CHAPTER I--THE POLITICAL CONSTITUTION OF

Produced by David Widger

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HISTORY OF EGYPT CHALDEA, SYRIA, BABYLONIA, AND ASSYRIA

By G. MASPERO, Honorable Doctor of Civil Laws, and Fellow of Queen’s

College, Oxford; Member of the Institute and Professor at the College of

France

Edited by A. H. SAYCE, Professor of Assyriology, Oxford

Translated by M. L. McCLURE, Member of the Committee of the Egypt

Exploration Fund

CONTAINING OVER TWELVE HUNDRED COLORED PLATES AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Volume II., Part A.

LONDON

THE GROLIER SOCIETY

PUBLISHERS

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[Illustration: Titlepage]

_THE POLITICAL CONSTITUTION OF EGYPT_

_THE KING, QUEEN, AND ROYAL PRINCES--PHARAONIC ADMINISTRATION_

_FEUDALISM AND THE EGYPTIAN PRIESTHOOD, THE MILITARY--THE CITIZENS AND

THE COUNTRY-PEOPLE._

_The cemeteries of Gizeh and Saqqâra: the Great Sphinx; the mastabas,

their chapel and its decoration, the statues of the double, the

sepulchral vault--Importance of the wall-paintings and texts of the

mastabas in determining the history of the Memphite dynasties._

_The king and the royal family--Double nature and titles of the

sovereign: his Horus-names, and the progressive formation of the

Pharaonic Protocol--Royal etiquette an actual divine worship; the

insignia and prophetic statues of Pharaoh, Pharaoh the mediator between

the gods and his subjects--Pharaoh in family life; his amusements, his

occupations, his cares--His harem: the women, the queen, her origin, her

duties to the king--His children: their position in the State; rivalry

among them during the old age and at the death of their father;

succession to the throne, consequent revolutions._

_The royal city: the palace and its occupants--The royal household and

its officers: Pharaoh’s jesters, dwarfs, and magicians--The royal domain

and the slaves, the treasury and the establishments which provided for

its service: the buildings and places for the receipt of taxes--The

scribe, his education, his chances of promotion: the career of Amten,

his successive offices, the value of his personal property at his

death._

_Egyptian feudalism: the status of the lords, their rights, their

amusements, their obligations to the sovereign--The influence of the

gods: gifts to the temples, and possessions in mortmain; the priesthood,

its hierarchy, and the method of recruiting its ranks--The military:

foreign mercenaries; native militia, their privileges, their training._

_The people of the towns--The slaves, men without a master--Workmen and

artisans; corporations: misery of handicraftsmen--Aspect of the towns:

houses, furniture, women in family life--Festivals; periodic markets,

bazaars: commerce by barter, the weighing of precious metals._

_The country people--The villages; serfs, free peasantry--Rural domains;

the survey, taxes; the bastinado, the corvée--Administration of justice,

the relations between peasants and their lords; misery of the peasantry;

their resignation and natural cheerfulness; their improvidence; their

indifference to political revolutions._

[Illustration: 003.jpg PAGE IMAGE]

CHAPTER I--THE POLITICAL CONSTITUTION OF EGYPT

_The king, the queen, and the royal princes--Administration under

the Pharaohs--Feudalism and the Egyptian priesthood, the military--The

citizens and country people._

Between the Fayûm and the apex of the Delta, the Lybian range expands

and forms a vast and slightly undulating table-land, which runs parallel

to the Nile for nearly thirty leagues. The Great Sphinx Harmakhis has

mounted guard over its northern extremity ever since the time of the

Followers of Horus.

Illustration: Drawn by Boudier, from _La Description de

l’Egypte,_ A., vol. v. pl. 7. vignette, which is also by

Boudier, represents a man bewailing the dead, in the

attitude adopted at funerals by professional mourners of

both sexes; the right fist resting on the ground, while the

left hand scatters on the hair the dust which he has just

gathered up. The statue is in the Gîzeh Museum.

Hewn out of the solid rock at the extreme margin of the

mountain-plateau, he seems to raise his head in order that he may be the

first to behold across the valley the rising of his father the Sun. Only

the general outline of the lion can now be traced in his weather-worn

body. The lower portion of the head-dress has fallen, so that the neck

appears too slender to support the weight of the head. The cannon-shot

of the fanatical Mamelukes has injured both the nose and beard, and

the red colouring which gave animation to his features has now almost

entirely disappeared. But in spite of this, even in its decay, it still

bears a commanding expression of strength and dignity. The eyes look

into the far-off distance with an intensity of deep thought, the lips

still smile, the whole face is pervaded with calmness and power. The

art that could conceive and hew this gigantic statue out of the

mountain-side, was an art in its maturity, master of itself and sure of

its effects. How many centuries were needed to bring it to this degree

of development and perfection!

[Illustration: 004.jpg THE MASTABA OF KHOMTINI IN THE NECROPOLIS OF

GÎZEH]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Lepsius. The

cornerstone at the top of the mastaba, at the extreme left

of the hieroglyphic frieze, had been loosened and thrown to

the ground by some explorer; the artist has restored it to

its original position.

In later times, a chapel of alabaster and rose granite was erected

alongside the god; temples were built here and there in the more

accessible places, and round these were grouped the tombs of the whole

country. The bodies of the common people, usually naked and uncoffined,

were thrust under the sand, at a depth of barely three feet from the

surface. Those of a better class rested in mean rectangular chambers,

hastily built of yellow bricks, and roofed with pointed vaulting.

No ornaments or treasures gladdened the deceased in his miserable

resting-place; a few vessels, however, of coarse pottery contained

the provisions left to nourish him during the period of his second

existence.

Some of the wealthy class had their tombs cut out of the mountain-side;

but the majority preferred an isolated tomb, a “mastaba,” * comprising a

chapel above ground, a shaft, and some subterranean vaults.

* “The Arabic word ‘mastaba,’ plur. ‘masatib,’ denotes the

stone bench or platform seen in the streets of Egyptian

towns in front of each shop. A carpet is spread on the

‘mastaba,’ and the customer sits upon it to transact his

business, usually side by side with the seller. In the

necropolis of Saqqâra, there is a temple of gigantic

proportions in the shape of a ‘mastaba.’The inhabitants of

the neighbourhood call it ‘Mastabat-el-Farâoun,’ the seat of

Pharaoh, in the belief that anciently one of the Pharaohs

sat there to dispense justice. The Memphite tombs of the

Ancient Empire, which thickly cover the Saqqâra plateau, are

more or less miniature copies of the ‘Mastabat-el-

Farâoun.’Hence the name of mastabas, which has always been

given to this kind of tomb, in the necropolis of Saqqâra.”

From a distance these chapels have the appearance of truncated pyramids,

varying in size according to the fortune or taste of the owner; there

are some which measure 30 to 40 ft. in height, with a façade 160 ft.

long, and a depth from back to front of some 80 ft., while others attain

only a height of some 10 ft. upon a base of 16 ft. square.*

* The mastaba of Sabû is 175 ft. 9 in. long, by about 87 ft.

9 in. deep, but two of its sides have lost their facing;

that of Ranimait measures 171 ft. 3 in. by 84 ft. 6 in. on

the south front, and 100 ft. on the north front. On the

other hand, the mastaba of Papû is only 19 ft. 4 in. by 29

ft. long, and that of KMbiûphtah 42 ft. 4 in. by 21 ft. 8

in.

The walls slope uniformly towards one another, and usually have a smooth

surface; sometimes, however, their courses are set back one above the

other almost like steps.

[Illustration: 006.jpg THE GREAT SPHINX OF GÎZEH PARTIALLY UNCOVERED,

AND THE PYRAMID OF KHEPHREN]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Émil Brugsch-Bey,

taken in the course of the excavations begun in 1886, with

the funds furnished by a public subscription opened by the

_Journal des Débats._

The brick mastabas were carefully cemented externally, and the layers

bound together internally by fine sand poured into the interstices.

Stone mastabas, on the contrary, present a regularity in the decoration

of their facings alone; in nine cases out of ten the core is built of

rough stone blocks, rudely cut into squares, cemented with gravel and

dried mud, or thrown together pell-mell without mortar of any kind. The

whole building should have been orientated according to rule, the four

sides to the four cardinal points, the greatest axis directed north and

south; but the masons seldom troubled themselves to find the true north,

and the orientation is usually incorrect.*

* Thus the axis of the tomb of Pirsenû is 17° east of the

magnetic north. In some cases the divergence is only 1° or

2°, more often it is 6°, 7°, 8°, or 9°, as can be easily

ascertained by consulting the work of Mariette.

The doors face east, sometimes north or south, but never west. One of

these is but the semblance of a door, a high narrow niche, contrived

so as to face east, and decorated with grooves framing a carefully

walled-up entrance; this was for the use of the dead, and it was

believed that the ghost entered or left it at will. The door for the

use of the living, sometimes preceded by a portico, was almost always

characterized by great simplicity. Over it is a cylindrical tympanum,

or a smooth flagstone, bearing sometimes merely the name of the dead

person, sometimes his titles and descent, sometimes a prayer for his

welfare, and an enumeration of the days during which he was entitled to

receive the worship due to ancestors. They invoked on his behalf, and

almost always precisely in the same words, the “Great God,” the Osiris

of Mendes, or else Anubis, dwelling in the Divine Palace, that burial

might be granted to him in Amentît, the land of the West, the very great

and very good, to him the vassal of the Great God; that he might walk

in the ways in which it is good to walk, he the vassal of the Great

God; that he might have offerings of bread, cakes, and drink, at the New

Year’s Feast, at the feast of Thot, on the first day of the year, on the

feast of Ûagaît, at the great fire festival, at the procession of the

god Mînû, at the feast of offerings, at the monthly and half-monthly

festivals, and every day.

[Illustration: 008.jpg TETINIÔNKHÛ, SITTING BEFORE THE FUNERAL REPAST]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph of the original monument

which is preserved in the Liverpool Museum; cf. Gatty,

_Catalogue of the Mayer Collection;_ I. Egyptian

Antiquities, No. 294, p. 45.

The chapel is usually small, and is almost lost in the great extent

of the building.* It generally consists merely of an oblong chamber,

approached by a rather short passage.**

* Thus the chapel of the mastaba of Sabu is only 14 ft. 4

in. long, by about 3 ft. 3 in. deep, and that of the tomb of

Phtahshopsisû, 10 ft. 4 in. by 3 ft. 7 in.

** The mastaba of Tinti has four chambers, as has also that

of Assi-ônkhû; but these are exceptions, as may be

ascertained by consulting the work of Mariette. Most of

those which contain several rooms are ancient one-roomed

mastabas, which have been subsequently altered or enlarged;

this is the case with the mastabas of Shopsi and of

Ankhaftûka. A few, however, were constructed from the outset

with all their apartments--that of Râônkhûmai, with six

chambers and several niches; that of Khâbiûphtah, with three

chambers, niches, and doorway ornamented with two pillars;

that of Ti, with two chambers, a court surrounded with

pillars, a doorway, and long inscribed passages; and that of

Phtahhotpû, with seven chambers, besides niches.

[Illustration: 009.jpg THE FAÇADE AND THE STELE OF THE TOMB OF

PHTAHSHOPSISU AT SAQQARA]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Dûhichen.

At the far end, and set back into the western wall, is a huge

quadrangular stele, at the foot of which is seen the table of offerings,

made of alabaster, granite or limestone placed flat upon the ground,

and sometimes two little obelisks or two altars, hollowed at the top to

receive the gifts mentioned in the inscription on the exterior of the

tomb. The general appearance is that of a rather low, narrow doorway,

too small to be a practicable entrance. The recess thus formed is almost

always left empty; sometimes, however, the piety of relatives placed

within it a statue of the deceased. Standing there, with shoulders

thrown back, head erect, and smiling face, the statue seems to step

forth to lead the double from its dark lodging where it lies embalmed,

to those glowing plains where he dwelt in freedom during his earthly

life: another moment, crossing the threshold, he must descend the few

steps leading into the public hall. On festivals and days of offering,

when the priest and family presented the banquet with the customary

rites, this great painted figure, in the act of advancing, and seen

by the light of flickering torches or smoking lamps, might well appear

endued with life. It was as if the dead ancestor himself stepped out of

the wall and mysteriously stood before his descendants to claim their

homage. The inscription on the lintel repeats once more the name and

rank of the dead. Faithful portraits of him and of other members of his

family figure in the bas-reliefs on the door-posts.

[Illustration: 010.jpg STELE IN THE FORM OF A DOOR]

The little scene at the far end represents him seated tranquilly at

table, with the details of the feast carefully recorded at his side,

from the first moment when water is brought to him for ablution, to that

when, all culinary skill being exhausted, he has but to return to his

dwelling, in a state of beatified satisfaction. The stele represented to

the visitor the door leading to the private apartments of the deceased;

the fact of its being walled up for ever showing that no living mortal

might cross its threshold. The inscription which covered its surface was

not a mere epitaph informing future generations who it was that reposed

beneath. It perpetuated the name and genealogy of the deceased, and

gave him a civil status, without which he could not have preserved his

personality in the world beyond; the nameless dead, like a living man

without a name, was reckoned as non-existing. Nor was this the only use

of the stele; the pictures and prayers inscribed upon it acted as so

many talismans for ensuring the continuous existence of the ancestor,

whose memory they recalled. They compelled the god therein invoked,

whether Osiris or the jackal Anubis, to act as mediator between the

living and the departed; they granted to the god the enjoyment of

sacrifices and those good things abundantly offered to the deities, and

by which they live, on condition that a share of them might first be

set aside for the deceased. By the divine favour, the soul or rather the

doubles of the bread, meat, and beverages passed into the other world,

and there refreshed the human double. It was not, however, necessary

that the offering should have a material existence, in order to be

effective; the first comer who should repeat aloud the name and the

formulas inscribed upon the stone, secured for the unknown occupant, by

this means alone, the immediate possession of all the things which he

enumerated.

The stele constitutes the essential part of the chapel and tomb. In many

cases it was the only inscribed portion, it alone being necessary to

ensure the identity and continuous existence of the dead man; often,

however, the sides of the chamber and passage were not left bare. When

time or the wealth of the owner permitted, they were covered with scenes

and writing, expressing at greater length the ideas summarized by the

figures and inscriptions of the stele.

[Illustration: 014.jpg A REPRESENTATION OF THE DOMAINS OF THE LORD TI,

BRINGING TO HIM OFFERINGS IN PROCESSION]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin taken from a “squeeze” taken from the

tomb of Ti. The domains are represented as women. The name

is written before each figure with the designation of the

landowner.

Neither pictorial effect nor the caprice of the moment was permitted

to guide the artist in the choice of his subjects; all that he drew,

pictures or words, bad a magical purpose. Every individual who built for

himself an “eternal house,” either attached to it a staff of priests

of the double, of inspectors, scribes, and slaves, or else made an

agreement with the priests of a neighbouring temple to serve the chapel

in perpetuity. Lands taken from his patrimony, which thus became the

“Domains of the Eternal House,” rewarded them for their trouble, and

supplied them with meats, vegetables, fruits, liquors, linen and vessels

for sacrifice.

[Illustration: 015.jpg THE REPRESENTATION OF THE LORD TI ASSISTING AT

THE PRELIMINARIES OF THE SACRIFICE AND OFFERINGS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Dumichen,

Besultate, vol. i. pl. 13.

In theory, these “liturgies” were perpetuated from year to year, until

the end of time; but in practice, after three or four generations, the

older ancestors were forsaken for those who had died more recently.

Notwithstanding the imprecations and threats of the donor against the

priests who should neglect their duty, or against those who should usurp

the funeral endowments, sooner or later there came a time when, forsaken

by all, the double was in danger of perishing for want of sustenance. In

order to ensure that the promised gifts, offered in substance on the day

of burial, should be maintained throughout the centuries, the relatives

not only depicted them upon the chapel walls, but represented in

addition the lands which produced them, and the labour which contributed

to their production. On one side we see ploughing, sowing, reaping, the

carrying of the corn, the storing of the grain, the fattening of the

poultry, and the driving of the cattle. A little further on, workmen of

all descriptions are engaged in their several trades: shoemakers ply

the awl, glassmakers blow through their tubes, metal founders watch over

their smelting-pots, carpenters hew down trees and build a ship; groups

of women weave or spin under the eye of a frowning taskmaster, who seems

impatient of their chatter. Did the double in his hunger desire meat? He

might choose from the pictures on the wall the animal that pleased him

best, whether kid, ox, or gazelle; he might follow the course of its

life, from its birth in the meadows to the slaughter-house and the

kitchen, and might satisfy his hunger with its flesh. The double saw

himself represented in the paintings as hunting, and to the hunt he

went; he was painted eating and drinking with his wife, and he ate and

drank with her; the pictured ploughing, harvesting, and gathering into

barns, thus became to him actual realities. In fine, this painted world

of men and things represented upon the wall was quickened by the same

life which animated the double, upon whom it all depended: the _picture_

of a meal or of a slave was perhaps that which best suited the _shade_

of guest or of master.

Even to-day, when we enter one of these decorated chapels, the idea of

death scarcely presents itself: we have rather the impression of being

in some old-world house, to which the master may at any moment return.

We see him portrayed everywhere upon the walls, followed by his

servants, and surrounded by everything which made his earthly life

enjoyable. One or two statues of him stand at the end of the room, in

constant readiness to undergo the “Opening of the Mouth” and to receive

offerings. Should these be accidentally removed, others, secreted in

a little chamber hidden in the thickness of the masonry, are there to

replace them. These inner chambers have rarely any external outlet,

though occasionally they are connected with the chapel by a small

opening, so narrow that it will hardly admit of a hand being passed

through it. Those who came to repeat prayers and burn incense at this

aperture were received by the dead in person. The statues were not mere

images, devoid of consciousness. Just as the double of a god could be

linked to an idol in the temple sanctuary in order to transform it into

a prophetic being, capable of speech and movement, so when the double of

a man was attached to the effigy of his earthly body, whether in stone,

metal, or wood, a real living person was created and was introduced into

the tomb. So strong was this conviction that the belief has lived on

through two changes of religion until the present day. The double still

haunts the statues with which he was associated in the past. As in

former times, he yet strikes with madness or death any who dare to

disturb is repose; and one can only be protected from him by breaking,

at the moment of discovery, the perfect statues which the vault

contains. The double is weakened or killed by the mutilation of these

his sustainers.*

* The legends still current about the pyramids of Gîzeh

furnish some good examples of this kind of superstition.

“The guardian of the Eastern pyramid was an idol... who had

both eyes open, and was seated on a throne, having a sort of

halberd near it, on which, if any one fixed his eye, he

heard a fearful noise, which struck terror to his heart, and

caused the death of the hearer. There was a spirit appointed

to wait on each guardian, who departed not from before

him.” The keeping of the other two pyramids was in like

manner entrusted to a statue, assisted by a spirit. I have

collected a certain number of tales resembling that of

Mourtadi in the _Études de Mythologie et Archéologie

Égyptiennes,_ vol. i. p. 77, et seq.

The statues furnish in their modelling a more correct idea of the

deceased than his mummy, disfigured as it was by the work of the

embalmers; they were also less easily destroyed, and any number could

be made at will. Hence arose the really incredible number of statues

sometimes hidden away in the same tomb. These sustainers or imperishable

bodies of the double were multiplied so as to insure for him a practical

immortality; and the care with which they were shut into a secure

hiding-place, increased their chances of preservation. All the same, no

precaution was neglected that could save a mummy from destruction. The

shaft leading to it descended to a mean depth of forty to fifty feet,

but sometimes it reached, and even exceeded, a hundred feet. Running

horizontally from it is a passage so low as to prevent a man standing

upright in it, which leads to the sepulchral chamber properly so called,

hewn out of the solid rock and devoid of all ornament; the sarcophagus,

whether of fine limestone, rose-granite, or black basalt, does not

always bear the name and titles of the deceased. The servants who

deposited the body in it placed beside it on the dusty floor the

quarters of the ox, previously slaughtered in the chapel, as well as

phials of perfume, and large vases of red pottery containing muddy

water; after which they walled up the entrance to the passage and filled

the shaft with chips of stone intermingled with earth and gravel. The

whole, being well watered, soon hardened into a compact mass, which

protected the vault and its master from desecration.

During the course of centuries, the ever-increasing number of tombs at

length formed an almost uninterrupted chain of burying-places on the

table-land. At Gîzeh they follow a symmetrical plan, and line the sides

of regular roads; at Saqqâra they are scattered about on the surface

of the ground, in some places sparsely, in others huddled confusedly

together. Everywhere the tombs are rich in inscriptions, statues, and

painted or sculptured scenes, each revealing some characteristic custom,

or some detail of contemporary civilization. From the womb, as it were,

of these cemeteries, the Egypt of the Memphite dynasties gradually takes

new life, and reappears in the full daylight of history. Nobles and

fellahs, soldiers and priests, scribes and craftsmen,--the whole nation

lives anew before us; each with his manners, his dress, his daily round

of occupation and pleasures. It is a perfect picture, and although in

places the drawing is defaced and the colour dimmed, yet these may be

restored with no great difficulty, and with almost absolute certainty.

The king stands out boldly in the foreground, and his tall figure towers

over all else. He so completely transcends his surroundings, that at

first sight one may well ask if he does not represent a god rather than

a man; and, as a matter of fact, he is a god to his subjects. They call

him “the good god,” “the great god,” and connect him with Râ through the

intervening kings, the successors of the gods who ruled the two worlds.

His father before him was “Son of Râ,” as was also his grandfather, and

his great-grandfather, and so through all his ancestors, until from

“son of Râ” to “son of Râ” they at last reached Râ himself. Sometimes

an adventurer of unknown antecedents is abruptly inserted in the series,

and we might imagine that he would interrupt the succession of the solar

line; but on closer examination we always find that either the intruder

is connected with the god by a genealogy hitherto unsuspected, or that

he is even more closely related to him than his predecessors, inasmuch

as Râ, having secretly descended upon the earth, had begotten him by a

mortal mother in order to rejuvenate the race.*

* A legend, preserved for us in the Westcar Papyrus (Erman’s

edition, pl. ix. 11. 5-11, pl. x. 1. 5, et seq.), maintains

that the first three kings of the Vth dynasty, Ûsirkaf,

Sahûrî, and Kakiû, were children born to Râ, lord of

Sakhîbû, by Rûdîtdidît, wife of a priest attached to the

temple of that town.

If things came to the worst, a marriage with some princess would soon

legitimise, if not the usurper himself, at least his descendants, and

thus firmly re-establish the succession.

[Illustration: 021.jpg THE BIRTH OF A KING AND HIS DOUBLE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Gay et. The

king is Amenôthes III., whose conception and birth are

represented in the temple of Luxor, with the same wealth of

details that we should have expected, had he been a son of

the god Amon and the goddess Mût.

The Pharaohs, therefore, are blood-relations of the Sun-god, some

through their father, others through their mother, directly begotten

by the God, and their souls as well as their bodies have a supernatural

origin; each soul being a double detached from Horus, the successor of

Osiris, and the first to reign alone over Egypt. This divine double

is infused into the royal infant at birth, in the same manner as the

ordinary double is incarnate in common mortals. It always remained

concealed, and seemed to lie dormant in those princes whom destiny did

not call upon to reign, but it awoke to full self-consciousness in those

who ascended the throne at the moment of their accession. From that time

to the hour of their death, and beyond it, all that they possessed of

ordinary humanity was completely effaced; they were from henceforth

only “the sons of Râ,” the Horus, dwelling upon earth, who, during his

sojourn here below, renews the blessings of Horus, son of Isis. Their

complex nature was revealed at the outset in the form and arrangement of

their names. Among the Egyptians the choice of a name was not a matter

of indifference; not only did men and beasts, but even inanimate

objects, require one or more names, and it may be said that no person or

thing in the world could attain to complete existence until the name

had been conferred. The most ancient names were often only a short word,

which denoted some moral or physical quality, as Titi the Runner, Mini

the Lasting, Qonqeni the Crusher, Sondi the Formidable, Uznasît the

Flowery-tongued. They consisted also of short sentences, by which

the royal child confessed his faith in the power of the gods, and his

participation in the acts of the Sun’s life--“Khâfrî,” his rising is

Râ; “Men-kaûhorû,” the doubles of Horus last for ever; “Usirkerî,” the

double of Râ is omnipotent. Sometimes the sentence is shortened, and the

name of the god is understood: as for instance, “Ûsirkaf,” his double is

omnipotent; “Snofmi,” he has made me good; “Khûfïïi,” he has protected

me, are put for the names “Usirkerî,” “Ptahsnofrûi,” “Khnûmkhûfûi,” with

the suppression of Râ, Phtah, and Khnûrnû.

[Illustration: 023.jpg PAGE IMAGE]

The name having once, as it were, taken possession of a man on his

entrance into life, never leaves him either in this world or the next;

the prince who had been called Unas or Assi at the moment of his birth,

retained this name even after death, so long as his mummy existed, and

his double was not annihilated.

{Hieroglyphics indicated by [--], see the page images in

the HTML file}

When the Egyptians wished to denote that a person or thing was in a

certain place, they inserted their names within the picture of the place

in question. Thus the name of Teti is written inside a picture of Teti’s

castle, the result being the compound hieroglyph [--] Again, when the

son of a king became king in his turn, they enclose his ordinary name

in the long flat-bottomed frame [--] which we call a cartouche;

the elliptical part [--] of which is a kind of plan of the world, a

representation of those regions passed over by Râ in his journey, and

over which Pharaoh, because he is a son of Râ, exercises his rule.

When the names of Teti or Snofrûi, following the group [----] which

respectively express sovereignty over the two halves of Egypt, the

South and the North, the whole expression describing exactly the visible

person of Pharaoh during his abode among mortals. But this first name

chosen for the child did not include the whole man; it left without

appropriate designation the double of Horus, which was revealed in

the prince at the moment of accession. The double therefore received a

special title, which is always constructed on a uniform plan: first the

picture [--] hawk-god, who desired to leave to his descendants a portion

of his soul, then a simple or compound epithet, specifying that virtue

of Horus which the Pharaoh wished particularly to possess--“Horû

nîb-mâîfc,” Horus master of Truth; “Horû miri-toûi,” Horus friend of

both lands; “Horû nîbkhâùû,” Horus master of the risings; “Horu mazîti,”

Horus who crushes his enemies.

[Illustration: 024.jpg THE ADULT KING ADVANCING, FOLLOWED BY HIS DOUBLE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an illustration in Arundale-

Bonomi-Birch’s _Gallery of Antiquities from the British

Museum,_ pl. 31. The king thus represented is Thutmosis II.

of the XVIIIth dynasty; the spear, surmounted by a man’s

head, which the double holds in his hand, probably recalls

the human victims formerly sacrificed at the burial of a

chief.

The variable part of these terms is usually written in an oblong

rectangle, terminated at the lower end by a number of lines portraying

in a summary way the façade of a monument, in the centre of which a

bolted door may sometimes be distinguished: this is the representation

of the chapel where the double will one day rest, and the closed door is

the portal of the tomb.* The stereotyped part of the names and titles,

which is represented by the figure of the god, is placed outside the

rectangle, sometimes by the side of it, sometimes upon its top: the hawk

is, in fact, free by nature, and could nowhere remain imprisoned against

his will.

* This is what is usually known as the “Banner Name;”

indeed, it was for some time believed that this sign

represented a piece of stuff, ornamented at the bottom by

embroidery or fringe, and bearing on the upper part the

title of a king. Wilkinson thought that this “square title,”

as he called it, represented a house. The real meaning of

the expression was determined by Professor Flinders Petrie

and by myself.

This artless preamble was not enough to satisfy the love of precision

which is the essential characteristic of the Egyptians. When they wished

to represent the double in his sepulchral chamber, they left out of

consideration the period in his existence during which he had presided

over the earthly destinies of the sovereign, in order to render them

similar to those of Horus, from whom the double proceeded.

[Illustration: 026.jpg Page Image]

They, therefore, withdrew him from the tomb which should have been his

lot, and there was substituted for the ordinary sparrow-hawk one of

those groups which symbolize sovereignty over the two countries of the

Nile--the coiled urasus of the North, and the vulture of the South,

[--]; there was then finally added a second sparrow-hawk, the golden

sparrow-hawk, [--], the triumphant sparrow-hawk which had delivered

Egypt from Typhon. The soul of Snofrai, which is called, as a surviving

double, [--], “Horus master of Truth,” is, as a living double, entitled

“[--]” “[--]” the Lord of the Vulture and of the “Urous,” master of

Truth, and Horus triumphant.*

* The Ka, or double name, represented in this illustration

is that of the Pharaoh Khephren, the builder of the second

of the great pyramids at Gîzeh; it reads “Horu usir-Hâîti,”

Horus powerful of heart.

On the other hand, the royal prince, when he put on the diadem,

received, from the moment of his advancement to the highest rank, such

an increase of dignity, that his birth-name--even when framed in a

cartouche and enhanced with brilliant epithets--was no longer able to

fully represent him. This exaltation of his person was therefore marked

by a new designation. As he was the living flesh of the sun, so his

surname always makes allusion to some point in his relations with his

father, and proclaims the love which he felt for the latter, “Mirirî,”

or that the latter experienced for him, “Mirnirî,” or else it indicates

the stability of the doubles of Râ, “Tatkerî,” their goodness,

“Nofirkerî,” or some other of their sovereign virtues. Several Pharaohs

of the IVth dynasty had already dignified themselves by these surnames;

those of the VIth were the first to incorporate them regularly into the

royal preamble.

[Illustration: 027.jpg PAGE IMAGE]

There was some hesitation at first as to the position the surname ought

to occupy, and it was sometimes placed after the birth-name, as in “Papi

Nofirkerî,” sometimes before it, as in [--] “Nofirkerî Papî.” It was

finally decided to place it at the beginning, preceded by the group [--]

“King of Upper and Lower Egypt,” which expresses in its fullest extent

the power granted by the gods to the Pharaoh alone; the other, or

birth-name, came after it, accompanied by the words [--]. “Son of the

Sun.” There were inscribed, either before or above these two solar names

--which are exclusively applied to the visible and living body of the

master--the two names of the sparrow-hawk, which belonged especially to

the soul; first, that of the double in the tomb, and then that of the

double while still incarnate. Four terms seemed thus necessary to the

Egyptians in order to define accurately the Pharaoh, both in time and in

eternity.

Long centuries were needed before this subtle analysis of the royal

person, and the learned graduation of the formulas which corresponded to

it, could transform the Nome chief, become by conquest suzerain over all

other chiefs and king of all Egypt, into a living god here below, the

all-powerful son and successor of the gods; but the divine concept of

royalty, once implanted in the mind, quickly produced its inevitable

consequences. From the moment that the Pharaoh became god upon earth,

the gods of heaven, his fathers or his brothers, and the goddesses

recognized him as their son, and, according to the ceremonial imposed

by custom in such cases, consecrated his adoption by offering him the

breast to suck, as they would have done to their own child.

[Illustration: 028.jpg THE GODDESS ADOPTS THE KING BY SUCKLING HIM]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger. The

original is in the great speos of Silsilis. The king here

represented is Harmhabît of the XVIIIth dynasty; cf.

Champollion, _Monuments de l’Egypt et de la Nubie,_ pl.

cix., No. 3; Rosellini, _Monumenti Storici,_ pl. xliv. 5;

Lepsius, Denkm., iii. 121 b.

Ordinary mortals spoke of him only in symbolic words, designating him by

some periphrasis: Pharaoh, “Pirûi-Aûi,” the Double Palace, “Prûîti,” the

Sublime Porte, His Majesty,* the Sun of the two lands, Horus master of

the palace, or, less ceremoniously, by the indeterminate pronoun “One.”

* The title “Honûf” is translated by the same authors,

sometimes as “His Majesty,” sometimes as “His Holiness.” The

reasons for translating it “His Majesty,” as was originally

proposed by Champollion, and afterwards generally adopted,

have been given last of all by E. de Rougé.

The greater number of these terms is always accompanied by a wish

addressed to the sovereign for his “life,” “health,” and “strength,” the

initial signs of which are written after all his titles. He accepts all

this graciously, and even on his own initiative, swears by his own life,

or by the favour of Râ, but he forbids his subjects to imitate him: for

them it is a sin, punishable in this world and in the next, to adjure

the person of the sovereign, except in the case in which a magistrate

requires from them a judicial oath.

[Illustration: 029.jpg THE CUCUPHA-HEADED SCEPTRE.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the engraving in Prisse

d’Avennes, _Recherches sur les légendes royales et l’époque

du règne de Schai ou Scheraï,_ in the _Revue Archéologique_,

1st series, vol. ii. p. 467. The original is now preserved

in the Bibliothèque Nationale, to which it was presented by

Prisse d’Avennes. It is of glazed earthenware, of very

delicate and careful workmanship.

He is approached, moreover, as a god is approached, with downcast eyes,

and head or back bent; they “sniff the earth” before him, they veil their

faces with both hands to shut out the splendour of his appearance; they

chant a devout form of adoration before submitting to him a petition.

No one is free from this obligation: his ministers themselves, and the

great ones of his kingdom, cannot deliberate with him on matters of

state, without inaugurating the proceeding by a sort of solemn service

in his honour, and reciting to him at length a eulogy of his divinity.

They did not, indeed, openly exalt him above the other gods, but these

were rather too numerous to share heaven among them, whilst he alone

rules over the “Entire Circuit of the Sun,” and the whole earth, its

mountains and plains, are in subjection under his sandalled feet.

People, no doubt, might be met with who did not obey him, but these

were rebels, adherents of Sît, “Children of Euin,” who, sooner or later,

would be overtaken by punishment.

[Illustration: 030.jpg DIFFERENT POSTURES FOR APPROACHING THE KING]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger. The

picture represents Khâmhaît presenting the superintendents

of storehouses to Tûtânkhamon, of the XVIIIth dynasty.

While hoping that his fictitious claim to universal dominion would be

realized, the king adopted, in addition to the simple costume of the old

chiefs, the long or short petticoat, the jackal’s tail, the turned-up

sandals, and the insignia of the supreme gods,--the ankh, the crook, the

flail, and the sceptre tipped with the head of a jerboa or a hare, which

we misname the cucupha-headed sceptre.* He put on the many-coloured

diadems of the gods, the head-dresses covered with feathers, the white

and the red crowns either separately or combined so as to form the

pshent. The viper or uraeus, in metal or gilded wood, which rose from

his forehead, was imbued with a mysterious life, which made it a means

of executing his vengeance and accomplishing his secret purposes. It was

supposed to vomit flames and to destroy those who should dare to attack

its master in battle. The supernatural virtues which it communicated to

the crown, made it an enchanted thing which no one could resist. Lastly,

Pharaoh had his temples where his enthroned statue, animated by one

of his doubles, received worship, prophesied, and fulfilled all the

functions of a Divine Being, both during his life, and after he had

rejoined in the tomb his ancestors the gods, who existed before him and

who now reposed impassively within the depths of their pyramids.**

* This identification, suggested by Champollion, is, from

force of custom, still adhered to, in nearly all works on

Egyptology. But we know from ancient evidence that the

cucupha was a bird, perhaps a hoopoe; the sceptre of the

gods, moreover, is really surmounted by the head of a

quadruped having a pointed snout and long retreating ears,

and belonging to the greyhound, jackal, or jerboa species.

** This method of distinguishing deceased kings is met with

as far back as the “Song of the Harpist,” which the

Egyptians of the Ramesside period attributed to the founder

of the XIth dynasty. The first known instance of a temple

raised by an Egyptian king to his double is that of

Amenôthes III.

Man, as far as his body was concerned, and god in virtue of his soul and

its attributes, the Pharaoh, in right of this double nature, acted as a

constant mediator between heaven and earth. He alone was fit to transmit

the prayers of men to his fathers and his brethren the gods. Just as the

head of a family was in his household the priest _par excellence_ of the

gods of that family,--just as the chief of a nome was in his nome the

priest _par excellence_ in regard to the gods of the nome,--so was

Pharaoh the priest _par excellence_ of the gods of all Egypt, who were

his special deities. He accompanied their images in solemn processions;

he poured out before them the wine and mystic milk, recited the formulas

in their hearing, seized the bull who was the victim with a lasso and

slaughtered it according to the rite consecrated by ancient tradition.

Private individuals had recourse to his intercession, when they asked

some favour from on high; as, however, it was impossible for every

sacrifice to pass actually through his hands, the celebrating priest

proclaimed at the beginning of each ceremony that it was the king who

made the offering--_Sûtni di hotpu_--he and none other, to Osiris,

Phtah, and Ka-Harmakhis, so that they might grant to the faithful

who implored the object of their desires, and, the declaration being

accepted in lieu of the act, the king was thus regarded as really

officiating on every occasion for his subjects.*

*I do not agree with Prof. Ed. Meyer, or with Prof. Erman,

who imagine that this was the first instance of the

practice, and that it had been introduced into Nubia before

its adoption on Egyptian soil. Under the Ancient Empire we

meet with more than one functionary who styles himself, in

some cases during his master’s lifetime, in others shortly

after his death, “Prophet of Horus who lives in the palace,”

or “Prophet of Kheops,” “Prophet of Sondi,” “Prophet of

Kheops, of Mykerinos, of Usirkaf,” or “of other sovereigns.”

He thus maintained daily intercourse with the gods, and they, on their

part, did not neglect any occasion of communicating with him. They

appeared to him in dreams to foretell his future, to command him to

restore a monument which was threatened with ruin, to advise him to set

out to war, to forbid him risking his life in the thick of the fight.*

* Among other examples, the texts mention the dream in which

Thûtmosis IV., while still a royal prince, received from

Phrâ-Harmakhis orders to unearth the Great Sphinx, the dream

in which Phtah forbids Minephtah to take part in the battle

against the peoples of the sea, that by which Tonûatamon,

King of Napata, is persuaded to undertake the conquest of

Egypt. Herodotus had already made us familiar with the

dreams of Sabaco and of the high priest Sethos.

Communication by prophetic dreams was not, however, the method usually

selected by the gods: they employed as interpreters of their wishes

the priests and the statues in the temples. The king entered the chapel

where the statue was kept, and performed in its presence the invocatory

rites, and questioned it upon the subject which occupied his mind. The

priest replied under direct inspiration from on high, and the dialogue

thus entered upon might last a long time. Interminable discourses,

whose records cover the walls of the Theban temples, inform us what

the Pharaoh said on such occasions, and in what emphatic tones the

gods replied. Sometimes the animated statues raised their voices in

the darkness of the sanctuary and themselves announced their will; more

frequently they were content to indicate it by a gesture. When they were

consulted on some particular subject and returned no sign, it was their

way of signifying their disapprobation. If, on the other hand, they

significantly bowed their head, once or twice, the subject was an

acceptable one, and they approved it. No state affair was settled

without asking their advice, and without their giving it in one way or

another.

The monuments, which throw full light on the supernatural character

of the Pharaohs in general, tell us but little of the individual

disposition of any king in particular, or of their everyday life. When

by chance we come into closer intimacy for a moment with the sovereign,

he is revealed to us as being less divine and majestic than we might

have been led to believe, had we judged him only by his impassive

expression and by the pomp with which he was surrounded in public. Not

that he ever quite laid aside his grandeur; even in his home life,

in his chamber or his garden, during those hours when he felt himself

withdrawn from public gaze, those highest in rank might never forget

when they approached him that he was a god. He showed himself to be a

kind father, a good-natured husband,* ready to dally with his wives and

caress them on the cheek as they offered him a flower, or moved a piece

upon the draught-board.

* As a literary example of what the conduct of a king was

like in his family circle, we may quote the description of

King Minîbphtah, in the story of Satni-Khâmoîs. The pictures

of the tombs at Tel-el-Amarna show us the intimate terms on

which King Khuniaton lived with his wife and daughters, both

big and little.

He took an interest in those who waited on him, allowed them certain

breaches of etiquette when he was pleased with them, and was indulgent

to their little failings. If they had just returned from foreign lands,

a little countrified after a lengthy exile from the court, he would

break out into pleasantries over their embarrassment and their

unfashionable costume,--kingly pleasantries which excited the forced

mirth of the bystanders, but which soon fell flat and had no meaning for

those outside the palace. The Pharaoh was fond of laughing and drinking;

indeed, if we may believe evil tongues, he took so much at times as to

incapacitate him for business. The chase was not always a pleasure

to him, hunting in the desert, at least, where the lions evinced a

provoking tendency to show as little respect for the divinity of the

prince as for his mortal subjects; but, like the chiefs of old, he felt

it a duty to his people to destroy wild beasts, and he ended by counting

the slain in hundreds, however short his reign might be.*

*Amenôthes III. had killed as many as a hundred and two

lions during the first ten years of his reign.

A considerable part of his time was taken up in war--in the east,

against the Libyans in the regions of the Oasis; in the Nile Valley to

the south of Aswan against the Nubians; on the Isthmus of Suez and in

the Sinaitic Peninsula against the Bedouin; frequently also in a civil

war against some ambitious noble or some turbulent member of his own

family. He travelled frequently from south to north, and from north to

south, leaving in every possible place marked traces of his visits--on

the rocks of Elephantine and of the first cataract, on those of Silsilis

or of El-Kab, and he appeared to his vassals as Tûmû himself arisen

among them to repress injustice and disorder. He restored or enlarged

the monuments, regulated equitably the assessment of taxes and

charges, settled or dismissed the lawsuits between one town and another

concerning the appropriation of the water, or the possession of certain

territories, distributed fiefs which had fallen vacant, among his

faithful servants, and granted pensions to be paid out of the royal

revenues.*

* These details are not found on the historical monuments,

but are furnished to us by the description given in “The

Book of Knowledge of what there is in the other world” of

the course of the sun across the domain of the hours of

night; the god is there described as a Pharaoh passing

through his kingdom, and all that he does for his vassals,

the dead, is identical with what Pharaoh was accustomed to

do for his subjects, the living.

At length he re-entered Memphis, or one of his usual residences, where

fresh labours awaited him. He gave audience daily to all, whether high

or low, who were, or believed that they were, wronged by some official,

and who came to appeal to the justice of the master against the

injustice of his servant. If he quitted the palace when the cause

had been heard, to take boat or to go to the temple, he was not left

undisturbed, but petitions and supplications assailed him by the way.

In addition to this, there were the daily sacrifices, the despatch

of current affairs, the ceremonies which demanded the presence of the

Pharaoh, and the reception of nobles or foreign envoys. One would think

that in the midst of so many occupations he would never feel time hang

heavy on his hands. He was, however, a prey to that profound _ennui_

which most Oriental monarchs feel so keenly, and which neither the cares

nor the pleasures of ordinary life could dispel. Like the Sultans of the

“Arabian Nights,” the Pharaohs were accustomed to have marvellous tales

related to them, or they assembled their councillors to ask them to

suggest some fresh amusement: a happy thought would sometimes strike one

of them, as in the case of him who aroused the interest of Snofrûi by

recommending him to have his boat manned by young girls barely clad in

large-meshed network.

[Illustration: 037.jpg PHARAOH IN HIS HAREM]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin.

All his pastimes were not so playful. The Egyptians by nature were not

cruel, and we have very few records either in history or tradition of

bloodthirsty Pharaohs; but the life of an ordinary individual was of so

little value in their eyes, that they never hesitated to sacrifice it,

even for a caprice. A sorcerer had no sooner boasted before Kheops of

being able to raise the dead, than the king proposed that he should try

the experiment on a prisoner whose head was to be forthwith cut off.

The anger of Pharaoh was quickly excited, and once aroused, became an

all-consuming fire; the Egyptians were wont to say, in describing its

intensity, “His Majesty became as furious as a panther.” The wild beast

often revealed itself in the half-civilized man.

The royal family was very numerous. The women were principally chosen

from the relatives of court officials of high rank, or from the

daughters of the great feudal lords; there were, however, many strangers

among them, daughters or sisters of petty Libyan, Nubian, or Asiatic

kings; they were brought into Pharaoh’s house as hostages for the

submission of their respective peoples. They did not all enjoy the same

treatment or consideration, and their original position decided their

status in the harem, unless the amorous caprice of their master should

otherwise decide. Most of them remained merely concubines for life,

others were raised to the rank of “royal spouses,” and at least one

received the title and privileges of “great spouse,” or queen. This was

rarely accorded to a stranger, but almost always to a princess born in

the purple, a daughter of Râ, if possible a sister of the Pharaoh, and

who, inheriting in the same degree and in equal proportion the flesh and

blood of the Sun-god, had, more than others, the right to share the bed

and throne of her brother.*

* It would seem that Queen Mirisônkhû, wife of Khephren, was

the daughter of Kheops, and consequently her husband’s

sister.

[Illustration: 039.jpg PHARAOH GIVES SOLEMN AUDIENCE TO ONE OF HIS

MINISTERS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after Lepsius. The king is Amenôthes

III. (XVIIIth. dynasty).

She had her own house, and a train of servants and followers as large

as those of the king; while the women of inferior rank were more or less

shut up in the parts of the palace assigned to them, she came and went

at pleasure, and appeared in public with or without her husband. The

preamble of official documents in which she is mentioned, solemnly

recognizes her as the living follower of Horus, the associate of

the Lord of the Vulture and the Uraeus, the very gentle, the very

praiseworthy, she who sees her Horus, or Horus and Sit, face to face.

Her union with the god-king rendered her a goddess, and entailed upon

her the fulfilment of all the duties which a goddess owed to a god. They

were varied and important. The woman, indeed, was supposed to combine

in herself more completely than a man the qualities necessary for the

exercise of magic, whether legitimate or otherwise: she saw and heard

that which the eyes and ears of man could not perceive; her voice, being

more flexible and piercing, was heard at greater distances; she was by

nature mistress of the art of summoning or banishing invisible

beings. While Pharaoh was engaged in sacrificing, the queen, by her

incantations, protected him from malignant deities, whose interest it

was to divert the attention of the celebrant from holy things: she put

them to flight by the sound of prayer and sistrum, she poured libations

and offered perfumes and flowers. In processions she walked behind her

husband, gave audience with him, governed for him while he was engaged

in foreign wars, or during his progresses through his kingdom: such

was the work of Isis while her brother Osiris was conquering the world.

Widowhood did not always entirely disqualify her. If she belonged to the

solar race, and the new sovereign was a minor, she acted as regent by

hereditary right, and retained the authority for some years longer.*

* The best-known of these queen regencies is that which

occurred during the minority of Thûtmosis III., about the

middle of the XVIIIth dynasty. Queen Tûaû also appears to

have acted as regent for her son Ramses II. during his first

Syrian campaigns.

It occasionally happened that she had no posterity, or that the child

of another woman inherited the crown. In that case there was no law or

custom to prevent a young and beautiful widow from wedding the son, and

thus regaining her rank as Queen by a marriage with the successor of her

deceased husband. It was in this manner that, during the earlier part

of the IVth dynasty, the Princess Mirtîttefsi ingratiated herself

successively in the favour of Snofrûi and Kheops.* Such a case did not

often arise, and a queen who had once quitted the throne had but little

chance of again ascending it. Her titles, her duties, her supremacy over

the rest of the family, passed to a younger rival: formerly she had been

the active companion of the king, she now became only the nominal spouse

of the god,** and her office came to an end when the god, of whom she

had been the goddess, quitting his body, departed heavenward to rejoin

his father the Sun on the far-distant horizon.

Children swarmed in the palace, as in the houses of private individuals:

in spite of the number who died in infancy, they were reckoned by tens,

sometimes by the hundred, and more than one Pharaoh must have been

puzzled to remember exactly the number and names of his offspring.***

* M. de Rougé was the first to bring this fact to light in

his _Becherches sur les monuments qu’on peut attribuer aux

six premières dynasties de Manéthon,_ pp. 36-38. Mirtîttefsi

also lived in the harem of Khephren, but the title which

connects her with this king--_Amahhit_, the vassal--proves

that she was then merely a nominal wife; she was probably by

that time, as M. de Rougé says, of too advanced an age to

remain the favourite of a third Pharaoh.

** The title of “divine spouse” is not, so far as we know at

present, met with prior to the XVIIIth dynasty. It was given

to the wife of a living monarch, and was retained by her

after his death; the divinity to whom it referred was no

other than the king himself.

*** This was probably so in the case of the Pharaoh Ramses

II., more than one hundred and fifty of whose children, boys

and girls, are known to us, and who certainly had others

besides of whom we know nothing.

[Illustration: THE QUEEN SHAKES THE SISTKUJU WHILE THE KING OFFERS THE

SACRIFICE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief in the temple of

Ibsambûl: Nofrîtari shakes behind Ramses II. two sistra, on

which are representations of the head of Hâthor.

The origin and rank of their mothers greatly influenced the condition

of the children. No doubt the divine blood which they took from a common

father raised them all above the vulgar herd but those connected with

the solar line on the maternal side occupied a decidedly much higher

position than the rest: as long as one of these was living, none of his

less nobly-born brothers might aspire to the crown.*

* Proof of this fact is furnished us, in so far as the

XVIIIth dynasty is concerned, by the history of the

immediate successors of Thûtmosis I., the Pharaohs Thûtmosis

IL, Thûtmosis III., Queen Hâtshopsîtû, Queen Mûtnofrît, and

Isis, concubine of Thûtmosis IL and mother of Thûtmosis III.

Those princesses who did not attain to the rank of queen by marriage,

were given in early youth to some well-to-do relative, or to some

courtier of high descent whom Pharaoh wished to honour; they filled the

office of priestesses to the goddesses Nît or Hâthor, and bore in their

households titles which they transmitted to their children, with such

rights to the crown as belonged to them. The most favoured of the

princes married an heiress rich in fiefs, settled on her domain, and

founded a race of feudal lords. Most of the royal sons remained at

court, at first in their father’s service and subsequently in that of

their brothers’ or nephews’: the most difficult and best remunerated

functions of the administration were assigned to them, the

superintendence of public works, the important offices of the

priesthood, the command of the army. It could have been no easy matter

to manage without friction this multitude of relations and connections,

past and present queens, sisters, concubines, uncles, brothers, cousins,

nephews, sons and grandsons of kings who crowded the harem and the

palace. The women contended among themselves for the affection of the

master, on behalf of themselves or their children. The children were

jealous of one another, and had often no bond of union except a common

hatred for the son whom the chances of birth had destined to be their

ruler. As long as he was full of vigour and energy, Pharaoh maintained

order in his family; but when his advancing years and failing strength

betokened an approaching change in the succession, competition showed

itself more openly, and intrigue thickened around him or around his

nearest heirs. Sometimes, indeed, he took precautions to prevent an

outbreak and its disastrous consequences, by solemnly associating with

himself in the royal power the son he had chosen to succeed him: Egypt

in this case had to obey two masters, the younger of whom attended

to the more active duties of royalty, such as progresses through the

country, the conducting of military expeditions, the hunting of wild

beasts, and the administration of justice; while the other preferred to

confine himself to the _rôle_ of adviser or benevolent counsellor. Even

this precaution, however, was insufficient to prevent disasters. The

women of the seraglio, encouraged from without by their relations or

friends, plotted secretly for the removal of the irksome sovereign.*

Those princes who had been deprived by their father’s decision of any

legitimate hope of reigning, concealed their discontent to no purpose;

they were arrested on the first suspicion of disloyalty, and were

massacred wholesale; their only chance of escaping summary execution was

either by rebellion** or by taking refuge with some independent tribe of

Libya or of the desert of Sinai.

* The passage of the Uni inscription, in which mention is

made of a lawsuit carried on against Queen Amîtsi, probably

refers to some harem conspiracy. The celebrated lawsuit,

some details of which are preserved for us in a papyrus of

Turin, gives us some information in regard to a conspiracy

which was hatched in the harem against Ramses II.

** A passage in the “Instructions of Amenemhâît” describes in

somewhat obscure terms an attack on the palace by

conspirators, and the wars which followed their undertaking.

[Illustration: 044.jpg The Island and Temple of Philæ]

Did we but know the details of the internal history of Egypt, it would

appear to us as stormy and as bloody as that of other Oriental

empires: intrigues of the harem, conspiracies in the palace, murders of

heirs-apparent, divisions and rebellions in the royal family, were

the almost inevitable accompaniment of every accession to the Egyptian

throne.

The earliest dynasties had their origin in the “White Wall,” but the

Pharaohs hardly ever made this town their residence, and it would be

incorrect to say that they considered it as their capital; each king

chose for himself in the Memphite or Letopolite nome, between the

entrance to the Fayûni and the apex of the Delta, a special residence,

where he dwelt with his court, and from whence he governed Egypt. Such

a multitude as formed his court needed not an ordinary palace, but an

entire city. A brick wall, surmounted by battlements, formed a square

or rectangular enclosure around it, and was of sufficient thickness

and height not only to defy a popular insurrection or the surprises of

marauding Bedouin, but to resist for a long time a regular siege. At the

extreme end of one of its façades, was a single tall and narrow opening,

closed by a wooden door supported on bronze hinges, and surmounted with

a row of pointed metal ornaments; this opened into a long narrow passage

between the external wall and a partition wall of equal strength; at

the end of the passage in the angle was a second door, sometimes leading

into a second passage, but more often opening into a large courtyard,

where the dwelling-houses were somewhat crowded together: assailants ran

the risk of being annihilated in the passage before reaching the centre

of the place.* The royal residence could be immediately distinguished by

the projecting balconies on its façade, from which, as from a tribune,

Pharaoh could watch the evolutions of his guard, the stately approach of

foreign envoys, Egyptian nobles seeking audience, or such officials as

he desired to reward for their services. They advanced from the far

end of the court, stopped before the balcony, and after prostrating

themselves stood up, bowed their heads, wrung and twisted their hands,

now quickly, now slowly, in a rhythmical manner, and rendered worship to

their master, chanting his praises, before receiving the necklaces and

jewels of gold which he presented to them by his chamberlains, or which

he himself deigned to fling to them.**

* No plan or exact drawing of any of the palaces of the

Ancient Empire has come down to us, but, as Erman has very

justly pointed out, the signs found in contemporary

inscriptions give us a good general idea of them. The doors

which lead from one of the hours of the night to another, in

the “Book of the Other World,” show us the double passage

leading to the courtyard. The hieroglyph [--] gives us the

name Ûôskhît (literally, _the broad_ [place]) of the

courtyard on to which the passage opened, at the end of

which the palace and royal judgment-seat (or, in the other

world, the tribunal of Osiris, the court of the double

truth) were situated.

** The ceremonial of these receptions is not represented on

any monuments with which we are at present acquainted, prior

to the XVIIIth dynasty.

It is difficult for us to catch a glimpse of the detail of the internal

arrangements: we find, however, mention made of large halls “resembling

the hall of Atûmû in the heavens,” whither the king repaired to deal

with state affairs in council, to dispense justice and sometimes also to

preside at state banquets. Long rows of tall columns, carved out of

rare woods and painted with bright colours, supported the roofs of these

chambers, which were entered by doors inlaid with gold and silver, and

incrusted with malachite or lapis-lazuli.*

* This is the description of the palace of Amon built by

Ramses III. Ramses II. was seated in one of these halls, on

a throne of gold, when he deliberated with his councillors

in regard to the construction of a cistern in the desert for

the miners who were going to the gold-mines of Akiti. The

room in which the king stopped, after leaving his

apartments, for the purpose of putting on his ceremonial

dress and receiving the homage of his ministers, appears to

me to have been called during the Ancient Empire “Pi-dait”

--“The House of Adoration,” the house in which the king was

worshipped, as in temples of the Ptolemaic epoch, was that

in which the statue of the god, on leaving the sanctuary,

was dressed and worshipped by the faithful. Sinûhît, under

the XIIth dynasty, was granted an audience in the “Hall of

Electrum.”

The private apartments, the “âkhonûiti,” were entirely separate, but

they communicated with the queen’s dwelling and with the harem of the

wives of inferior rank. The “royal children” occupied a quarter to

themselves, under the care of their tutors; they had their own houses

and a train of servants proportionate to their rank, age, and the

fortune of their mother’s family. The nobles who had appointments

at court and the royal domestics lived in the palace itself, but the

offices of the different functionaries, the storehouses for their

provisions, the dwellings of their _employés_, formed distinct quarters

outside the palace, grouped around narrow courts, and communicating

with each other by a labyrinth of lanes or covered passages. The entire

building was constructed of wood or bricks, less frequently of roughly

dressed stone, badly built, and wanting in solidity. The ancient

Pharaohs were no more inclined than the Sultans of later days to occupy

palaces in which their predecessors had lived and died. Each king

desired to possess a habitation after his own heart, one which would not

be haunted by the memory, or perchance the double, of another sovereign.

These royal mansions, hastily erected, hastily filled with occupants,

were vacated and fell into ruin with no less rapidity: they grew old

with their master, or even more rapidly than he, and his disappearance

almost always entailed their ruin. In the neighbourhood of Memphis many

of these palaces might be seen, which their short-lived masters had

built for eternity, an eternity which did not last longer than the lives

of their builders.*

Nothing could present a greater variety than the population of these

ephemeral cities in the climax of their splendour. We have first the

people who immediately surrounded the Pharaoh,** the retainers of

the palace and of the harem, whose highly complex degrees of rank are

revealed to us on the monuments.*** His person was, as it were, minutely

subdivided into departments, each requiring its attendants and their

appointed chiefs.

* The song of the harp-player on the tomb of King Antûf

contains an allusion to these ruined palaces: “The gods

[kings] who were of yore, and who repose in their tombs,

mummies and manes, all buried alike in their pyramids, when

castles are built they no longer have a place in them; see,

thus it is done with them! I have heard the poems in praise

of Imhotpû and of Hardidif which are sung in the songs, and

yet, see, where are their places to-day? their walls are

destroyed, their places no more, as though they have never

existed!”

** They are designated by the general terms of Shonîtiû, the

“people of the circle,” and Qonbîtiû, the “people of the

corner.” These words are found in religious inscriptions

referring to the staff of the temples, and denote the

attendants or court of each god; they are used to

distinguish the notables of a town or borough, the sheikhs,

who enjoyed the right to superintend local administration

and dispense justice.

*** The Egyptian scribes had endeavoured to draw up an

hierarchical list of these offices. At present we possess

the remains of two lists of this description. One of these,

preserved in the “Hood Papyrus” in the British Museum, has

been published and translated by Maspero, in _Études

Égyptiennes,_ vol. ii. pp. 1-66; another and more complete

copy, discovered in 1890, is in the possession of M.

Golénischeff. The other list, also in the British Museum,

was published by Prof. Petrie in a memoir of _The Egypt

Exploration Fund _; in this latter the names and titles are

intermingled with various other matter. To these two works

may be added the lists of professions and trades to be found

_passim_ on the monuments, and which have been commented on

by Brugsch.

His toilet alone gave employment to a score of different trades. There

were royal barbers, who had the privilege of shaving his head and chin;

hairdressers who made, curled, and put on his black or blue wigs and

adjusted the diadems to them; there were manicurists who pared and

polished his nails, perfumers who prepared the scented oils and pomades

for the anointing of his body, the kohl for blackening his eyelids, the

_rouge_ for spreading on his lips and cheeks. His wardrobe required a

whole troop of shoemakers, belt-makers, and tailors, some of whom had

the care of stuffs in the piece, others presided over the body-linen,

while others took charge of his garments, comprising long or short,

transparent or thick petticoats, fitting tightly to the hips or cut with

ample fulness, draped mantles and flowing pelisses. Side by side

with these officials, the laundresses plied their trade, which was an

important one among a people devoted to white, and in whose estimation

want of cleanliness in dress entailed religious impurity. Like the

fellahîn of the present time, they took their linen daily to wash in

the river; they rinsed, starched, smoothed, and pleated it without

intermission to supply the incessant demands of Pharaoh and his family.*

* The “royal laundrymen” and their chiefs are mentioned in

the Conte des deux frères under the XIXth dynasty, as well

as their laundries on the banks of the Nile.

[Illustration: 051.jpg MEN AND WOMEN SINGERS, FLUTE-PLAYERS, HARPISTS,

AND DANCERS, FROM THE TOMB OF TI]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin from a squeeze taken at Saqqâra in

1878 by Mariette

The task of those set over the jewels was no easy one, when we consider

the enormous variety of necklaces, bracelets, rings, earrings, and

sceptres of rich workmanship which ceremonial costume required for

particular times and occasions. The guardianship of the crowns almost

approached to the dignity of the priesthood; for was not the uraeus,

which ornamented each one, a living goddess? The queen required numerous

waiting-women, and the same ample number of attendants were to be

encountered in the establishments of the other ladies of the harem.

Troops of musicians, singers, dancers, and almehs whiled away the

tedious hours, supplemented by buffoons and dwarfs. The great Egyptian

lords evinced a curious liking for these unfortunate beings, and amused

themselves by getting together the ugliest and most deformed creatures.

They are often represented on the tombs beside their masters in company

with his pet dog, or a gazelle, or with a monkey which they sometimes

hold in leash, or sometimes are engaged in teasing. Sometimes the

Pharaoh bestowed his friendship on his dwarfs, and confided to

them occupations in his household. One of them, Khnûmhotpû, died

superintendent of the royal linen. The staff of servants required for

supplying the table exceeded all the others in number. It could scarcely

be otherwise if we consider that the master had to provide food, not

only for his regular servants,* but for all those of his _employés_ and

subjects whose business brought them to the royal residence: even those

poor wretches who came to complain to him of some more or less imaginary

grievance were fed at his expense while awaiting his judicial verdict.

Head-cooks, butlers, pantlers, pastrycooks, fishmongers, game or fruit

dealers--if all enumerated, would be endless. The bakers who baked the

ordinary bread were not to be confounded with those who manufactured

biscuits. The makers of pancakes and dough-nuts took precedence of the

cake-bakers, and those who concocted delicate fruit preserves ranked

higher than the common dryer of dates.

* Even after death they remained inscribed on the registers

of the palace, and had rations served out to them every day

as funeral offerings.

[Illustration: 052.jpg THE DWARF KHNUMHOTPU, SUPERINTENDENT OF THE ROYAL

LINEN]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-

Bey; the original is at Gizeh

If one had held a post in the royal household, however low the

occupation, it was something to be proud of all one’s life, and after

death to boast of in one’s epitaph. The chiefs to whom this army of

servants rendered obedience at times rose from the ranks; on some

occasion their master had noticed them in the crowd, and had transferred

them, some by a single promotion, others by slow degrees, to the

highest offices of the state. Many among them, however, belonged to

old families, and held positions in the palace which their fathers

and grandfathers had occupied before them, some were members of the

provincial nobility, distant descendants of former royal princes and

princesses, more or less nearly related to the reigning sovereign.*

* It was the former who, I believe, formed the class of

_rokhu sûton_ so often mentioned on the monuments. This

title is generally supposed to have been a mark of

relationship with the royal family. M. de Rougé proved long

ago that this was not so, and that functionaries might bear

this title even though they were not blood relations of the

Pharaohs. It seems to me to have been used to indicate a

class of courtiers whom the king condescended to “know”

(_rokhu_) directly, without the intermediary of a

chamberlain, the “persons known by the king;” the others

were only his “friends” (samirû).

They had been sought out to be the companions of his education and of

his pastimes, while he was still living an obscure life in the “House

of the Children;” he had grown up with them and had kept them about his

person as his “sole friends” and counsellors. He lavished titles and

offices upon them by the dozen, according to the confidence he felt in

their capacity or to the amount of faithfulness with which he credited

them. A few of the most favoured were called “Masters of the Secret of

the Royal House;” they knew all the innermost recesses of the palace,

all the passwords needed in going from one part of it to another, the

place where the royal treasures were kept, and the modes of access to

it. Several of them were “Masters of the Secret of all the Royal Words,”

and had authority over the high courtiers of the palace, which gave

them the power of banishing whom they pleased from the person of the

sovereign. Upon others devolved the task of arranging his amusements;

they rejoiced the heart of his Majesty by pleasant songs, while the

chiefs of the sailors and soldiers kept watch over his safety. To these

active services were attached honorary privileges which were highly

esteemed, such as the right to retain their sandals in the palace, while

the general crowd of courtiers could only enter unshod; that of kissing

the knees and not the feet of the “good god,” and that of wearing the

panther’s skin. Among those who enjoyed these distinctions were the

physicians of the king, chaplains, and men of the roll--“khri-habi.”

The latter did not confine themselves to the task of guiding Pharaoh

through the intricacies of ritual, nor to that of prompting him with the

necessary formulas needed to make the sacrifice efficacious; they were

styled “Masters of the Secrets of Heaven,” those who see what is in the

firmament, on the earth and in Hades, those who know all the charms

of the soothsayers, prophets, or magicians. The laws relating to the

government of the seasons and the stars presented no mysteries to them,

neither were they ignorant of the months, days, or hours propitious to

the undertakings of everyday life or the starting out on an expedition,

nor of those times during which any action was dangerous. They drew

their inspirations from the books of magic written by Thot, which

taught them the art of interpreting dreams or of curing the sick, or

of invoking and obliging the gods to assist them, and of arresting

or hastening the progress of the sun on the celestial ocean. Some are

mentioned as being able to divide the waters at their will, and to

cause them to return to their natural place, merely by means of a short

formula. An image of a man or animal made by them out of enchanted

wax, was imbued with life at their command, and became an irresistible

instrument of their wrath. Popular stories reveal them to us at work.

“Is it true,” said Kheops to one of them, “that thou canst replace a

head which has been cut off?” On his admitting that he could do so,

Pharaoh immediately desired to test his power. “Bring me a prisoner from

prison and let him be slain.” The magician, at this proposal, exclaimed:

“Nay, nay, not a man, sire my master; do not command that this sin

should be committed; a fine animal will suffice!” A goose was brought,

“its head was cut off and the body was placed on the right side, and

the head of the goose on the left side of the hall: he recited what he

recited from his book of magic, the goose began to hop forward, the head

moved on to it, and, when both were united, the goose began to cackle.

A pelican was produced, and underwent the same process. His Majesty then

caused a bull to be brought forward, and its head was smitten to the

ground: the magician recited what he recited from his book of magic,

the bull at once arose, and he replaced on it what had fallen to the

earth.” The great lords themselves deigned to become initiated into

the occult sciences, and were invested with these formidable powers.

A prince who practised magic would enjoy amongst us nowadays but small

esteem: in Egypt sorcery was not considered incompatible with royalty,

and the magicians of Pharaoh often took Pharaoh himself as their pupil.*

Such were the king’s household, the people about his person, and those

attached to the service of his family. His capital sheltered a still

greater number of officials and functionaries who were charged with

the administration of his fortune--that is to say, what he possessed

in Egypt.** In theory it was always supposed that the whole of the

soil belonged to him, but that he and his predecessors had diverted and

parcelled off such an amount of it for the benefit of their favourites,

or for the hereditary lords, that only half of the actual territory

remained under his immediate control. He governed most of the nomes of

the Delta in person:*** beyond the Fayum, he merely retained isolated

lands, enclosed in the middle of feudal principalities and often at

considerable distance from each other.

* We know the reputation, extending even to the classical

writers of antiquity, of the Pharaohs Nechepso and Nectanebo

for their skill in magic. Arab writers have, moreover,

collected a number of traditions concerning the marvels

which the sorcerers of Egypt were in the habit of

performing; as an instance, I may quote the description

given by Makrîzî of one of their meetings, which is probably

taken from some earlier writer.

** They were frequently distinguished from their provincial

or manorial colleagues by the addition of the word _khonû_

to their titles, a term which indicates, in a general

manner, the royal residence. They formed what we should

nowadays call the departmental staff of the public officers,

and might be deputed to act, at least temporarily, in the

provinces, or in the service of one of the feudal princes,

without thereby losing their status as functionaries of the

_khonû_ or central administration.

*** This seems, at any rate, an obvious inference from the

almost total absence of feudal titles on the most ancient

monuments of the Delta. Erman, who was struck by this fact,

attributed it to a different degree of civilization in the

two halves of Egypt; I attribute it to a difference in

government. Feudal titles naturally predominate in the

South, royal administrative titles in the North.

The extent of the royal domain varied with different dynasties, and even

from reign to reign: if it sometimes decreased, owing to too frequently

repeated concessions,* its losses were generally amply compensated by

the confiscation of certain fiefs, or by their lapsing to the crown. The

domain was always of sufficient extent to oblige the Pharaoh to confide

the larger portion of it to officials of various kinds, and to farm

merely a small remainder of the “royal slaves:” in the latter case,

he reserved for himself all the profits, but at the expense of all the

annoyance and all the outlay; in the former case, he obtained without

any risk the annual dues, the amount of which was fixed on the spot,

according to the resources of the nome.

* We find, at different periods, persons who call themselves

masters of new domains or strongholds--Pahûrnofir, under the

IIIrd dynasty; several princes of Hermopolis, under the VIth

and VIIth; Khnûmhotpû at the begining of the XIIth. In

connection with the last named, we shall have occasion,

later on, to show in what manner and with what rapidity one

of these great _new_ fiefs was formed.

In order to understand the manner in which the government of Egypt was

conducted, we should never forget that the world was still ignorant of

the use of money, and that gold, silver, and copper, however abundant we

may suppose them to have been, were mere articles of exchange, like

the most common products of Egyptian soil. Pharaoh was not then, as the

State is with us, a treasurer who calculates the total of his receipts

and expenses in ready money, banks his revenue in specie occupying but

little space, and settles his accounts from the same source. His fiscal

receipts were in kind, and it was in kind that he remunerated his

servants for their labour: cattle, cereals, fermented drinks, oils,

stuffs, common or precious metals,--“all that the heavens give, all

that the earth produces, all that the Nile brings from its mysterious

sources,” * --constituted the coinage in which his subjects paid him their

contributions, and which he passed on to his vassals by way of salary.

* This was the most usual formula for the offering on the

funerary stelo, and sums up more completely than any other

the nature of the tax paid to the gods by the living, and

consequently the nature of that paid to the king; here, as

elsewhere, the domain of the gods is modelled on that of the

Pharaohs.

One room, a few feet square, and, if need be, one safe, would easily

contain the entire revenue of one of our modern empires: the largest

of our emporiums would not always have sufficed to hold the mass of

incongruous objects which represented the returns of a single Egyptian

province. As the products in which the tax was paid took various forms,

it was necessary to have an infinite variety of special agents and

suitable places to receive it; herdsmen and sheds for the oxen,

measurers and granaries for the grain, butlers and cellarers for

the wine, beer, and oils. The product of the tax, while awaiting

redistribution, could only be kept from deteriorating in value by

incessant labour, in which a score of different classes of clerks and

workmen in the service of the treasury all took part, according to their

trades. If the tax were received in oxen, it was led to pasturage, or at

times, when a murrain threatened to destroy it, to the slaughter-house

and the currier; if it were in corn, it was bolted, ground to flour, and

made into bread and pastry; if it were in stuffs, it was washed, ironed,

and folded, to be retailed as garments or in the piece. The royal

treasury partook of the character of the farm, the warehouse, and the

manufactory.

Each of the departments which helped to swell its contents, occupied

within the palace enclosure a building, or group of buildings, which was

called its “house,” or, as we should say, its storehouse.

[Illustration: 059.jpg THE PACKING OF THE LINEN AND ITS REMOVAL TO THE

WHITE STOREHOUSE.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a chromolithograph in Lepsius,

_Denhm._, ii. 96.

There was the “White Storehouse,” where the stuffs and jewels were

kept, and at times the wine; the “Storehouse of the Oxen,” the “Gold

Storehouse,” the “Storehouse for Preserved Fruits,” the “Storehouse for

Grain,” the “Storehouse for Liquors,” and ten other storehouses of the

application of which we are not always sure. In the “Storehouse of

Weapons” (or Armoury) were ranged thousands of clubs, maces, pikes,

daggers, bows, and bundles of arrows, which Pharaoh distributed to his

recruits whenever a war forced him to call out his army, and which were

again warehoused after the campaign. The “storehouses” were further

subdivided into rooms or store-chambers,* each reserved for its own

category of objects.

* Aît, Âî. Lefébure has collected a number of passages in

which these storehouses are mentioned, in his notes _Sur

différents mots et noms Égyptiens._ In many of the cases

which he quotes, and in which he recognizes an office of the

State, I believe reference to be made to a trade: many of

the ari âît-afû, “people of the store-chambers for meat,”

were probably butchers; many of the ari âît-hiqÎtû, “people

of the store-chamber for beer,” were probably keepers of

drink-shops, trading on their own account in the town of

Abydos, and not _employés_ attached to the exchequer of

Pharaoh or of the ruler of Thinis.

It would be difficult to enumerate the number of store-chambers in

the outbuildings of the “Storehouse of Provisions”--store-chambers for

butcher’s meat, for fruits, for beer, bread, and wine, in which were

deposited as much of each article of food as would be required by the

court for some days, or at most for a few weeks. They were brought there

from the larger storehouses, the wines from vaults, the oxen from their

stalls, the corn from the granaries. The latter were vast brick-built

receptacles, ten or more in a row, circular in shape and surmounted by

cupolas, but having no communication with each other. They had only two

openings, one at the top for pouring in the grain, another on the ground

level for drawing it out; a notice posted up outside, often on the

shutter which closed the chamber, indicated the character and quantity

of the cereals within. For the security and management of these, there

were employed troops of porters, store-keepers, accountants, “primates”

who superintended the works, record-keepers, and directors. Great nobles

coveted the administration of the “storehouses,” and even the sons

of kings did not think it derogatory to their dignity to be entitled

“Directors of the Granaries,” or “Directors of the Armoury.” There was

no law against pluralists, and more than one of them boasts on his tomb

of having held simultaneously five or six offices. These storehouses

participated like all the other dependencies of the crown, in that

duality which characterized the person of the Pharaoh. They would

be called in common parlance, the Storehouse or the Double White

Storehouse, the Storehouse or the Double Gold Storehouse, the Double

Warehouse, the Double Granary.

[Illustration: 061.jpg MEASURING THE WHEAT AND DEPOSITING IT IN THE

GRANARIES]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a scene on the tomb of Amoni at

Beni-Hasan. On the right, near the door, is a heap of grain,

from which the measurer fills his measure in order to empty

it into the sack which one of the porters holds open. In the

centre is a train of slaves ascending the stairs which lead

to the loft above the granaries; one of them empties his

sack into a hole above the granary in the presence of the

overseer. The inscriptions in ink on the outer wall of the

receptacles, which have already been filled, indicate the

number of measures which each one of them contains.

The large towns, as well as the capital, possessed their double

storehouses and their store-chambers, into which were gathered the

products of the neighbourhood, but where a complete staff of employés

was not always required: in such towns we meet with “localities”

in which the commodities were housed merely temporarily. The least

perishable part of the provincial dues was forwarded by boat to the

royal residence,* and swelled the central treasury.

* The boats employed for this purpose formed a flotilla, and

their commanders constituted a regularly organized transport

corps, who are frequently to be found represented on the

monuments of the New Empire, carrying tribute to the

residence of the king or of the prince, whose retainers they

were.

The remainder was used on the spot for paying workman’s wages, and for

the needs of the Administration. We see from the inscriptions, that

the staffs of officials who administered affairs in the provinces was

similar to that in the royal city. Starting from the top, and going down

to the bottom of the scale, each functionary supervised those beneath

him, while, as a body, they were all responsible for their depot. Any

irregularity in the entries entailed the bastinado; peculators were

punished by imprisonment, mutilation, or death, according to the gravity

of the offence. Those whom illness or old age rendered unfit for work,

were pensioned for the remainder of their life.

[Illustration: 063.jpg PLAN OF A PRINCELY STOREHOUSE FOR PROVISIONS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Lepsius, _Denkm_., iii. 95. The

illustration is taken from one of the tombs at Tel el-

Amarna. The storehouse consists of four blocks, isolated by

two avenues planted with trees, which intersect each other

in the form of a cross. Behind the entrance gate, in a small

courtyard, is a kiosque, in which the master sat for the

purpose of receiving the stores or of superintending their

distribution; two arms of the cross are lined by porticoes,

under which are the entrances to the “chambers” (dît) for

the stores, which are filled with jars of wine, linen-

chests, dried fish, and other articles.

The writer, or, as we call him, the scribe, was the mainspring of

all this machinery. We come across him in all grades of the staff: an

insignificant registrar of oxen, a clerk of the Double White Storehouse,

ragged, humble, and badly paid, was a scribe just as much as the noble,

the priest, or the king’s son. Thus the title of scribe was of no value

in itself, and did not designate, as one might naturally think, a savant

educated in a school of high culture, or a man of the world, versed in

the sciences and the literature of his time; El-kab was a scribe who

knew how to read, write, and cipher, was fairly proficient in wording

the administrative formulas, and could easily apply the elementary rules

of book-keeping. There was no public school in which the scribe could be

prepared for his future career; but as soon as a child had acquired the

first rudiments of letters with some old pedagogue, his father took him

with him to his office, or entrusted him to some friend who agreed to

undertake his education. The apprentice observed what went on around

him, imitated the mode of procedure of the _employés_, copied in his

spare time old papers, letters, bills, flowerily-worded petitions,

reports, complimentary addresses to his superiors or to the Pharaoh, all

of which his patron examined and corrected, noting on the margin letters

or words imperfectly written, improving the style, and recasting or

completing the incorrect expressions.* As soon as he could put together

a certain number of sentences or figures without a mistake, he was

allowed to draw up bills, or to have the sole superintendence of some

department of the treasury, his work being gradually increased in amount

and difficulty; when he was considered to be sufficiently _au courant_

with the ordinary business, his education was declared to be finished,

and a situation was found for him either in the place where he had begun

his probation, or in some neighbouring office.**

* We still possess school exercises of the XIXth and XXth

dynasties, e.g. the _Papyrus Anastasi n IV_., and the

_Anastasi Papyrus n V._, in which we find a whole string of

pieces of every possible style and description--business

letters, requests for leave of absence, complimentary verses

addressed to a superior, all probably a collection of

exercises compiled by some professor, and copied by his

pupils in order to complete their education as scribes; the

master’s corrections are made at the top and bottom of the

pages in a bold and skilful hand, very different from that

of the pupil, though the writing of the latter is generally

more legible to our modern eyes (_Select Papyri,_ vol. i.

pls. lxxxiii.-cxxi.).

** Evidence of this state of things seems to be furnished by

all the biographies of scribes with which we are acquainted,

e.g. that of Amten; it is, moreover, what took place

regularly throughout the whole of Egypt, down to the latest

times, and what probably still occurs in those parts of the

country where European ideas have not yet made any deep

impression.

[Illustration: 065.jpg THE STAFF OF A GOVERNMENT OFFICER IN THE TIME OF

THE MEMPHITE DYNASTIES]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a wall-painting on the tomb of

Khûnas. Two scribes are writing on tablets. Before the

scribe in the upper part of the picture we see a palette,

with two saucers, on a vessel which serves as an ink-bottle,

and a packet of tablets tied together, the whole supported

by a bundle of archives. The scribe in the lower part rests

his tablet against an ink-bottle, a box for archives being

placed before him. Behind them a _nakht-khrôû_ announces the

delivery of a tablet covered with figures which the third

scribe is presenting to the master.

[Illustration: THE CRIER ANNOUNCES THE ARRIVAL OF FIVE REGISTRARS OF THE

TEMPLE OF KING ÛSIRNIRÎ, OF THE Vth DYNASTY]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a picture in the tomb of

Shopsisûri. Four registrars of the funerary temple of

Ûsirnirî advance in a crawling posture towards the master,

the fifth has just risen and holds himself in a stooping

attitude, while an usher introduces him and transmits to him

an order to send in his accounts.

Thus equipped, the young man ended usually by succeeding his father or

his patron: in most of the government administrations, we find whole

dynasties of scribes on a small scale, whose members inherited the same

post for several centuries. The position was an insignificant one, and

the salary poor, but the means of existence were assured, the occupant

was exempted from forced labour and from military service, and he

exercised a certain authority in the narrow world in which he lived; it

sufficed to make him think himself happy, and in fact to be so. “One has

only to be a scribe,” said the wise man, “for the scribe takes the lead

of all.” Sometimes, however, one of these contented officials, more

intelligent or ambitious than his fellows, succeeded in rising above

the common mediocrity: his fine handwriting, the happy choice of his

sentences, his activity, his obliging manner, his honesty--perhaps also

his discreet dishonesty--attracted the attention of his superiors and

were the cause of his promotion. The son of a peasant or of some poor

wretch, who had begun life by keeping a register of the bread and

vegetables in some provincial government office, had been often known

to crown his long and successful career by exercising a kind of

vice-regency over the half of Egypt. His granaries overflowed with corn,

his storehouses were always full of gold, fine stuffs, and precious

vases, his stalls “multiplied the backs” of his oxen; the sons of his

early patrons, having now become in turn his _protégés_, did not venture

to approach him except with bowed head and bended knee.

No doubt the Amten whose tomb was removed to Berlin by Lepsius, and put

together piece by piece in the museum, was a _parvenu_ of this kind. He

was born rather more than four thousand years before our era under one

of the last kings of the IIIrd dynasty, and he lived until the reign of

the first king of the IVth dynasty, Snofrûi. He probably came from the

Nome of the Bull, if not from Xoïs itself, in the heart of the Delta.

His father, the scribe Anûpûmonkhû, held, in addition to his office,

several landed estates, producing large returns; but his mother,

Nibsonît, who appears to have been merely a concubine, had no personal

fortune, and would have been unable even to give her child an education.

Anûpûmonkhû made himself entirely responsible for the necessary

expenses, “giving him all the necessities of life, at a time when he had

not as yet either corn, barley, income, house, men or women servants,

or troops of asses, pigs, or oxen.” As soon as he was in a condition to

provide for himself, his father obtained for him, in his native Nome,

the post of chief scribe attached to one of the “localities” which

belonged to the Administration of Provisions. On behalf of the Pharaoh,

the young man received, registered, and distributed the meat, cakes,

fruits, and fresh vegetables which constituted the taxes, all on his

own responsibility, except that he had to give an account of them to the

“Director of the Storehouse” who was nearest to him. We are not told how

long he remained in this occupation; we see merely that he was

raised successively to posts of an analogous kind, but of increasing

importance. The provincial offices comprised a small staff of _employés,

_ consisting always of the same officials:--a chief, whose ordinary

function was “Director of the Storehouse;” a few scribes to keep the

accounts, one or two of whom added to his ordinary calling that of

keeper of the archives; paid ushers to introduce clients, and, if need

be, to bastinado them summarily at the order of the “director;” lastly,

the “strong of voice,” the criers, who superintended the incomings and

outgoings, and proclaimed the account of them to the scribes to be noted

down forthwith. A vigilant and honest crier was a man of great value.

[Illustration: 068.jpg THE FUNERAL STELE OF THE TOMB OF AMTEN, THE

“GRAND HUNTSMAN.”]

He obliged the taxpayer not only to deliver the exact number of measures

prescribed as his quota, but also compelled him to deliver good measure

in each case; a dishonest crier, on the contrary, could easily favour

cheating, provided that he shared in the spoil. Amten was at once

“crier” and “taxer of the colonists” to the civil administrator of the

Xoïte nome: he announced the names of the peasants and the payments they

made, then estimated the amount of the local tax which each, according

to his income, had to pay. He distinguished himself so pre-eminently in

these delicate duties, that the civil administrator of Xoïs made him one

of his subordinates. He became “Chief of the Ushers,” afterwards “Master

Crier,” then “Director of all the King’s flax” in the Xoïfce nome--an

office which entailed on him the supervision of the culture, cutting,

and general preparation of flax for the manufacture which was carried

on in Pharaoh’s own domain. It was one of the highest offices in the

Provincial Administration, and Amten must have congratulated himself on

his appointment.

From that moment his career became a great one, and he advanced quickly.

Up to that time he had been confined in offices; he now left them to

perform more active service. The Pharaohs, extremely jealous of their

own authority, usually avoided placing at the head of the nomes in their

domain, a single ruler, who would have appeared too much like a prince;

they preferred having in each centre of civil administration, governors

of the town or province, as well as military commanders who were jealous

of one another, supervised one another, counterbalanced one another, and

did not remain long enough in office to become dangerous. Amten held all

these posts successively in most of the nomes situated in the centre or

to the west of the Delta. His first appointment was to the government

of the village of Pidosû, an unimportant post in itself, but one which

entitled him to a staff of office, and in consequence procured for him

one of the greatest indulgences of vanity that an Egyptian could enjoy.

The staff was, in fact, a symbol of command which only the nobles,

and the officials associated with the nobility, could carry without

transgressing custom; the assumption of it, as that of the sword with

us, showed every one that the bearer was a member of a privileged class.

[Illustration: 072.jpg STATUE OF AMTEN, FOUND IN HIS TOMB]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Lepsius, Denkm., ii. 120 a;

the original is in the Berlin Museum.

Amten was no sooner ennobled, than his functions began to expand;

villages were rapidly added to villages, then towns to towns, including

such an important one as Bûto, and finally the nomes of the Harpoon, of

the Bull, of the Silurus, the western half of the Saïte nome, the nome

of the Haunch, and a part of the Fayûm came within his jurisdiction. The

western half of the Saïte nome, where he long resided, corresponded with

what was called later the Libyan nome. It reached nearly from the apex

of the Delta to the sea, and was bounded on one side by the Canopic

branch of the Nile, on the other by the Libyan range; a part of the

desert as well as the Oases fell under its rule. It included among

its population, as did many of the provinces of Upper Egypt, regiments

composed of nomad hunters, who were compelled to pay their tribute

in living or dead game. Amten was metamorphosed into Chief Huntsman,

scoured the mountains with his men, and thereupon became one of the most

important personages in the defence of the country. The Pharaohs had

built fortified stations, and had from time to time constructed walls at

certain points where the roads entered the valley--at Syene, at Coptos,

and at the entrance to the Wady Tûmilât. Amten having been proclaimed

“Primate of the Western Gate,” that is, governor of the Libyan marches,

undertook to protect the frontier against the wandering Bedouin from the

other side of Lake Mareotis. His duties as Chief Huntsman had been

the best preparation he could have had for this arduous task. They had

forced him to make incessant expeditions among the mountains, to explore

the gorges and ravines, to be acquainted with the routes marked out by

wells which the marauders were obliged to follow in their incursions,

and the pathways and passes by which they could descend into the plain

of the Delta; in running the game to earth, he had gained all the

knowledge needful for repulsing the enemy. Such a combination of

capabilities made Amten the most important noble in this part of Egypt.

When old age at last prevented him from leading an active life, he

accepted, by way of a pension, the governorship of the nome of

the Haunch: with civil authority, military command, local priestly

functions, and honorary distinctions, he lacked only one thing to make

him the equal of the nobles of ancient family, and that was permission

to bequeath without restriction his towns and offices to his children.

His private fortune was not as great as we might be led to think. He

inherited from his father only one estate, but had acquired twelve

others in the nomes of the Delta whither his successive appointments had

led him--namely, in the Saïte, Xoïte, and Letopolite nomes. He received

subsequently, as a reward for his services, two hundred portions of

cultivated land, with numerous peasants, both male and female, and an

income of one hundred loaves daily, a first charge upon the funeral

provision of Queen Hâpûnimâit. He took advantage of this windfall to

endow his family suitably. His only son was already provided for, thanks

to the munificence of Pharaoh; he had begun his administrative career by

holding the same post of scribe, in addition to the office of provision

registrar, which his father had held, and over and above these he

received by royal grant, four portions of cornland with their population

and stock. Amten gave twelve portions to his other children and fifty to

his mother Nibsonît, by means of which she lived comfortably in her old

age, and left an annuity for maintaining worship at her tomb. He built

upon the remainder of the land a magnificent villa, of which he has

considerately left us the description. The boundary wall formed a square

of 350 feet on each face, and consequently contained a superficies of

122,500 square feet. The well-built dwelling-house, completely furnished

with all the necessities of life, was surrounded by ornamental and

fruit-bearing trees,--the common palm, the nebbek, fig trees, and

acacias; several ponds, neatly bordered with greenery, afforded a

habitat for aquatic birds; trellised vines, according to custom, ran in

front of the house, and two plots of ground, planted with vines in full

bearing, amply supplied the owner with wine every year.

[Illustration: 075.jpg PLAN OF THE VILLA OF A GREAT EGYPTIAN NOBLE]

This plan is taken from a Theban tomb of the XVIIIth

dynasty; but it corresponds exactly with the description

which Amten has left us of his villa.

It was there, doubtless, that Amten ended his days in peace and quietude

of mind. The tableland whereon the Sphinx has watched for so many

centuries was then crowned by no pyramids, but mastabas of fine white

stone rose here and there from out of the sand: that in which the mummy

of Amten was to be enclosed was situated not far from the modern village

of Abûsîr, on the confines of the nome of the Haunch, and almost in

sight of the mansion in which his declining years were spent.*

* The site of Amten’s manorial mansion is nowhere mentioned

in the inscriptions; but the custom of the Egyptians to

construct their tombs as near as possible to the places

where they resided, leads me to consider it as almost

certain that we ought to look for its site in the Memphite

plain, in the vicinity of the town of Abûsîr, but in a

northern direction, so as to keep within the territory of

the Letopolite nome, where Amten governed in the name of the

king.