The Government of Ancient Egypt
In Ancient Egypt, much was different than it was today. To begin with, Egypt used to be a theocracy, or a government based on the belief of one or many gods or goddesses, where they usually represent different aspects of nature, such as Isis represented fertility, childbirth, and rainbows, and Ra was the god of the Sun. Their government and religion were very closely tied. In fact, they thought that their pharaoh was god-born. There are at least two examples of theocracies in the modern world. The first being the Jewish government of Israel, second being the Catholic government of the Vatican.
Ancient Egyptian law is a difficult subject. To begin with, there are no surviving legal codes, which basically means that we have no idea what they thought was right and wrong. All we have are a few court case records. These were all simple cases that could not be disputed through arguing, and needed someone of authority to achieve fairness.
The way their government worked was: Their government was divided into twenty-four "nomes", which are sort of like states or counties, which were ruled by governors. The pharaoh was advised by a group of viziers. these viziers also were the masters of each governor. The governors were also called “nomarchs”. What's surprising, though, is the odd lack of corruption. The political people were never greedy to the point of evil. This was probably because of the strong belief in the fact that the gods would smite them dead if they used their power for bad. If you could count corruption as basically dictatorship, then the only exception to this rule of was when the Persian conquerors/emperors took over on two separate occasions, and installed themselves as pharaohs each time.
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^ When the great Pharaohs of Egypt died, they were almost always immortalized in sarcophagi like this one. They were almost always ornately decorated.
Ancient Egyptian law is a difficult subject. To begin with, there are no surviving legal codes, which basically means that we have no idea what they thought was right and wrong. All we have are a few court case records. These were all simple cases that could not be disputed through arguing, and needed someone of authority to achieve fairness.
The way their government worked was: Their government was divided into twenty-four "nomes", which are sort of like states or counties, which were ruled by governors. The pharaoh was advised by a group of viziers. these viziers also were the masters of each governor. The governors were also called “nomarchs”. What's surprising, though, is the odd lack of corruption. The political people were never greedy to the point of evil. This was probably because of the strong belief in the fact that the gods would smite them dead if they used their power for bad. If you could count corruption as basically dictatorship, then the only exception to this rule of was when the Persian conquerors/emperors took over on two separate occasions, and installed themselves as pharaohs each time.
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^ When the great Pharaohs of Egypt died, they were almost always immortalized in sarcophagi like this one. They were almost always ornately decorated.