Marketplaces in Egypt in the first millennium BC: locating an elusive mode of exchange, in Weight and Value Vol. 1 (2019), edited by L. Rahmstorf

The temple dromos is the most likely location for marketplaces in Egypt in the first millennium BC. In the densely built-up settlements of Egypt, open spaces would have been limited and the dromos, often leading to water so with good transport links, would have been an ideal location.

In this paper, I argue that identifying a set of characteristics for (physical) marketplaces—in many ways applicable cross-culturally and diachronically as other papers in this volume show—allows me to suggest a hypothesis for locations of physical marketplaces in Egypt during the first millennium BC. As there is a lack of direct evidence, I build up a case in view by combining a variety of sources: documentary as well as literary references, the limited archaeological remains, weights and coins. I suggest that dromoiin front of temples, and perhaps on occasion the temple terraces, were likely locations for marketplaces (for long-distance trade) where goods could be exchanged that required the security of institutional oversight. Moreover, I argue that the element of institutional oversight by the temples is key. Temples demonstrably are an important interconnecting feature elsewhere in the Mediterranean from the Late Iron Age onwards when they formed a very visible part of the identity of newly established settlements. This hypothesis is further reinforced in my view by examples from the Roman period in Egypt and in the Levant, where much commercial activity took place at temple gates.