Ptolemaic economy

When the Ptolemy dynasty began to rule Egypt, all the land in Egypt belonged to the king in name, but the royal family could give it away, such as temples, private people and soldiers. The main land management system in the kingdom is tenancy system, and free farmers are the most important producers. They signed a contract with the landowner to ensure that they would not leave the land from sowing to harvesting. There are mandatory factors in the contract. If the term is to be extended continuously, tenants need to make various guarantees. Military immigrants from Greece and Macedonia often rent their land to Egyptian farmers. In addition, farmers can rent land from the royal family, as well as seeds, production tools, farm animals and sometimes even houses. The varieties of crops planted in the fields are decided by the government and strictly controlled by local officials.

However, the Ptolemy government's miscellaneous taxes are quite large and heavy. Land, houses, gardens, poultry, livestock, slaves, heads, property inheritance, commercial transactions, checkpoint traffic, and all kinds of goods and activities must be taxed. Except for land taxes, most of these taxes are paid in currency. Sometimes, for the sake of simplicity, the kingdom implements a contractual tax system. Many farmers could not bear the heavy taxes and fled one after another. Or take refuge in the temple and become a "hieroi" or the slaves of the temple enjoy many tax-free privileges, but they need to provide all kinds of labor for the temple. Otherwise, these farmers who can't pay government taxes will be enslaved temporarily or permanently by the state. These state-owned slave owners mainly serve the government, engaged in all kinds of labor, such as building dams and opening canals, and sometimes engaged in agricultural labor. Many farmers have temporarily become state-owned slaves because they can't pay taxes. Some scholars believe that these state-owned slaves may not have lost their personal freedom. In addition, slavery prevailed in Ptolemy, including private slaves, state-owned slaves and temple slaves who could not pay state taxes.

Ptolemy government adopted a rather extreme state monopoly system, and the monopoly scope was quite extensive. The state not only monopolized mining, salt, wine, spices, glass, pottery and so on. , including foreign trade and commercial activities such as banks. This system applies not only to Egypt, but also to other territories of the Kingdom. Strict taxation system and strict monopoly management enabled Ptolemy Kingdom to exploit as much wealth as possible.

Ptolemy dynasty provided various conveniences to strengthen commercial competitiveness, encourage people to engage in trade and improve production quality. The government has improved the business environment by building ports, roads and rebuilding canals from the Nile to the Red Sea. Even sending expeditions to explore new trade markets has made Egyptian trade quite prosperous, with a wide variety of goods, including Arabic spices, Iberian silver, Indian gold and even China silk, which can be seen in the market in Alexandria, benefiting both the government and businessmen.