How Did Ancient Egyptians Get Paid Without Money?

Ancient Egypt had no money. Not less money — none. No coins existed in Egypt until the Persians arrived in 525 BCE, which means the pyramids, Karnak and Tutankhamun's tomb were all built by a state that had never invented cash. So how did anyone get paid? In bread and beer - a barter system that functioned efficiently across the Nile Valley Ten loaves and roughly two jugs of beer a day — that was the standard wage. In this video: how you price a donkey when money doesn't exist (the deben, an ancient Egyptian currency with no coin), what actually turned up on payday at Deir el-Medina, why beer is a far more sensible salary than it sounds, how you save when your wages go stale in four days, how you tax a country with no cash — including the staircase in the river that set the rate — and the day it all broke down. And we look at the Deben, the ancient currency of the Egyptians. Because when your salary is food, late payment isn't an inconvenience. It's hunger. In the 29th year of Ramesses III, rations were 18 days late, and the tomb-builders of Deir el-Medina put down their tools, walked out past the guard posts and shouted three words a scribe wrote down 3,100 years ago: "We are hungry." It's the first recorded strike in human history. This was all part of the Ancient Egyptian economy. Fully sourced. All the research is linked below. ⏱️ WHAT THIS VIDEO COVERS 0:00 – Payday 1:43 – How do you price a donkey? 4:04 – What actually turned up on payday 5:20 – The beer problem 6:53 – So how do you get rich? 9:11 – And how do you tax it? 11:22 – The day it all broke 14:00 – Why it kept happening 15:13 – The end of the oldest system 16:05 – What they had that we don't 📚 SOURCES & FURTHER READING The Turin Strike Papyrus (Museo Egizio, Turin, Cat. 1880), recorded by the scribe Amennakht. The deben as a unit of weight and account — James C. Thompson; Ben Haring (Leiden) on "money-barter." Deir el-Medina ration records: emmer for bread, barley for beer, plus vegetables, fish and delivered water. Toby Wilkinson on the breakdown of the necropolis payment system and the earliest recorded strikes. Nilometer readings used to forecast harvest and set taxation. ▶️ MORE FROM THE SERIES How Did Ancient Egyptians Survive the Deadly 50°C Sandstorms? 👉    • How Did Ancient Egyptians Survive the Dead...   How Did Ancient Egyptians Actually Survive the Nile Floods? 👉    • How Did Ancient Egyptians Actually Survive...   King Tut — How a Sick 9-Year-Old Boy Ended Up Ruling Ancient Egypt 👉    • King Tut - How a Sick 9-Year-Old Boy Ended...   Subscribe for the strange, true lives of the ancient Egyptians 👉    / @follow-the-ankh   #AncientEgypt #AncientEgyptians #Egypt #History #AncientHistory #Pharaoh #Beer #Economics #Archaeology #Barter #Deben