Sources for the study of the use of money in Egypt consists of documents of the temple, biographies and other archaeological data. Currency began to be used by the Egyptians as the Greco-Roman period. For most, the ancient Egyptians were never conceptualized the use of money.
The Egyptian economy has been characterized by the system of barter goods were bought and sold . Payments were made in the form of rations of cereals, meat and fabric. The standard base salary of ten loaves of bread and one third to two full jugs of beer per day.
Egypt was basically an agrarian culture, the exchange of goods was across the grain and commodities. Later, the calculation has been done in terms of weight metals such as copper or silver. Prices were recorded on some papyri that date for a period of 150 years during the 19th and 20th dynasties. However, there are many problems associated with the interpretation of these documents.
Many of these texts were never intended to be read by anyone other than their owners, and were often not the work of professional scribes. However, from their scholars have identified four value units that have been used to price products, consisting of the debenture, Senyu, and the hin khar. The debenture is a measure of weight that was used for gold, silver, and most often copper.