In ancient Egypt, the cattle count was one of the two main means of evaluating the amount of

tax A tax is a compulsory financial charge or some other type of levy imposed on a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a governmental organization in order to fund government spending and various public expenditures (regional, local, or n ...

es to be levied, the other one being the height of the annual

inundation A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrolog ...

. A very important

economic An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with th ...

event, the cattle count was controlled by high officials, and was connected to several

cult In modern English, ''cult'' is usually a pejorative term for a social group that is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals, or its common interest in a particular personality, object, or goal. Thi ...

ic feasts. In addition it served as a means of dating other events, with the entire year when it occurred being called "year of the Xth cattle count under the person of the king Y". The frequency of cattle counts varied through the history of ancient Egypt; in the Old Kingdom it was most likely biennial, i.e. occurring every two years, and became more frequent subsequently.

Process and purpose

To perform the cattle count, all chattel (including productive livestock such as cows and oxen,

sheep Sheep or domestic sheep (''Ovis aries'') are domesticated, ruminant mammals typically kept as livestock. Although the term ''sheep'' can apply to other species in the genus '' Ovis'', in everyday usage it almost always refers to domesticate ...

, pigs,

goat The goat or domestic goat (''Capra hircus'') is a domesticated species of goat-antelope typically kept as livestock. It was domesticated from the wild goat (''C. aegagrus'') of Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the a ...

s and

donkey The domestic donkey is a hoofed mammal in the family Equidae, the same family as the horse. It derives from the African wild ass, ''Equus africanus'', and may be classified either as a subspecies thereof, ''Equus africanus asinus'', or as ...

s) were rounded up and counted. Following the count, the percentage of chattel to be taxed by the state would be calculated. The cattle count was performed in every nome of Egypt. Fraud was harshly punished. From the

2nd Dynasty The Second Dynasty of ancient Egypt (or Dynasty II, c. 2890 – c. 2686 BC) is the latter of the two dynasties of the Egyptian Archaic Period, when the seat of government was centred at Thinis. It is most known for its last ruler, K ...

onwards, the cattle count was connected with the ''"Following of

Horus Horus or Heru, Hor, Har in Ancient Egyptian, is one of the most significant ancient Egyptian deities who served many functions, most notably as god of kingship and the sky. He was worshipped from at least the late prehistoric Egypt until the ...

"'' (Egypt. ''Shemsu Hor'') which occurred every two years. The Shemsu Hor consisted of a journey by the king and his court throughout Egypt which facilitated the assessment and levying of taxes by the central administration.

Importance

The cattle count is of great importance to

Egyptologist Egyptology (from ''Egypt'' and Greek , '' -logia''; ar, علم المصريات) is the study of ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, architecture and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end of its native religiou ...

s and

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

s, because many inscriptions report the ''year of the x-th occasion of the cattle count'' followed by the name of a pharaoh. Thus these inscriptions are used to assess the minimum duration of the reign of the pharaoh, for example assuming that the cattle count was held every two years. This last point being of paramount importance for correct datation of reign lengths, it is highly disputed up to this day. According to the Palermo stone, a black

basalt Basalt (; ) is an aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the surface of a rocky planet or moon. More than 90 ...

stone slab recording the yearly events of cultic and

religious Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatur ...

nature from king

Narmer Narmer ( egy, Wiktionary:nꜥr-mr, nꜥr-mr, meaning "painful catfish," "stinging catfish," "harsh catfish," or "fierce catfish;" ) was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh of the Early Dynastic Period (Egypt), Early Dynastic Period. He was the successor ...

( 1st Dynasty) down to king

Neferirkare Kakai Neferirkare Kakai (known in Greek as Nefercherês, Νεφερχέρης) was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, the third king of the Fifth Dynasty. Neferirkare, the eldest son of Sahure with his consort Meretnebty, was known as Ranefer A before h ...

(3rd pharaoh of the

5th Dynasty The Fifth Dynasty of ancient Egypt (notated Dynasty V) is often combined with Dynasties III, IV and VI under the group title the Old Kingdom. The Fifth Dynasty pharaohs reigned for approximately 150 years, from the early 25th century BC until ...

), the cattle count was performed every second year until the late

Old Kingdom In ancient Egyptian history, the Old Kingdom is the period spanning c. 2700–2200 BC. It is also known as the "Age of the Pyramids" or the "Age of the Pyramid Builders", as it encompasses the reigns of the great pyramid-builders of the Fourth ...

. After this period, however, it was performed more frequently and finally yearly. The first pharaoh during whose reign yearly cattle counts are known to have taken place with certainty is king

Pepi I Pepi I Meryre (also Pepy I) was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, third king of the Sixth Dynasty of Egypt, who ruled for over 40 years at the turn of the 24th and 23rd centuries BC, toward the end of the Old Kingdom period. He was the son of ...

of the

6th Dynasty The Sixth Dynasty of ancient Egypt (notated Dynasty VI), along with the Third, Fourth and Fifth Dynasty, constitutes the Old Kingdom of Dynastic Egypt. Pharaohs Known pharaohs of the Sixth Dynasty are listed in the table below. Manetho acc ...

.Siegfried Schott: ''Altägyptische Festdaten'' (= ''Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur. Abhandlungen der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse.'' Bd. 10, 1950, ISSN 0002-2977). Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz u. a. 1950.Thomas Schneider: ''Lexikon der Pharaonen''. Albatros, Düsseldorf 2002, {{ISBN, 3-491-96053-3, p. 100–102. This does not exclude that the cattle count necessarily took place every second year before Pepi I. An example of conflicting evaluations for a reign duration via cattle count is the case of king

Khufu Khufu or Cheops was an ancient Egyptian monarch who was the second pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty, in the first half of the Old Kingdom period ( 26th century BC). Khufu succeeded his father Sneferu as king. He is generally accepted as having c ...

(

4th Dynasty The Fourth Dynasty of ancient Egypt (notated Dynasty IV) is characterized as a "golden age" of the Old Kingdom of Egypt. Dynasty IV lasted from to 2494 BC. It was a time of peace and prosperity as well as one during which trade with other ...

). The highest known numbers of cattle counts under Khufu are found in workmen's graffiti inside the relieving chambers of the Khufu pyramid. The ink inscription reports the "17th occasion of the cattle count". Since the Palermo stone inscriptions hold that the cattle count was performed every second year during the 4th Dynasty, it would prove that Khufu ruled at least 34 years. This calculation is rejected by several Egyptologists, because another ancient Egyptian source, the

Turin canon The Turin King List, also known as the Turin Royal Canon, is an ancient Egyptian hieratic papyrus thought to date from the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses II, now in the Museo Egizio (Egyptian Museum) in Turin. The papyrus is the most extensive list ...

, credits Khufu with a reign of merely 23 years. At the opposite, the

ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...

historian

Herodotus Herodotus ( ; grc, , }; BC) was an ancient Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus, part of the Persian Empire (now Bodrum, Turkey) and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria (Italy). He is known fo ...

claims that Khufu ruled for 50 years, which is now seen as an exaggeration. Meanwhile, today Egyptologists such as Thomas Schneider assume that either Khufu indeed ruled for a little over 34 years, or that the author of the Turin canon simply did not take into account the 2-year-cycle of cattle counts and in fact credits Khufu with 23 cattle counts, which is a reign of 46 years.

References

Festivals in ancient Egypt

Process and purpose

Importance

See also

References