Over recent weeks, the world’s eyes have been focused firmly on Egypt as a people’s revolution threatens to reverberate across the entire Middle East region. However, the subject of this post is another crisis that engulfed the region in about 1700-1600BC.
According to the Biblical account (Genesis 39-47), Egypt, and indeed the whole region, suffered from a devastating seven-year famine. This was foretold by Joseph seven years earlier at the culmination of a highly familiar and romantic story involving Joseph’s rise from being sold into slavery by his brothers to becoming vizier of Egypt. Having established a reputation for interpreting prophetic dreams, Joseph had the opportunity to interpret the Pharaoh’s dream in which God divulged that the country would experience seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine.
At this point, I would like to explore whether there are any parallels between these events in Ancient Egypt and the current crisis. While the circumstances surrounding the two crises are quite different, it is interesting to note that rising food prices was one of the issues that brought people to the streets of Cairo last month. Perhaps more significantly, however, there have been a number of prophecies in the church to suggest that 2011 may mark the start of another seven years of “famine” (a significant period of hardship but accompanied by God’s deliverance and blessing). I heard about these prophecies long before we entered 2011 but I wonder whether it is just a coincidence that Egypt is once again a global focal point.
As well as correctly predicting the famine, Joseph offered up a solution, and the Pharaoh gave him the opportunity to implement it by promoting him to vizier (his second in command). Joseph immediately introduced a tax whereby the state would take a fifth of the grain harvest over the seven years of abundance to be stored (Gen 41:33-36). When the years of abundance came to an end and the private supply of food became insufficient to feed the population, Joseph sold the grain reserves back to the people. People came from all over the known world to Joseph to buy food (41:53-57). When the people ran out of money and the famine had not abated, Joseph sold grain in exchange for livestock and land until such time as the entire capital stock of Egypt belonged to the state. The land was then leased out by Pharaoh to the people, at a price of a fifth of the harvest (47:13-26).
The story fits well with what we know about the economy of Ancient Egypt although whether Joseph really made such a radical long term impact as Genesis suggests is debatable. Egypt was essentially a command economy in which the Pharaoh in theory owned all of the land (on behalf of the gods). The vast majority of Egyptians were subsistence farmers, but a proportion of the grain harvest was taxed to feed the governing aristocracy and priesthood and provide reserves for periods of famine (source www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt). So Joseph’s policies probably did not represent a major shift from the norm.
I think that there is much we can learn from this key episode in Israel’s (if not Egypt’s) history about the role of the state in risk management. But this is a discussion for next time...
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