social classes in ancient egypt

by istoisto

i want detailed hierarchy of social classes in ancinet egypt. i have got this one: I (highest) - pharaoh, aristocracy, priests II (high) - bureaucracy (officials) and soldiers III - merchants and craftsmen IV - members of rural community (peasants) V - slaves

i think that this hierarchy is not complete. many books say that members of rural community are only cultivators. where are cattleman, fishers, aviculturists?

BarqueOfTheNile

  1. The pharaoh wielded the most power in the country by divine right (he was divine as well as the son of Osiris).

  2. The vizier which was later expanded to Upper and Lower Egypt. Everyone, but the overseer of the house of gold reported to the vizier or techty, who reported directly to the pharaoh.

  3. This is where it gets rather tricky. Beneath the overseer of the house of gold came the overseer of granaries and an overseer of cattle. These two overseers were in charge of provisioning food to the army. Taxes were levied by a different department. These members roamed the Nile levying taxes not based on their produce from the year but how high the Nile flooded. This was to insure that they do not hide anything.

The pharaoh, in one of many duties, was the position of high priest of each god and goddess throughout the land. Now, Emily Teeter of the University of Chicago goes into great detail outlining the several priests and priestesses from the bottom up which is too great to mention here. This position of priest, especially from the Amun-Re priesthood would, at the end of the New Kingdom and the Third Intermediate Period, grow to rival the power of the pharaohs.

  1. After the bureaucratic government comes the regional government. At the top were the nomarchs which governed each of the 42 nomes of Ancient Egypt. Below each nomarch stood mayors, vollage chiefs constabularies and district councils or kenbets in Ancient Egyptian. These Kenbets were appointed by the normarch of each nome. It is interesting to note the there was something called a Great Kenbet which was found in both Memphis and Thebes. Sometimes they would consult the statue of a god in order to seek out justice as well. And finally, I should like to mention that most of the material here comes from Bob Brier's book called Ancient Egypt; Everyday Life in the Land of the Nile and Emily Teeter's book entitled Religion and Ritual in Ancient Egypt.