assignment on ancient egyptian civilization

6
INTRODUCTION Civilization consists of basic three components; these are ceremonial center, a system of writing and a city. If we analyze the Egyptian civilization we can see that is has all these three components. It was the longest and the largest lived civilization of the world’s different civilization. The ancient Egyptian civilization is discussed from three points of view 1) Socio economic perspective 2) Governance perspective 3) Accountability perspective 1)Socio economic perspective The presence of Nile River The river Nile played a great role in building the economy of Egypt civilization. The civilization was built based on river. The water of the Nile River provided a few things that were important to the growth of civilization in Ancient Egypt. The Ancient Egyptians needed water to continue their daily work as well as to survive. The Nile river over flooded and it fertilized the soil. Because of the Nile river they developed good agricultural sector. The Nile also provided for crops drinks and to bath. Not only in the agricultural sector it also provided the opportunity of fishing. The river also played an important role in transport sector. With the help of this river they were able to trade in different countries. For these reasons, the transportation provided by the Nile helped in building up the civilization. The empowerment of women The women of ancient Egypt had the same accessibility to power that man had. They had the legal opportunity of being the owner of states and of treasury. They enjoyed the financial freedom. They also

Upload: rashminmahady

Post on 14-Apr-2017

219 views

Category:

Spiritual


4 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Assignment on ancient egyptian civilization

INTRODUCTION

Civilization consists of basic three components; these are ceremonial center, a system of writing and a city. If we analyze the Egyptian civilization we can see that is has all these three components. It was the longest and the largest lived civilization of the world’s different civilization. The ancient Egyptian civilization is discussed from three points of view

1) Socio economic perspective

2) Governance perspective

3) Accountability perspective

1)Socio economic perspective

The presence of Nile River

The river Nile played a great role in building the economy of Egypt civilization. The civilization was built based on river. The water of the Nile River provided a few things that were important to the growth of civilization in Ancient Egypt. The Ancient Egyptians needed water to continue their daily work as well as to survive. The Nile river over flooded and it fertilized the soil. Because of the Nile river they developed good agricultural sector. The Nile also provided for crops drinks and to bath. Not only in the agricultural sector it also provided the opportunity of fishing.

The river also played an important role in transport sector. With the help of this river they were able to trade in different countries. For these reasons, the transportation provided by the Nile helped in building up the civilization.

The empowerment of women

The women of ancient Egypt had the same accessibility to power that man had. They had the legal opportunity of being the owner of states and of treasury. They enjoyed the financial freedom. They also achieved important social position. They also had the opportunity to rule if they had royal blood. They preferred royal blood women then man holding normal blood.

Education system

The education system of Egypt was quite different. The children stayed with their mothers until the age four and when they reach at the age of four their fathers took them. The children always follow the same trade that was practiced by their father. Most of the children choose the job of a priest or scribe. Avery few got the opportunity to go general village school. The children of higher status continued study on the other side the sons of general people start their fathers profession. There were different categories of higher level education such as instructions of wisdom. These courses included lessons of ethics and morality.

Page 2: Assignment on ancient egyptian civilization

Commerce and banking

The Egyptians were also developed in banking and commerce sector. They stared to deposit grains apart from receiving and giving payments. They involved the term taxes, credit and interest rates. In Egypt, accounts were kept on papyrus. Taxes were usually payable in goods and labor. The method of auditing that they followed by means of duplicate but distinct records cannot in some instances be improved upon even today. Both water and land were used by them to trade.

In the fifth century BCE, foreign coins were introduced. At first these imported gold and silver pieces were used by the Egyptians as precious metal of standardized weight rather than true money. then Granting credit to one another was also a part of their economy. Most daily transactions were based on oral agreements, given the fact that the sums involved were often small and they had to trust each another because of the absence of written document. Right after the term credit they started to use high interest rate. The grain banks, instead of paying interest on a deposit, deducted annually 10% of the total amount.

2) The governance of ancient Egyptian civilization

If we see the history of ancient Egypt we can see that pharaoh were the most powerful persons whom people believed as living god. The pharaoh followed the theocracy government. In that time number of the people carrying out the Pharaoh's decrees were known as holy men. They formed a different social class because of their importance in estate. The government structure of ancient Egypt involved other officials, including viziers, army commanders, chief treasurers, the minister of public works, and tax collectors, all of whom answered directly to the pharaoh.

These centralized governments broke down in the intermediate periods. Is this time the unity was divided into upper and lower Egypt. But after a certain period the ruling people again took over the rest of the Egypt and these periods last for few decades and things were back in normal position mostly.

The governing was consistent for several thousand of year and they followed the same ruler except for some rare situations. These situations are overthrow of government or invasion of Egypt by others. These religion values and their faith and belief toward pharaoh allowed the country to remain strong and powerful country for a long time.

The law of Egypt were very strong. The law involved punishments for crimes. The law applied charges for crimes. The family members were also held responsible for punishments.

Page 3: Assignment on ancient egyptian civilization

3) The accounting system of Egypt

The royal palace and the temple were two important institutions for ancient Egypt. They used to keep documents for different activities. These included statements of accounts that shows the beginning and ending balances and also different form of special supplies, list of expenditures of valuable things, any specific orders remarking the specified persons, official accounts and documents of different items that they received. To secure daily supplies a safety account was maintained by scribes.

They also maintained inventory by using red and black ink in tabular form which made easy for scribes to detect the damaged goods. The scribes used dependency visibility to keep record of particular delivery that enhanced their accounting system. Both crops and labor wages were issued from granaries and were distributed to the appropriate persons.

From the documents of middle kingdom it was found that they also kept details of the persons working on a project and how many days they worked and how many days they were absent. They kept workshop documents and payroll account. These document indicates the amount of work finished and the remaining work. These documents reveal a great sight of their accountability and allocation of works based on labor.

Some important accounts were found on the early part of the first century which shows that the payments were of various kind such as payment for food of all kinds and expenses such as writing ,doctors, baths. From these account one thing was found that they first received the receipts for the day given and then the payment were made that were subtracted from the receipts.

The Egyptians used papyrus to keep account. They had advanced distribution system for commodities. To keep track of goods and by whom they were consumed they used one set of scribes which included the information of amount that were actually brought and another set to keep records of movements. Another set were used to compare the both records. This method was simple and was useful for that time. The rurers maintained accounting record to keep record of taxation. The rulers also kept the information of the location and ownership of wealth to extract the expenses for the emperors.

Account prepared by Amatino Manucci show the evidence that they followed double entry book keeping in that era. The differences that are found in modern bookkeeping and the method of that were refinements which made necessary to accommodate the size of business.

,

Page 4: Assignment on ancient egyptian civilization

References

Ancient Egypt. [Online]. (URL http://www.awhistory.com/egypt/index.html). (Accessed 27th August2013).

Ancient Egypt education [online] (URL http://historylink101.com/n/egypt_1/a-education.htm) (Accessed 28th August 2013).

History of accounting of Egypt [online]( URL http://www.accountanttown.com/site/history-of-accounting-ancient-egypt) (Accessed 28th August 2013).

Ancient Egypt economy [Online] (URL http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/economy/)(Accessed 28th August 2013).

Egyptian Social Structure. [Online]. (URL http://www.ushistory.org/civ/3b.asp). (Accessed 26 August2013).

Ancient Egyptian Government. [Online]. (URL http://library.thinkquest.org/3011/egypt3.htm). (Accessed27 August 2013).

A Brief History of the Practice of Accounting. [Online]. (URLhttp://www.inconcertfinancialgroup.com/forte-consulting/history-of-accounting.shtml). (Accessed 26August 2013).