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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Ancient tax collectors amassed a fortune — until it went up in smoke

Grain stored in a burnt silo came from multiple farms in an empire in the sixteenth century BC.
A gate made of stone, with two giant lion statues.

The Lion’s Gate was the southwestern entrance to Hattusha, which is located in modern-day Turkey and was once the capital of the Hittite empire. Credit: Francesco Bandarin/UNESCO (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

Heaps of Bronze-Age grain retrieved from an enormous subterranean silo show the long reach of the tax collector, even 3,000 years ago.

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Nature 585, 485 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-02630-9

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