What was ancient egypts economy?

Question

What was ancient egypts economy?

Answer 1

They didn't have an economy; they bartered.  They had to devote their whole lives to serving the Pharaoh; and the Pharaoh provided all their needs and necessities.

Answer 2

In the most simple albeit literal sense, their economy was the structure and/or conditions of economic life in ancient Egypt.

Answer 3

Like most cultures of that time, basic survival and raising of food was the first essential.

A second was the ruling class desire for self-aggrandizement and the use of slave labor to build the monuments to themselves. It was believed they would never really die if they did this. HA!

Farming, boat building and adobe-like block making, with a few scribes and of course weavers, and then the rulers and their staff needs.

Answer 4

The ancient Egyptian economy was based primarily on agriculture as the main source of "income" with fields being farmed either by individuals who owned or leased the land or by those who were hired to work the land or who belonged to the estate of which the farmland was a part - a system roughly similar to medieval European feudalism (serfs).  The surplus of agriculture products produced allowed other individuals to specialize in trades other than farming, while still providing sufficient food for people to survive.

Most interpretations of the Egyptian economy in most periods suggest that it was a redistributive system organized around local temples.  The country itself was divided into districts (nomes).  Each nome had a capital and a governor (nomarch) and a patron deity.  This facilitated the collection of taxes and offerings to the gods which could then be redistributed upward along the chain of organization to the upper levels of the government, sideways to temples or nomes at a similar level in the hierarchy, or downward to people or institutions in a lower level(s) of the administrative hierarchy.  The temple in each nome capital, as well as temples in other towns served as tax collectors.  They also operated to redistribute materials as payment for services o goods or in times of need.