Tweet
Memphis: "Sacks of Pebbles aren't Good Enough!!"
"The Nomarch is not happy, no not a bit - not happy AT ALL!" The young slave bustled about the room, a worried look clouding his face, versions of the same refrain repeated again and again, his head shaking back and forth all the while. After two seasons of this behavior, Merneptah scarcely even notices - his old head instead pondering the problem set before him. The Nomarch was correct - the old methods for recording information simply didn't work any more. When Memphis was a small village, it was fine to use a sack of pebbles to represent an equivalent number of wheat sheaves. But the system quickly broke down when applied to the incoming harvests from multiple towns. And you still had to account for jars of beer, racks of dried fish, stacks of pottery - the list went on and on. Even harder to conceive, the Nomarch also wanted to track last summer's produce, and the harvests preceding even THAT! It was enough to make an old man long for simpler times, that was for sure!
But even as the thought arrived, Merneptah banished it. Yes, there was little to keep him busy in those days, but also less reason for the village to keep him alive. One bad harvest and the eldest and infirm could expect to be sacrificed. Oh, there wouldn't be sharp weapons involved, but slow starvation was just as effective. And a house of his own? With a slave - clucking hen though is? No, all things considered, life under the Nomarch was infinitely superior to the "good old days".
"Bah!!" Merneptah spoke aloud, surprising his slave and even himself, "That's enough backward-gazing old man! Think on this matter, think!" Ignoring the strange look from his suddenly silent servant, Merneptah's eyes wandered, as they always did, to his lovely young wife. There before him sat the greatest benefit of the Nomarch's new order. Her family had demanded a stiff bride price, but it was one Merneptah could afford and was glad to pay. No longer did a man have to be young and robust to earn a living, and for that Merneptah gave thanks to the Gods for the thousandth time. She was quite an artist, that little one. Look how she had beaten the wet papyrus into a mat, dried it in the sun, and now drew upon it using a palette of brightly colored clays and charcoal. The lifelike palms appeared to grow beneath her brush, the birds to take wing, even the wheat seemed to wave in the breeze....the....wheat....it truly looked like.....WHEAT!
Stunned, Merneptah let the idea wash over him like a great wave. Every hair on his arms stood on end, while a warm hum rose up and down his spine. OF COURSE! That was the answer. Who needed sacks of pebbles when one could draw the very likeness of the object to be counted! "Five Sheaves of Wheat, Six Jars of Beer, Seven Racks of Fish!" With a great cry Merneptah leaped to his feet, snatched the mat from the grasp of his stunned wife and raced out the door. Ahead lay the palace and Merneptah bounded toward it, his feet moving like those of a man forty summers younger, waving the papyrus like a wild man and all the while shouting joyfully at the top of his lungs, "PICTOGRAPHS! Yes! The answer is PICTOGRAPHS!"
"The Nomarch is not happy, no not a bit - not happy AT ALL!" The young slave bustled about the room, a worried look clouding his face, versions of the same refrain repeated again and again, his head shaking back and forth all the while. After two seasons of this behavior, Merneptah scarcely even notices - his old head instead pondering the problem set before him. The Nomarch was correct - the old methods for recording information simply didn't work any more. When Memphis was a small village, it was fine to use a sack of pebbles to represent an equivalent number of wheat sheaves. But the system quickly broke down when applied to the incoming harvests from multiple towns. And you still had to account for jars of beer, racks of dried fish, stacks of pottery - the list went on and on. Even harder to conceive, the Nomarch also wanted to track last summer's produce, and the harvests preceding even THAT! It was enough to make an old man long for simpler times, that was for sure!
But even as the thought arrived, Merneptah banished it. Yes, there was little to keep him busy in those days, but also less reason for the village to keep him alive. One bad harvest and the eldest and infirm could expect to be sacrificed. Oh, there wouldn't be sharp weapons involved, but slow starvation was just as effective. And a house of his own? With a slave - clucking hen though is? No, all things considered, life under the Nomarch was infinitely superior to the "good old days".
"Bah!!" Merneptah spoke aloud, surprising his slave and even himself, "That's enough backward-gazing old man! Think on this matter, think!" Ignoring the strange look from his suddenly silent servant, Merneptah's eyes wandered, as they always did, to his lovely young wife. There before him sat the greatest benefit of the Nomarch's new order. Her family had demanded a stiff bride price, but it was one Merneptah could afford and was glad to pay. No longer did a man have to be young and robust to earn a living, and for that Merneptah gave thanks to the Gods for the thousandth time. She was quite an artist, that little one. Look how she had beaten the wet papyrus into a mat, dried it in the sun, and now drew upon it using a palette of brightly colored clays and charcoal. The lifelike palms appeared to grow beneath her brush, the birds to take wing, even the wheat seemed to wave in the breeze....the....wheat....it truly looked like.....WHEAT!
Stunned, Merneptah let the idea wash over him like a great wave. Every hair on his arms stood on end, while a warm hum rose up and down his spine. OF COURSE! That was the answer. Who needed sacks of pebbles when one could draw the very likeness of the object to be counted! "Five Sheaves of Wheat, Six Jars of Beer, Seven Racks of Fish!" With a great cry Merneptah leaped to his feet, snatched the mat from the grasp of his stunned wife and raced out the door. Ahead lay the palace and Merneptah bounded toward it, his feet moving like those of a man forty summers younger, waving the papyrus like a wild man and all the while shouting joyfully at the top of his lungs, "PICTOGRAPHS! Yes! The answer is PICTOGRAPHS!"
Comment