A FIFTH — twenty percent. It appears twice in the Joseph story and the second time is the first one made permanent: Joseph tells Pharaoh to take a fifth of the harvest through the seven good years (41:34), and then, when the famine has stripped the country of its silver, its livestock and finally its land, he fixes a fifth to Pharaoh as a STATUTE 'to this day' (47:26). The people are buying back their own stored surplus and paying for it with everything they own. A crown owning the land and taking a fixed share of every harvest, with a tax-exempt temple estate beside it, is a recognisable description of later Egyptian agriculture — the narrator is explaining to his readers why the country they know is arranged as it is. → first discussed at Gen 47:24