divine oracle.[24] The oracle, usually a statue in the image of the deity, could be asked a yes or no question to which the oracle could respond by a movement through the hidden actions of a priest.[24]

Agriculture
A tomb relief depicts workers plowing the fields, harvesting the crops, and threshing the grain under the direction of an overseer
A tomb relief depicts workers plowing the fields, harvesting the crops, and threshing the grain under the direction of an overseer

Egypt has a favorable combination of geographical features which contributed to the success of the ancient Egyptian culture, the most important of which was the rich fertile soil provided by annual inundations of the Nile river. This resulted in the ability of the ancient Egyptians to grow an abundance of food, which freed up the population to devote more time and resources for cultural, technological, and artistic pursuits. Land management was crucial in ancient Egypt, because taxes were assessed based on the amount of land a person owned.[4]

Farming in Egypt was dependent upon the cycle of the Nile River. The Egyptians distinguished between three seasons in their written records, which they called Akhet (flooding), Peret (planting), and Shemu (harvesting). The flooding season lasted from June to September, after which a layer of mineral-rich silt was deposited on the banks, being perfect for growing crops.

The growing season occurred between October and February, after the flood waters had receded. Farmers plowed and planted seeds in the fields, which were irrigated with dikes and canals. Egypt receives little rainfall, so farmers relied on the Nile to water their crops.

The harvesting season followed in March, April, and May. Farmers would harvest the crops by cutting them down with sickles. The crops would then be threshed by beating them with a flail, in order to separate the straw from the grain. Then the crops would be winnowed to remove the chaff. The grain was then ground on a stone to make flour, brewed to make beer, or stored for later use.

The ancient Egyptians cultivated wheat, emmer, barley, and several other cereal grains, which they used to make their two main food staples, bread and beer. Flax plants were grown, uprooted before they started flowering, and the fibres of their stems extracted. These fibres were split along their length, spun into thread which was used to weave sheets of linen to make into clothing. Papyrus growing on the banks of the Nile River was used to make paper. Vegetables and fruits were grown in garden plots close to their habitations on higher ground and had to be watered by hand.[25]

Natural resources

Egypt is a land rich in building and decorative stone, copper and lead ores, gold, and semiprecious stones, which the ancient Egyptians used to build monuments, sculpt statues, make tools, and fashion jewelry. They left no stone unturned in their search for gold, as no deposits of gold have since been found in Egypt that they overlooked.[26] Embalmers used salts from the Wadi Natrun for mummification, which also provided the gypsum needed to make plaster.[27]

The ore bearing rock formations in Egypt are found in distant, inhospitable Wadis in the eastern desert and the Sinai and required large state controlled expeditions to obtain the gold, copper ores, and decorative stones found there. The Wadi Hammamat was a notable source of granite, greywacke, and gold. Whenever possible, prisoners and slaves were forced into mining service, but Egyptian peasants might also be conscripted for this unpleasant labor.[28]

Flint was the first mineral collected and used to make tools, and flint handaxes are the earliest evidence of habitation in the Nile vally. Nodules of the material were carefully flaked to make blades and arrowheads of moderate hardness and durability even after copper was adopted for this purpose.[29] The Egyptians worked deposits of the lead ore galena at Gebel Rosas to make net sinkers, plumb bobs, and small figurines. Copper was the most important metal for toolmaking in ancient Egypt, and was smelted in furnaces from malachite ore mined in the Sinai.[30] Workers collected gold by washing the nuggets out of sediments in alluvial deposits, or by the more labor intensive process of grinding and washing gold-bearing quartzite. Iron deposits found in upper Egypt were utilized in the Late Period.[31]

High quality building stones are abundant in Egypt; the ancient Egyptians quarried limestone all along the Nile vally, granite from Aswan, and basalt and sandstone from the wadis of the eastern desert. Deposits of decorative stones such as porphyry, greywacke, alabaster, and carnelian dot the eastern desert and were collected even before the First Dynasty. In the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods, miners worked deposits of emeralds in Wadi Sikait and amethyst in Wadi el-Hudi.[31]

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