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134:. The papyrus is 10 meters long and divided into two sections, text A and text B. Text A contains an extensive account of lands both privately and collectively owned. Text B is much shorter and contains an account of exclusively royal lands. The Wilbour Papyrus is a rare case of a well preserved look into the economic administration of Ancient Egypt.
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mostly lists
Libyans and Near-Easterners, it is possible they were foreign mercenaries who had descendants who settled on farmland in which they obtained for serving in the military. In some cases we see if the person who owned the land had deceased. It would then say the land is being cultivated by the sons or daughters.
150:. It may not be the original copy of the survey, instead it may have been created as an archival copy. Between its creation and discovery, most of the first section of the papyrus was lost due to decomposition. Charles Edwin Wilbour purchased seventeen papyri from a farmer when he visited the island of
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for the different lands in Egypt. Text A includes some royal lands as well, but it only accounts for those specifically in Middle Egypt. However, in the 18th dynasty, under
Ramesses V, there were certain situations where land-owning would not have been mentioned in their prospective categories of the
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farms were being rented from the state and their rent was paid as a percentage of grain produced by the land. The larger three types of plots that were worked by field workers paid taxes by turning over 30 percent of their harvest. It is possible that this survey was conducted to evaluate and change
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The most numerous occupations of plot-holders in the document are priests (making up 10.6% of the population), soldiers (8.4%), ladies (11.1%), herdsmen (7.7%), stable-masters (17.7%), farmers (8.3%), and scribes (4.3%). The papyrus also lists a significant number of foreigners in its population. It
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farms by farmers, meaning the exchange of grain from them to the state would have to be taxes, though at rates far lower than is expected for a grain tax. This low-tax rate could be explained by the expectation that farmers were to give goods like pottery, textiles and other foodstuffs to the state
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of the approximately 150,000 hectares that would have been arable at the time. Text A is a ledger containing a list of names and occupations of the holders of plots of land. It is divided into 4 sections, the first of which has been lost to damage. Section 2 begins with “year 4, , day 15 to day 20,
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making six days, assessment made by (unknown)”, "year 4" and "" referring to the summer of the 4th year of the reign of
Ramesses V, which has allowed Egyptologists to date the document to around 1145 BCE, but the specificity varies between 1140 BCE and 1150 BCE. Text B documents the cultivatable
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The purpose of the survey conducted is unclear. What is known is that it documents the exchange of grain between farmers and the state. It is unknown whether or not these exchanges were a tax or a kind of rent or both. The language in the document could imply private ownership of
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The second section of the
Wilbour Papyrus is primarily related to the royal lands of Ancient Egypt. Text B is significantly smaller than Text A, but it was written much earlier. While Text A does have specific royal lands included in its records, Text B is more focused on
233:-fields, which are the lands belonging specifically to the Pharaoh. The lands that the Pharaoh or King owned were lands belonging to temples or to other royal institutions. The governmental structures that owned these lands officially were referred to as
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land made up a plurality of the arable land in the document, especially those plots held by temples. This has allowed for
Egyptologists to estimate that 13 to 18 percent of all of Ancient Egypt's farmland during the Ramesside Period was held by temples.
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were much smaller plots and had lower quality soil that were expected to produce around 100 litres/hectare (26.5 gallons/hectare) of grain while the larger plots were expected to produce as much as 3000 liters/hectare (792.5 gallons/hectare).
220:
Wilbour
Papyrus. For example, veterans were given plots that could have been from royal land or temples, but these records might have remained registered in Text A, instead of Text B, which includes royal land records.
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in 1941. After its translation, there has been extensive writing done about the document by
Egyptologists. As of 2023, it remains in storage at the museum, not on display.
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were plots of land that were held collectively by more than one of this class of people, these two types of plots were generally owned by the lower or middle class.
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are thought to have been small plots privately held by individuals while the other three types seem to be larger state holdings of land that were leased to tenets.
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papyri, were put in storage by the hotel. When
Wilbour's property was returned to his family, nearly half a century later, his widow donated the papyri to the
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The
Wilbour Papyrus contains a large amount of data collected about cultivatable land. The area surveyed is not known with complete accuracy but it begins at
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469:"The Wilbour Papyrus and the Management of the Nile Riverbanks in Ramesside Egypt: Preliminary Analysis of the Types of Cultivated Land"
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in the modern day), a distance of approximately 140 kilometers. Within the region surveyed, the papyrus contains data for only 4,630
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the tax or rent rates. It was likely ordered by the "Chief Taxing Master", an official in charge of the financial matters of Egypt.
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The first section of the
Wilbour Papyrus is primarily related to taxation. More specifically, it functioned as land surveys, or
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in the surveyed region. It, unlike Text A, documents the grain yields of the land and where they were collected to.
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The papyrus breaks the plots of land documented in Text A into four different types. These types are listed as
557:"Social position and the organisation of landholding in Ramesside Egypt: An analysis of the Wilbour Papyrus"
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have been able to use it to produce a more complete analysis of the function of the Ancient Egyptian state.
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497:"Before the IMF: The Economic Implications of Unintentional Structural Adjustment in Ancient Egypt"
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126:. It is an administrative document which contains a survey of cultivatable lands in the late
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541:. Vol. 2. Chiswick Press, London: Oxford University Press. pp. I, 9, 161.
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were small plots held by individual field laborers, cultivators or tenant farmers.
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labor force as a form of taxation through labor. The alternative, is that these
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656:"Labour on Smallholdings in the New Kingdom: O. BM 5627 In Light of P. Wilbour"
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A piece of the Wilbour Papyrus in the Brooklyn Museum (back of papyrus) (
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in 1893. Among these was the Wilbour Papyrus. When he died in a hotel in
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593:"The Administration of Institutional Agriculture in the New Kingdom"
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meant a plot of land held by an administrator such as a priest and
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The Papyrus was created in 1140s BCE, the 4th year of the reign of
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The Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities
445:. Vol. 1. Chiswick Press, London: Oxford University Press.
174:. The Wilbour Papyrus translated by for the Brooklyn Museum by
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as an additional tax and meant to work in the off season as a
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Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient
111:, named after the New York journalist who acquired it,
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A piece of the Wilbour Papyrus in the Brooklyn Museum (
475:. 2587. Archeopress: 199–215 – via academia.edu.
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in 1896, his belongings, which included the Wilbour,
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473:BAR (British Archeological Reports) International
274:were plots held by institutions like temples.
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628:GarcĂa, Moreno; Carlos, Juan (2008-11-06).
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666:: 112–123 – via academia.edu.
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699:Collection of the Brooklyn Museum
561:Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur
555:Antoine, Jean-Christophe (2014).
634:UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology
597:Ancient Egyptian Administration
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537:Gardiner, Alan, ed. (1948).
441:Gardiner, Alan, ed. (1941).
694:Works of unknown authorship
115:, is the largest known non-
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689:12th-century BC literature
256:ihwty, m-drt, rowdy, rmnyt
190:and ends near Tihna (near
684:Papyri from ancient Egypt
605:10.1163/9789004250086_017
495:Warburton, David (2000).
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630:"Estates (Old Kingdom)"
513:10.1163/156852000511240
654:Katary, Sally (2001).
591:Katary, Sally (2013).
467:Katary, Sally (2014).
142:History of the Papyrus
414:"The Wilbour Papyrus"
113:Charles Edwin Wilbour
132:New Kingdom of Egypt
539:The Wilbour Papyrus
443:The Wilbour Papyrus
182:Content and Purpose
575:– via JSTOR.
614:978-90-04-25008-6
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342:Aswan Governorate
318:length: 10 meters
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54:length: 10 meters
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599:: 719–783.
168:Elephantine
152:Elephantine
678:Categories
395:References
334:Discovered
188:The Faiyum
148:Ramesses V
70:Discovered
567:: 17–46.
573:44160268
423:March 1,
360:New York
329:1147 BCE
196:hectares
164:Brooklyn
117:funerary
96:New York
521:3632488
323:Created
205:Pharaoh
130:of the
120:papyrus
65:1145 BC
59:Created
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571:
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384:corvée
224:Text B
211:Text A
569:JSTOR
517:JSTOR
388:ihwty
379:ihwty
346:Egypt
338:Aswan
309:2010)
285:Rmnyt
280:Ihwty
276:Ihwty
272:rmnyt
264:M-drt
260:Ihwty
231:khato
201:khato
192:Minya
160:Paris
156:Aswan
154:near
122:from
82:Egypt
74:Aswan
45:2010)
640:(1).
609:ISBN
425:2023
315:Size
268:Rwdw
250:Land
217:dnἰt
166:and
107:The
51:Size
601:doi
509:doi
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235:hwt
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Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional terms may apply.
