I believe that, in the early 20th century, historians/archaeologists started to believe that the roots of western civilization were not in Greece and Rome but in Sumer and Egypt. When I took 'western civ' in college, we began with ancient Iraq and Egypt, the "fertile crescent".
I need to really step it up and start reading the Archaeology magazines that I've received so far. I have ten of them sitting in the magazine rack, and I still don't have even the first one read.
I did read a little of the article on taxation in the first one. Apparently, Egypt did not have money as such. Taxation was with labor. A worker had to work a certain number of days for the Pharaoh as the substitute for an income tax. The wealthy and the high officials could often "pay" a peasant to work the labor tax for him. In the afterlife, you still owed Pharaoh the tax, so the tombs of these officials and wealthy individuals included little statuettes of peasants to do the labor for the deceased! They essentially "gamed the system" according to the article. (from Archaeology magazine, May-June 2021 issue).