If people do not trade, they cannot specialize in production. In the case of Egypt, what had been a rich nation became poor. Pharaoh was rich, and the people of Egypt survived, but at very high cost: the loss of their freedom. They sold themselves into a form of slavery in order to buy food—they sold their land and their children’s inheritance to Pharaoh.
That is poverty with a vengeance. But they survived the famine, by selling themselves—their very lives.
