ABSTRACT
The political and economic classification of countries has always been on the agenda of politicians and scholars. One of the first attempts to classify the world was the use of the term “ecumene” by the ancient Greeks to describe the world as they knew it. The known world of that time can be separated into two general categories. The ancient Egyptian economy, especially of the Ptolemaic period, was fundamentally different from that of ancient Greece, which was organized around city-states based on market principles and individual property rights. According to Professor Darel Tai Engen of California State University, San Marcos, “unlike the large kingdoms of the Near East, Greece had a freeenterprise economy and most land was privately owned.”2 Conversely, the Egyptian economy was based on “large palace or temple complexes,” which “virtually monopolized anything that can be called ‘industrial production’ as well as foreign trade . . . and organized the economic, military, political and religious life of the society through a single complicated, bureaucratic, record-keeping operation.”3 Later, at the end of the fifteenth century, civilizations of the ecumene became the core of a new category-the “Old World,” due to the European discovery of the “New World,” the territories of which eventually became distinct countries.
