The chief advisor and administrator of the Pharaoh, was the tjaty, the vizier or prime minister. The position of tjaty or vizier was in existence by the beginning of the Third Dynasty, the start of the Old Kingdom. The earliest-known holder of the title was named Menka, mentioned on a number of ink inscriptions on a stone vessel found beneath the Step Pyramid of Djoser Netjerikhet. The vizier had authority and power that were second only to the Pharaoh, and sometimes perhaps rivaled the Pharaoh's authority.
The vizier was responsible for civil order, the assessment and collection of taxes, the maintenance of archives, the mobilization of troops, appointment and supervision of officials, examination of land claims, inspection and surveillance of provincial governments, and the exercise of the law over civil cases. Viziers were responsible for the registration of people and property for tax purposes. They supervised and recorded various transactions, especially those involving land, and as "seal-bearers of the king," they had the authority to certify them. The viziers also supervised the biennial census of raw materials, cattle, and produce.
They were also the Overseer of Works for the royal monuments, and the holder had access to and control over vast manpower and material resources by their control of the corvee, a tax paid in the form of labor to obtain troops and workers for the Pharaoh's building projects. The majority of Egyptian people were peasants who worked the land along the fertile Nile flood basin. The corvee provided them with work during the annual flooding of the Nile, when their fields would be under water. These people had no voice in their government, and accepted this fact because it was backed by their religious beliefs that the pharaoh was a god and that they were worshiping him by doing his biding.
The land itself was divided up into provinces called nomes. Each nome had a governor, who was appointed by the Pharaoh, and responsible to the vizier. There were courts in each nome and a high court in the capital, where the Viziers judged most of the cases. By the 1400's B.C., the king appointed two viziers. One vizier administered the Nile Delta area, and the other one managed the region to the south.
More about The Vizier
References:
Maspero, Gaston. Life in ancient Egypt and Assyria. Ungar Publishing, New York: 1892.
Wilson, John A. The culture of ancient Egypt. University of Chicago Press, Chicago: 1951.
Ancient Egyptian Government. http://expage.com/page/AncientEgyptianGovernment
Written by Nathan Bailey, 2002
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