Nothing New: Taxes

A recently discovered chunk of pottery in Egypt had a tax receipt written on the side of it, it burdened the pot owner with a 90 talent tax on his shipment. It was in Greek, the receipt, so we suspect it was a Greek merchant delivering his wares to Egypt. That is a gigantic sum of money, talents were worth 5-10000 drachmas which is half a man's earnings in 98 BC.

Nice article of at Live Science, explains the math of it and more about the Egyptian Government being made up of a bunch of argumentative types...much like the whole of our species.

Live Science