The Long Shadow of Corruption | Part I | Lessons from the Ancient World.
- Rotten&Co.
- Nov 10
- 14 min read
I'm taking a break from the AI series and going back to when it all began. Corruption is proper old, it's old news and bad news, so it feels right to take a look at examples of corruption from ancient times. To put this AI malarkey in context. Who said, 'they don't make 'em like they used to?' Whoever it was, they were wrong. They make 'em exactly like they used to and that's the point, that's the problem. When it comes to corruption, people don't seem to have changed much in the last few thousand years.
The example that comes to mind initially, of early anti-corruption law and adoption - one I cited while studying - was the Code of Hammurabi. This is from Babylonia - where the hell is that, that's part of modern day Iraq, obviously. My recent pondering had made me think about how corruption has always been around. It made me think (more) about how societies evolve, human nature and the nature of power. And about if AI can really make a difference to an issue that has plagued us since records began. Some might think history and such to be boring or irrelevant, they'd be wrong on both counts.
I am not going to scrutinise, just inform and show that corruption is pretty much the same issue as it was 3875 years ago where we pick up our first example - for clarity I'm not saying this is the first recorded instance or anything, it just gives us some context about how corruption and humans go way back - way, way, way back. My maths isn't great but I double checked that number, it is right, however weird and wrong it seems. It makes my point. Corruption has been a persistent problem for justice and equality since the time of God Emperors (will they return - yes, Dune book 4). And humans, being everywhere - they do get everywhere, like spilt sugar - we are going around the world to find examples. It's no shock that there is a good spread to support the claim that, corruption is an old, omnipotent, universal annoyance.
EGYPT (c. 1850 BCE ≈ 3,875 years ago)
The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant.
Background
We’re in Egypt’s Middle Kingdom period (around 2050–1650 BCE), often seen as a political and cultural renaissance following a century of disunity known as the First Intermediate Period. That earlier era had seen weak pharaohs, local warlords (nomarchs) vying for power, and widespread famine and unrest. By the time of Pharaoh Senusret III (reigned c. 1878–1839 BCE), the monarchy had reasserted control, creating a more centralized bureaucracy. Egypt’s rulers saw themselves not just as kings but as divine custodians of moral and cosmic order - a principle known as Ma’at, meaning truth, balance, and justice.
Ma’at wasn’t just spiritual—it was administrative. Every scribe, judge, and tax collector was expected to uphold it. Corruption, therefore, wasn’t merely a crime; it was an act of cosmic disorder, a crack in the world’s harmony. But in practice, Egypt’s social hierarchy meant power could be abused easily, especially by local officials who controlled land, taxes, and trade routes far from the Pharaoh’s eye.
Types of Corruption and How They Manifested
This context comes to life in The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, a story recorded on papyrus and copied for centuries by Egyptian scribes. It tells of Khun-Anup, a small farmer traveling with his goods (grain, donkeys, and produce) to sell at market. Along the way, a corrupt local official named Nemtynakht seizes his wares, exploiting his status and authority to justify outright theft (abuse of power for illicit gain). When Khun-Anup protests, Nemtynakht mocks him, confident that the system will protect the powerful, not the poor.
Instead of giving up, the peasant travels to the High Steward Rensi, a representative of the Pharaoh, and delivers nine eloquent speeches pleading for justice. Each speech is a poetic appeal to Ma’at and an accusation against corruption:
He compares corrupt judges to thieves who steal daylight from the world.
He argues that silence in the face of injustice is itself an act of wrongdoing.
He calls for the law to be applied equally, “that the scales be balanced.
He insists that those who twist justice for profit destroy the very order the Pharaoh is meant to uphold.
These speeches are remarkable because they aren’t simply complaints—they’re philosophical reflections on what justice should mean. The peasant’s voice, humble but articulate, exposes the hypocrisy of an elite system that claimed divine order yet allowed everyday oppression.
Impact and Response
At the story’s end, the Pharaoh (unnamed in the tale) finally intervenes. He punishes the corrupt Nemtynakht, restores the peasant’s property, and rewards Khun-Anup for his eloquence. Justice is theatrically re-established, but the story’s lasting power lies in its critique: corruption is shown not as isolated misconduct but as a systemic rot that endangers the moral fabric of Egypt.
That this story was preserved, studied, and copied in scribal schools for centuries is telling. It was both a moral parable and an educational exercise for future officials—an early piece of anti-corruption literature. It reinforced the idea that truth, fairness, and honesty were not just moral ideals but practical necessities for social stability. In essence, the tale argues that when the poor cannot speak and be heard, the entire state drifts away from Ma’at and toward chaos (Isfet).
The tale is arguably the world’s earliest recorded anti-corruption narrative, using literature to demand accountability and moral clarity from those in power. Its message still resonates: when officials betray justice, they unravel the very order that legitimises them.
BABYLONIA (c. 1754 BCE ≈ 3,780 years ago)
The Code of Hammurabi.
Background
A few years later we’re in ancient Mesopotamia (within modern-day Iraq), around 1754 BCE, during the reign of King Hammurabi of Babylon (a major city), one of history’s most famous lawmakers. Hammurabi ruled a patchwork of city-states along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, a region that had already seen centuries of local kings, priests, and warlords competing for control. By the time Hammurabi came to power (around 1792 BCE), Babylon was a rising power among rivals like Larsa and Eshnunna. Through a mix of diplomacy, military strength, and careful alliance-building, he unified much of Mesopotamia under one rule (which included Assyria and Sumer).
Once he had consolidated power, Hammurabi sought to legitimise his rule through law, presenting himself as a divinely chosen guardian of justice. The Code of Hammurabi, carved onto a seven-foot basalt stele (ancient, upright stone or wooden monument) and placed in public view, was both legal text and royal propaganda. The opening lines claim he was appointed by the gods “to cause justice to prevail in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil, that the strong may not oppress the weak.” It was, in essence, a public anti-corruption manifesto, two millennia before that phrase existed.
Types of Corruption and How They Manifested
The Code is not an abstract treatise but a pragmatic set of about 282 laws covering trade, property, marriage, debt, and criminal justice. But woven through it is a strong concern for the integrity of officials, especially judges and administrators.
Judicial corruption: Law §5 is perhaps the earliest known written sanction against judicial misconduct:
“If a judge gives a judgment, renders a decision, and later alters his judgment, they shall convict that judge of altering the judgment. He shall pay twelve times the penalty imposed in the case, and he shall be expelled from the bench.”
This is a remarkably clear articulation of accountability - a legal safeguard against bribed or politically pressured judges.
Administrative corruption: Other laws address dishonest merchants, false accusers, and corrupt officials who misuse their office or manipulate documents. For instance, tampering with contracts, taking bribes in temple or palace business, or falsifying measurements in trade were serious offences, often punishable by fines or even death.
Social corruption: The Code also targeted behaviour that eroded social trust - fraud, false testimony, and negligence by those in authority. For example, if an official neglected a canal and caused flooding (Law §55), they bore the cost of the damage. In other words, accountability wasn’t just moral; it was financial
Just for clarity here, while there is a definite crossover of moral corruption and the abuse of power for illicit gain, the distinction has to be made when it comes to incompetence/neglect. If someone is just plain bad at their job and/or clueless, which leads to harm, then they aren't corrupt in that context (but it is possible they got their role via nepotism or cronyism which might explain the incompetence).
Impact and Response
For Hammurabi, this code served two purposes. First, it was a moral demonstration of fairness: by inscribing the laws in stone, he made justice visible and unchangeable - a symbolic rebuke to secretive, arbitrary governance. Second, it was a tool of state control: in a sprawling empire where literacy was limited, the act of publishing a legal code itself projected power and divine legitimacy.
In practical terms, it codified what we might now call anti-corruption governance - setting expectations that power must be exercised transparently, that judgments could not be bought or altered, and that officials were stewards, not owners, of authority. Whether it was fully enforced is another question (most ordinary citizens never saw it), but its message endured.
Centuries later, fragments of Hammurabi’s Code were echoed in Biblical law (Exodus, Deuteronomy) and other Near Eastern legal traditions. Its anti-corruption stance, especially the insistence that justice must be consistent and impartial, helped define the very idea of rule of law.
GREECE (c. 350 BCE ≈ 2,375 years ago)
Aristotle’s Politics.
Background
When Aristotle was writing Politics in the mid-4th century BCE, Greece was a patchwork of city-states (poleis), each experimenting with different forms of government - democracies like Athens, oligarchies like Sparta, and monarchies in Macedonia. This was a politically turbulent era: the Athenian democracy had fallen to oligarchic coups, been restored, and then humiliated by foreign powers. By the time Aristotle settled in Athens to teach at the Lyceum, Macedon under Philip II and later Alexander the Great was beginning to dominate the Greek world, effectively ending the independence of the city-states.
For Aristotle, this was not just politics, it was diagnosis. He looked at why governments rose, decayed, and fell. He wanted to know what made a state good and what made it corrupt. Unlike Plato, who dreamed of ideal philosopher-kings, Aristotle was more practical: he studied real constitutions - 158 of them, by his own claim - to understand what caused systems to collapse. His conclusion was simple and timeless: corruption begins when rulers use power for personal gain rather than the common good.
Types of Corruption and How They Manifested
In Politics, Aristotle doesn’t use the modern word “corruption” (diaphthora in Greek means decay or degeneration), but his meaning is unmistakable. Every form of government, he says, has a “pure” version that serves the public interest, and a corrupt version that serves the rulers’ private interests. He lays them out in pairs:
PURE FORM | CORRUPT FORM | ESSENCE |
Monarchy | Tyranny | Rule for the ruler’s benefit, not the people’s |
Aristocracy | Oligarchy | Rule by the rich, for the rich |
Polity (constitutional rule by citizens) | Democracy (in its degraded form) | Rule of the poor majority exploiting the wealthy minority |
For Aristotle, corruption wasn’t just bribery or abuse of power, it was the distortion of purpose. When political office ceased to serve the common good, the system began to rot. He observed that this decay often started subtly:
Cronyism and patronage: Offices given to allies or kin, not the capable.
Electoral manipulation: Wealth used to buy votes or influence assemblies.
Class legislation: Laws shaped to favour a faction, not the whole.
Demagoguery: Politicians flattering the masses for power rather than pursuing justice.
He warned that democracies could be corrupted by populism just as oligarchies were corrupted by greed. In his words, “When those who are equal in one respect (e.g. freedom) claim to be equal in all things, the state becomes perverted.”
Impact and Response
Aristotle’s solution to corruption was balance - the “golden mean” of politics. The best constitution, he argued, was neither rule of the rich nor the poor, but a polity with a strong middle class. Middle-class citizens were less likely to be corrupted by extreme poverty or luxury; they sought stability rather than domination. He also championed the rule of law over rule by men, reasoning that even the best leaders are still human and thus susceptible to temptation. There is the small issue of who could of vote - women, slaves, manual labourers, and foreigners cannot be citizens with voting rights or political power - but let's not go there.
In effect, Aristotle proposed one of the first anti-corruption systems of governance: dispersed power, mixed constitutions, civic education, and laws strong enough to restrain personal ambition. Later republican thinkers, Cicero, Machiavelli, and the framers of the U.S. Constitution, would all draw on this idea: corruption thrives where power concentrates and accountability weakens.
Ethically, Aristotle saw corruption as a failure of virtue. A just ruler exercises phronesis (practical wisdom) and dikaiosyne (justice). A corrupt one succumbs to pleonexia, the insatiable desire for more. For him, corruption was not just an institutional decay but a moral one, the political manifestation of greed and excess.
CHINA (c. 240 BCE ≈ 2,265 years ago)
Han Feizi and the Legalist Tradition.
Background
We’re now in warring states China, around the 3rd century BCE, a time of relentless conflict and political scheming. The once-unified Zhou dynasty had fractured into competing kingdoms like Qin, Chu, and Han, each fighting for survival and supremacy. It was a brutal Darwinian world where diplomacy, deception, and power politics were as common as open war.
Into this chaos came Han Feizi (c. 280–233 BCE), a prince of the small state of Han, educated in the Confucian tradition but ultimately disillusioned by its idealism. He turned instead to a new, hard-edged philosophy: Legalism (fa jia). Where Confucians talked of virtue and moral example, Legalists spoke of law, surveillance, and enforcement. Han Feizi’s writings became the defining statement of this school — a blueprint for strong, disciplined government that could resist the corruption and collapse that plagued weaker states.
Legalism’s timing was perfect for one particular ruler: the ambitious King Zheng of Qin, who would later unify China as the First Emperor (Qin Shi Huang). The Qin state adopted Han Feizi’s ideas ruthlessly — creating an administrative machine where law reigned supreme, fear maintained order, and personal corruption was treated as treason.
Types of Corruption and How They Manifested
Han Feizi saw corruption not as a moral failing, but as a predictable human behaviour. People, he argued, naturally pursue self-interest. Expecting them to act virtuously without strict incentives and deterrents was naïve. Therefore, the problem wasn’t that officials were weak — it was that systems allowed them the opportunity to be weak.
He identified several forms of corruption that threatened the state:
Abuse of office: Officials using their authority for personal or familial gain, especially through patronage or leniency.
Manipulation of reputation: Courtiers using charm, rhetoric, or flattery to sway rulers - a kind of moral bribery.
Nepotism and favoritism: Loyalty to kin or friends instead of to the state, leading to incompetence and misrule.
Deception of the ruler: Ministers hiding information, falsifying reports, or taking credit for others’ achievements — what Han Feizi called “stealing the ruler’s authority.”
In his view, moral preaching and virtue-signalling were themselves forms of corruption. A smooth-talking minister could feign loyalty while enriching himself - we'd call that patronage or clientelism nowadays (the power to control appointments or the right to privileges). Thus, Han Feizi proposed that the ruler should trust no one (not even his closest aides) and instead rely on objective systems:
Clear, written laws (fa) known to all.
Strict methods (shu) for evaluating performance.
Concentration of power (shi) in the ruler, not his ministers.
Where Confucians saw corruption as the rot of the soul, Han Feizi saw it as a design flaw in governance — something that could be engineered out of the system.
Impact and Response
Han Feizi’s ideas were revolutionary and, in a sense, brutally effective. When adopted by the state of Qin, they created a system where officials were constantly monitored and punished for disloyalty or inefficiency. Corruption, at least the kind rooted in personal discretion, was drastically curtailed — but at the cost of fear and paranoia.
In the short term, this Legalist regime succeeded spectacularly: Qin conquered all rival states by 221 BCE, forming the first unified Chinese empire. In the long term - there wasn't really a long term, it imploded within fifteen years. The same laws that restrained corruption also crushed initiative and compassion. Officials followed rules mechanically, citizens feared the state, and rebellion flared as soon as the emperor died.
Ethically, Legalism stood in sharp contrast to Confucianism. Confucius believed that moral education and virtuous rulers inspired people to behave well. Han Feizi countered: “If laws are clear and rewards certain, even a bad man will do good. If laws are vague and punishments uncertain, even a good man will do evil.” For him, corruption was not a moral sickness but a failure of control. Yet ironically, the Legalist system, by denying humanity in favour of efficiency, created a different kind of moral corruption — a state without empathy, where fear replaced trust.
CONCLUSION
I think you get the idea. We touched on Europe, Africa, Middle East and Asia, and there's more than enough corruption to go around. Humans have been recording their dealings with corruption for around 4000 years, why not round up for emphasis. It's not going anywhere but up at this point, it appears to be inherent - a part of our evolutionary make up. This shouldn't be surprising, considering the fight for power has always been a part of civilisation. It's key to survival. Apparently power corrupts, but some say that power attracts the corruptible and they leave no room for the decent ones. I think they're both true and that's a problem.
These examples are structured and nuanced, but there were definitely precursors of various types. Think about human behaviour, habits and the way we learn to follow rules. Think about body language and threats of violence. Think about the myriad ways power can be abused. I can imagine civilisations with no written language, and instructions made verbally or in grunts and scowls - thousands of years prior to Khun-Anup and Hammurabi. The biggest guy in the tribe, the power he held got him what he wanted but maybe without civilisation proper, you wouldn't call it corruption. It might not be seen as as an abuse of power back then, it might not be illicit gain without rules and laws. Whatever it was, it's part of us. It is an inevitable reflex, it's nature and nurture. It's a long shadow.
Part of my unofficial studies have been relating to psychology and behavioural economics. The evolutionary hiccups we bring to the table. The idea of the human as an algorithmic meat sack. And how this algorithm can be programmed and hi-jacked by internal and external forces. The desire for order and the disposition for chaos. There are patterns and expressions of these things everywhere.
In this case, the old can predict and inform the new. So, depending on how familiar you are with todays geopolitics and historical politics, you might spot trends that led to current cultural norms, certain behavioural traits and tropes in societal evolution. It's something I will look into further. It's not rocket science, but it is more important, the proper rocket science comes afterwards - see Star Trek. Solving corruption is a helluva challenge - so maybe it is brain surgery, computational neuroscience and moral relativism all wrapped into one superbly mobius- shaped, complex package - the strip features in some Roman mosaics from the 3rd century - just saying. I say if you solve corruption, just watch the humans go.
Next in this series, we'll look at examples from India and Italy - two historical powerhouses. I'll also contrast the old dame, with how new our democracy is, and then we will go back to China and back home to good old England, less than a thousand years from today - not long before I was born...
Thanks for stopping by,
Alvin.
Sources & Disclaimers.
This article was created in collaboration with an AI research assistant.
General Inspo.
A Very Short History of Corruption
Corruption: A Short History (The Short Histories)
Egypt
Parkinson, R. B. (1991). The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant. Oxford University Press.
Lichtheim, M. (1973). Ancient Egyptian Literature, Vol. I: The Old and Middle Kingdoms. University of California Press.
Assmann, J. (2002). The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs. Harvard University Press.
Tobin, V. A. (1987). “The Peasant and the Law: A Study of Justice in Ancient Egypt.” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, 24, 79–91.
Simpson, W. K. (2003). The Literature of Ancient Egypt. Yale University Press.
https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1127/the-eloquent-peasant--egyptian-justice/
Babylonia
Roth, M. T. (1997). Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. Scholars Press.
Van De Mieroop, M. (2005). King Hammurabi of Babylon: A Biography. Blackwell Publishing.
Driver, G. R., & Miles, J. C. (1952). The Babylonian Laws. Oxford University Press.
Bottéro, J. (1992). Mesopotamia: Writing, Reasoning, and the Gods. University of Chicago Press.
Lipit-Ishtar and Hammurabi Codes – Translation and Commentary, Yale Law School Avalon Project.
Greece
Aristotle (trans. Lord, C.) (1984). The Politics. University of Chicago Press.
Keyt, D., & Miller, F. D. (eds.) (1991). A Companion to Aristotle’s Politics. Blackwell.
Sinclair, T. A. (trans.) (1962). The Politics of Aristotle. Penguin Classics.
Mulgan, R. G. (1977). “Aristotle’s Doctrine That Man Is a Political Animal.” Hermes, 105(3), 438–445.
Allen, D. (2017). World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens. Princeton University Press.
China
Han Feizi (trans. Liao, W. K.) (1939). The Complete Works of Han Fei Tzu. Arthur Probsthain.
Creel, H. G. (1970). Chinese Thought: From Confucius to Mao Tse-tung. University of Chicago Press.
Pines, Y. (2017). “Legalism in Chinese Philosophy.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Watson, B. (trans.) (2003). Basic Writings of Mo Tzu, Hsün Tzu, and Han Fei Tzu. Columbia University Press.
Lewis, M. E. (1999). Writing and Authority in Early China. SUNY Press.
Comments