Egypt (2650–716 BC) Egypt represents an interesting contrast, since, for most of its history, it managed to avoid the development of interest-bearing debt entirely. Egypt was, like Mesopotamia, extraordinarily rich by ancient standards, but it was also a self-contained society, a river running through a desert, and far more centralized than Mesopotamia. The pharaoh was a god, and the state and temple bureaucracies had their hands in everything: there were a dazzling array of taxes and a continual distribution of allotments, wages, and payments from the state. Here, too, money clearly arose as
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