The official gift in ancient Egypt

by Edward Bleiberg

An important custom in ancient Egypt was the official exchanging of gifts, called inw, between individuals of unequal status. In this provocative study, Edward Bleiberg challenges traditional notions of inw-exchange that view the custom in strictly economic terms. Arguing that this perception is misguidedly based on a modern industrial model, Bleiberg instead defines inw-exchange as a primarily social phenomenon. The practice of exchanging inw lasted nearly three thousand years, from the Archaic Period to the end of the New Kingdom. Because the nature of the practice changed from period to period, it is difficult to describe inw as a single concept. In addition, the preservation of sources is so uneven that scholars are forced to generalize from incomplete or biased data. To overcome this difficulty, Bleiberg proposes a model that borrows its theory from economic anthropology. This model identifies reciprocity and redistribution, rather than profit-making, as the primary goals of a pre