However, almost none of the regimes we’ve been considering in this chapter were actually staffed by full-time specialists. Most obviously, none seem to have had a standing army. Warfare was largely a business for the agricultural off-season. Priests and judges rarely worked full-time either; in fact, most government institutions in Old Kingdom Egypt, Shang China, Early Dynastic Mesopotamia or for that matter classical Athens were staffed by a rotating workforce whose members had other lives as managers of rural estates, traders, builders or any number of different occupations.
