Year: 2008
From repression to revolution: Egypt’s Tax Collectors
The pic below is taken by archeologist Nora Shalaby, in Sakkara’s Tomb of Mereruka. The latter was the Prime Minister and the son-in-law of Pharaoh Teti, from the 6th Dynasty. The full mural shows Egyptian tax collectors torturing tax evaders, dragging the village elders to give evidence on their faulty tax returns, to be paid in produce. One man has been stripped, and his arms and feet are bound round a post where he is being beaten
This was 5,000 years ago. Today, under King Mubarak I, the Egyptian property tax collectors are the ones leading the fight against the state.
