The number of persons of obscure origin, who in this manner had risen in

a few years to the highest honours, and died governors of provinces or

ministers of Pharaoh, must have been considerable. Their descendants

followed in their fathers’ footsteps, until the day came when royal

favour or an advantageous marriage secured them the possession of an

hereditary fief, and transformed the son or grandson of a prosperous

scribe into a feudal lord. It was from people of this class, and from

the children of the Pharaoh, that the nobility was mostly recruited.

In the Delta, where the authority of the Pharaoh was almost everywhere

directly felt, the power of the nobility was weakened and much

curtailed; in Middle Egypt it gained ground, and became stronger and

stronger in proportion as one advanced southward. The nobles held the

principalities of the Gazelle, of the Hare, of the Serpent Mountain, of

Akhmîm, of Thinis, of Qasr-es-Sayad, of El-Kab, of Aswan, and doubtless

others of which we shall some day discover the monuments.

[Illustration: 077.jpg HUNTING WITH THE BOOMERANG AND FISHING WITH THE

DOUBLE HARPOON IN A MARSH OR POOL]

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

They accepted without difficulty the fiction according to which Pharaoh

claimed to be absolute master of the soil, and ceded to his subjects

only the usufruct of their fiefs; but apart from the admission of the

principle, each lord proclaimed himself sovereign in his own domain, and

exercised in it, on a small scale, complete royal authority.

[Illustration: 078.jpg PRINCE API, BORNE IN A PALANQUIN, INSPECTS HIS

FUNERARY DOMAIN]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-

Bey. The tomb of Api was discovered at Saqqâra in 1884. It

had been pulled down in ancient times, and a new tomb built

on its ruins, about the time of the XIIth dynasty; all that

remains of it is now in the museum at Gîzeh.

Everything within the limits of this petty state belonged to him--woods,

canals, fields, even the desert-sand: after the example of the Pharaoh,

he farmed a part himself, and let out the remainder, either in farms or

as fiefs, to those of his followers who had gained his confidence or

his friendship. After the example of Pharaoh, also, he was a priest, and

exercised priestly functions in relation to all the gods--that is,

not of all Egypt, but of all the deities of the nome. He was an

administrator of civil and criminal law, received the complaints of his

vassals and serfs at the gate of his palace, and against his decisions

there was no appeal. He kept up a flotilla, and raised on his estate a

small army, of which he was commander-in-chief by hereditary right. He

inhabited a fortified mansion, situated sometimes within the capital of

the principality itself, sometimes in its neighbourhood, and in which

the arrangements of the royal city were reproduced on a smaller scale.

[Illustration: 079.jpg A DWARF PLAYING WITH CYNOCEPHALI AND A TAME IBIS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a chromolithograph in Flinders

Petrie’s _Medûm,_ pl. xxiv.

Side by side with the reception halls was the harem, where the

legitimate wife, often a princess of solar rank, played the rôle of

queen, surrounded by concubines, dancers, and slaves. The offices of

the various departments were crowded into the enclosure, with their

directors, governors, scribes of all ranks, custodians, and workmen, who

bore the same titles as the corresponding employés in the departments of

the State: their White Storehouse, their Gold Storehouse, their Granary,

were at times called the Double White Storehouse, the Double Gold

Storehouse, the Double Granary, as were those of the Pharaoh. Amusements

at the court of the vassal did not differ from those at that of the

sovereign: hunting in the desert and the marshes, fishing, inspection of

agricultural works, military exercises, games, songs, dancing, doubtless

the recital of long stories, and exhibitions of magic, even down to the

contortions of the court buffoon and the grimaces of the dwarfs.

[Illustration: 080.jpg IN A NILE BOAT]

It amused the prince to see one of these wretched favourites leading to

him by the paw a cynocephalus larger than himself, while a mischievous

monkey slyly pulled a tame and stately ibis by the tail. From time to

time the great lord proceeded to inspect his domain: on these occasions

he travelled in a kind of sedan chair, supported by two mules yoked

together; or he was borne in a palanquin by some thirty men, while

fanned by large flabella; or possibly he went up the Nile and the canals

in his beautiful painted barge. The life of the Egyptian lords may be

aptly described as in every respect an exact reproduction of the life of

the Pharaoh on a smaller scale.

Inheritance in a direct or indirect line was the rule, but in every

case of transmission the new lord had to receive the investiture of

the sovereign either by letter or in person. The duties enforced by the

feudal state do not appear to have been onerous. In the first place,

there was the regular payment of a tribute, proportionate to the

extent and resources of the fief. In the next place, there was military

service: the vassal agreed to supply, when called upon, a fixed number

of armed men, whom he himself commanded, unless he could offer a

reasonable excuse such as illness or senile incapacity.*

* Prince Amoni, of the Gazelle nome, led a body of four

hundred men and another body of six hundred, levied in his

principality, into Ethiopia under these conditions; the

first that he served in the royal army, was as a substitute

for his father, who had grown too old. Similarly, under the

XVIIIth dynasty, Âhmosis of El-Kab commanded the war-ship,

the Calf, in place of his father. The Uni inscription

furnishes us with an instance of a general levy of the

feudal contingents in the time of the VIth dynasty (1. 14,

et seq.).

Attendance at court was not obligatory: we notice, however, many nobles

about the person of Pharaoh, and there are numerous examples of princes,

with whose lives we are familiar, filling offices which appear to have

demanded at least a temporary residence in the palace, as, for instance,

the charge of the royal wardrobe. When the king travelled, the great

vassals were compelled to entertain him and his suite, and to escort

him to the frontier of their domain. On the occasion of such visits, the

king would often take away with him one of their sons to be brought

up with his own children: an act which they on their part considered a

great honour, while the king on his had a guarantee of their fidelity in

the person of these hostages. Such of these young people as returned to

their fathers’ roof when their education was finished, were usually most

loyal to the reigning dynasty. They often brought back with them

some maiden born in the purple, who consented to share their little

provincial sovereignty, while in exchange one or more of their sisters

entered the harem of the Pharaoh. Marriages made and marred in their

turn the fortunes of the great feudal houses. Whether she were

a princess or not, each woman received as her dowry a portion of

territory, and enlarged by that amount her husband’s little state;

but the property she brought might, in a few years, be taken by her

daughters as portions and enrich other houses. The fief seldom could

bear up against such dismemberment; it fell away piecemeal, and by

the third or fourth generation had disappeared. Sometimes, however,

it gained more than it lost in this matrimonial game, and extended its

borders till they encroached on neighbouring nomes or else completely

absorbed them. There were always in the course of each reign several

great principalities formed, or in the process of formation, whose

chiefs might be said to hold in their hands the destinies of the

country. Pharaoh himself was obliged to treat them with deference,

and he purchased their allegiance by renewed and ever-increasing

concessions.

Their ambition was never satisfied; when they were loaded with favours,

and did not venture to ask for more for themselves, they impudently

demanded them for such of their children as they thought were poorly

provided for. Their eldest son “knew not the high favours which came

from the king. Other princes were his privy counsellers, his chosen

friends, or foremost among his friends!” he had no share in all this.

Pharaoh took good care not to reject a petition presented so humbly:

he proceeded to lavish appointments, titles, and estates on the son in

question; if necessity required it, he would even seek out a wife for

him, who might give him, together with her hand, a property equal to

that of his father. The majority of these great vassals secretly aspired

to the crown: they frequently had reason to believe that they had some

right to it, either through their mother or one of their ancestors. Had

they combined against the reigning house, they could easily have gained

the upper hand, but their mutual jealousies prevented this, and the

overthrow of a dynasty to which they owed so much would, for the most

part, have profited them but little: as soon as one of them revolted,

the remainder took arms in Pharaoh’s defence, led his armies and

fought his battles. If at times their ambition and greed harassed

their suzerain, at least their power was at his service, and their

self-interested allegiance was often the means of delaying the downfall

of his house.

Two things were specially needful both for them and for Pharaoh in order

to maintain or increase their authority--the protection of the gods,

and a military organization which enabled them to mobilize the whole of

their forces at the first signal. The celestial world was the faithful

image of our own; it had its empires and its feudal organization, the

arrangement of which corresponded to that of the terrestrial world. The

gods who inhabited it were dependent upon the gifts of mortals, and the

resources of each individual deity, and consequently his power, depended

on the wealth and number of his worshippers; anything influencing one

had an immediate effect on the other. The gods dispensed happiness,

health, and vigour;* to those who made them large offerings and

instituted pious foundations, they lent their own weapons, and inspired

them with needful strength to overcome their enemies. They even came

down to assist in battle, and every great encounter of armies involved

an invisible struggle among the immortals. The gods of the side which

was victorious shared with it in the triumph, and received a tithe of

the spoil as the price of their help; the gods of the vanquished were

so much the poorer, their priests and their statues were reduced

to slavery, and the destruction of their people entailed their own

downfall.

* I may here remind my readers of the numberless bas-reliefs

and stelae on which the king is represented as making an

offering to a god, who replies in some such formula as the

following: “I give thee health and strength;” or, “I give

thee joy and life for millions of years.”

It was, therefore, to the special interest of every one in Egypt, from

the Pharaoh to the humblest of his vassals, to maintain the good will

and power of the gods, so that their protection might be effectively

ensured in the hour of danger. Pains were taken to embellish their

temples with obelisks, colossi, altars, and bas-reliefs; new buildings

were added to the old; the parts threatened with ruin were restored or

entirely rebuilt; daily gifts were brought of every kind--animals which

were sacrificed on the spot, bread, flowers, fruit, drinks, as well

as perfumes, stuffs, vases, jewels, bricks or bars of gold, silver,

lapis-lazuli, which were all heaped up in the treasury within the

recesses of the crypts.* If a dignitary of high rank wished to

perpetuate the remembrance of his honours or his services, and at the

same time to procure for his double the benefit of endless prayers and

sacrifices, he placed “by special permission” ** a statue of himself on a

votive stele in the part of the temple reserved for this purpose,--in

a courtyard, chamber, encircling passage, as at Karnak,*** or on

the staircase of Osiris as in that leading up to the terrace in the

sanctuary of Abydos; he then sealed a formal agreement with the priests,

by which the latter engaged to perform a service in his name, in front

of this commemorative monument, a stated number of times in the year, on

the days fixed by universal observance or by local custom.

* See the “Poem of Pentaûîrît” for the grounds on which

Ramses II. bases his imperative appeal to Araon for help:

“Have I not made thee numerous offerings? I have filled thy

temple with my prisoners. I have built thee an everlasting

temple, and have not spared my wealth in endowing it for

thee; I lay the whole world under contribution in order to

stock thy domain.... I have built thee whole pylons in

stone, and have myself reared the flagstaffs which adorn

them; I have brought thee obelisks from Elephantine.”

** The majority of the votive statues were lodged in a

temple “by special favour of a king “--em HOSÎtû nti KUÎr

sûton--as a recompense for services rendered. Some only of

the stelae bear an inscription to the above effect, no

authorization from the king was required for the

consecration of a stele in a temple.

*** It was in the encircling passage of the limestone temple

built by the kings of the XIIth dynasty, and now completely

destroyed, that all the Karnak votive statues were

discovered. Some of them still rest on the stone ledge on

which they were placed by the priests of the god at the

moment of consecration.

For this purpose he assigned to them annuities in kind, charges on his

patrimonial estates, or in some cases, if he were a great lord, on the

revenues of his fief,--such as a fixed quantity of loaves and drinks

for each of the celebrants, a fourth part of the sacrificial victim,

a garment, frequently also lands with their cattle, serfs, existing

buildings, farming implements and produce, along with the conditions

of service with which the lands were burdened. These gifts to the

god--“notir hotpûû”--were, it appears, effected by agreements analogous

to those dealing with property in mortmain in modern Egypt; in each

nome they constituted, in addition to the original temporalities of the

temple, a considerable domain, constantly enlarged by fresh endowments.

The gods had no daughters for whom to provide, nor sons among whom to

divide their inheritance; all that fell to them remained theirs for

ever, and in the contracts were inserted imprecations threatening with

terrible ills, in this world and the next, those who should abstract the

smallest portion from them. Such menaces did not always prevent the king

or the lords from laying hands on the temple revenues: had this not been

the case, Egypt would soon have become a sacerdotal country from one end

to the other. Even when reduced by periodic usurpations, the domain of

the gods formed, at all periods, about one-third of the whole country.*

* The tradition handed down by Diodorus tells us that the

goddess Isis assigned a third of the country to the priests;

the whole of Egypt is said to have been divided into three

equal parts, the first of which belonged to the priests, the

second to the kings, and the third to the warrior class.

When we read, in the great Harris Papyrus, the list of the

property possessed by the temple of the Theban Amon alone,

all over Egypt, under Ramses III., we can readily believe

that the tradition of the Greek epoch in no way exaggerated

matters.

Its administration was not vested in a single body of Priests,

representing the whole of Egypt and recruited or ruled everywhere in

the same fashion. There were as many bodies of priests as there were

temples, and every temple preserved its independent constitution with

which the clergy of the neighbouring temples had nothing to do: the

only master they acknowledged was the lord of the territory on which

the temple was built, either Pharaoh or one of his nobles. The tradition

which made Pharaoh the head of the different worships in Egypt*

prevailed everywhere, but Pharaoh soared too far above this world

to confine himself to the functions of any one particular order of

priests: he officiated before all the gods without being specially

the minister of any, and only exerted his supremacy in order to make

appointments to important sacerdotal posts in his domain.**

* The only exception to this rule was in the case of the

Theban kings of the XXIst dynasty, and even here the

exception is more apparent than real. As a matter of fact,

these kings, Hrihor and Pinozmû, began by being high priests

of Amon before ascending the throne; they were pontiffs who

became Pharaohs, not Pharaohs who created themselves

pontiffs. Possibly we ought to place Smonkharî of the XIVth

dynasty in the same category, if, as Brugsch assures us, his

name, Mîr-mâshâù, is identical with the title of the high

priest of Osiris at Mendes, thus proving that he was pontiff

of Osiris in that town before he became king.

** Among other instances, we have that of the king of the

XXIst Tanite dynasty, who appointed Mankhopirrî, high priest

of the Theban Amon, and that of the last king of the same

dynasty, Psûsennes IL, who conferred the same office on

prince Aûpûti, son of Sheshonqû. The king’s right of

nomination harmonized very well with the hereditary

transmission of the priestly office through members of the

same family, as we shall have occasion to show later on.

He reserved the high priesthood of the Memphite Phtah and that of Râ of

Heliopolis either for the princes of his own family or more often for

his most faithful servants; they were the docile instruments of his

will, through whom he exerted the influence of the gods, and disposed

of their property without having the trouble of administrating it. The

feudal lords, less removed from mortal affairs than the Pharaoh, did not

disdain to combine the priesthood of the temples dependent on them with

the general supervision of the different worships practised on their

lands. The princes of the Gazelle nome, for instance, bore the title

of “Directors of the Prophets of all the Gods,” but were, correctly

speaking, prophets of Horus, of Khnûmû master of Haoîrît, and of Pakhît

mistress of the Speos-Artemidos. The religious suzerainty of such

princes was the complement of their civil and military power, and their

ordinary income was augmented by some portion at least of the revenues

which the lands in mortmain furnished annually. The subordinate

sacerdotal functions were filled by professional priests whose status

varied according to the gods they served and the provinces in which they

were located. Although between the mere priest and the chief prophet

there were a number of grades to which the majority never attained,

still the temples attracted many people from divers sources, who, once

established in this calling of life, not only never left it, but never

rested until they had introduced into it the members of their families.

The offices they filled were not necessarily hereditary, but the

children, born and bred in the shelter of the sanctuary, almost always

succeeded to the positions of their fathers, and certain families thus

continuing in the same occupation for generations, at last came to be

established as a sort of sacerdotal nobility.*

* We possess the coffins of the priests of the Theban Montû

for nearly thirty generations, viz. from the XXVth dynasty

to the time of the Ptolemies. The inscriptions give us their

genealogies, as well as their intermarriages, and show us

that they belonged almost exclusively to two or three

important families who intermarried with one another or took

their wives from the families of the priests of Amon.

The sacrifices supplied them with daily meat and drink; the temple

buildings provided them with their lodging, and its revenues furnished

them with a salary proportionate to their position. They were exempted

from the ordinary taxes, from military service, and from forced labour;

it is not surprising, therefore, that those who were not actually

members of the priestly families strove to have at least a share in

their advantages. The servitors, the workmen and the _employés_ who

congregated about them and constituted the temple corporation, the

scribes attached to the administration of the domains, and to the

receipt of offerings, shared _de facto_ if not _de jure_ in the immunity

of the priesthood; as a body they formed a separate religious society,

side by side, but distinct from, the civil population, and freed from

most of the burdens which weighed so heavily on the latter.

The soldiers were far from possessing the wealth and influence of the

clergy. Military service in Egypt was not universally compulsory, but

rather the profession and privilege of a special class of whose

origin but little is known. Perhaps originally it comprised only the

descendants of the conquering race, but in historic times it was not

exclusively confined to the latter, and recruits were raised everywhere

among the fellahs,* the Bedouin of the neighbourhood, the negroes,**

the Nubians,*** and even from among the prisoners of war, or adventurers

from beyond the sea.****

* This is shown, _inter alia,_ by the real or supposititious

letters in which the master-scribe endeavours to deter his

pupil from adopting a military career, recommending that of

a scribe in preference.

** Uni, under Papi I., recruited his army from among the

inhabitants of the whole of Egypt, from Elephantine to

Letopolis at the mouth of the Delta, and as far as the

Mediterranean, from among the Bedouin of Libya and of the

Isthmus, and even from the six negro races of Nubia

_(Inscription d’Ouni, 11. 14-19)_.

*** The Nubian tribe of the Mâzaiû, afterwards known as the

Libyan tribe of the Mâshaûasha, furnished troops to the

Egyptian kings and princes for centuries; indeed, the Mâzaiû

formed such an integral part of the Egyptian armies that

their name came to be used in Coptic as a synonym for

soldier, under the form “matoï.”

**** Later on we shall come across the Shardana of the Royal

Guard under Ramses II. (E. de Rougé, _Extrait d’un mémoire

sur les attaques,_ p. 5); later still, the Ionians, Carians,

and Greek mercenaries will be found to play a decisive part

in the history of the Saïte dynasties.

This motley collection of foreign mercenaries composed ordinarily the

body-guard of the king or of his barons, the permanent nucleus round

which in times of war the levies of native recruits were rallied. Every

Egyptian soldier received from the chief to whom he was attached, a

holding of land for the maintenance of himself and his family. In the

fifth century B.C. twelve _aruræ_ of arable land was estimated as ample

pay for each man,* and tradition attributes to the fabulous Sesostris

the law which fixed the pay at this rate. The soldiers were not taxed,

and were exempt from forced labour during the time that they were away

from home on active service; with this exception they were liable to the

same charges as the rest of the population. Many among them possessed

no other income, and lived the precarious life of the fellah,--tilling,

reaping, drawing water, and pasturing their cattle,--in the interval

between two musters. Others possessed of private fortunes let their

holdings out at a moderate rental, which formed an addition to their

patrimonial income.**

* Herodotus, ii. 168. The arura being equal to 27.82 ares

[an are = 100 square metres], the military fief contained

27*82 x 12 = 333.84 ares. [The “arura,” according to F. L.

Griffith, was a square of 100 Egyptian cubits, making about

3/5 of an acre, or 2600 square metres.--Trs.] The _chifliks_

created by Mohammed-Ali, with a view to bringing the

abandoned districts into cultivation, allotted to each

labourer who offered to reclaim it, a plot of land varying

from one to three feddans, i.e. from 4200.83 square metres

to 12602.49 square metres, according to the nature of the

soil and the necessities of each family. The military fiefs

of ancient Egypt were, therefore, nearly three times as

great in extent as these _abadiyehs_, which were considered,

in modern Egypt, sufficient to supply the wants of a whole

family of peasants; they must, therefore, have secured not

merely a bare subsistence, but ample provision for their

proprietors.

** Diodorus Siculus says in so many words (i. 74) that “the

farmers spent their life in cultivating lands which had been

let to them at a moderate rent by the king, by the priests,

and _by the warriors_.”

Lest they should forget the conditions upon which they possessed this

military holding, and should regard themselves as absolute masters

of it, they were seldom left long in possession of the same place:

Herodotus asserts that their allotments were taken away-yearly and

replaced by others of equal extent. It is difficult to say if this law

of perpetual change was always in force; at any rate, it did not prevent

the soldiers from forming themselves in time into a kind of aristocracy,

which even kings and barons of highest rank could not ignore. They were

enrolled in special registers, with the indication of the holding which

was temporarily assigned to them. A military scribe kept this register

in every royal nome or principality.

[Illustration: 092.jpg SOME OF THE MILITARY ATHLETIC EXERCISES]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a scene in the tomb of Amoni-

Amenemhâît at Beni-Hasan.

He superintended the redistribution of the lands, the registration of

privileges, and in addition to his administrative functions, he had in

time of war the command of the troops furnished by his own district; in

which case he was assisted by a “lieutenant,” who as opportunity offered

acted as his substitute in the office or on the battle-field. Military

service was not hereditary, but its advantages, however trifling they

may appear to us, seemed in the eyes of the fellahs so great, that

for the most part those who were engaged in it had their children also

enrolled. While still young the latter were taken to the barracks, where

they were taught not only the use of the bow, the battle-axe, the mace,

the lance, and the shield, but were all instructed in such exercises as

rendered the body supple, and prepared them for manoeuvring, regimental

marching, running, jumping, and wrestling either with closed or open

hand. They prepared themselves for battle by a regular war-dance,

pirouetting, leaping, and brandishing their bows and quivers in the

air. Their training being finished, they were incorporated into local

companies, and invested with their privileges. When they were required

for service, part or the whole of the class was mustered; arms kept in

the arsenal were distributed among them, and they were conveyed in boats

to the scene of action. The Egyptians were not martial by temperament;

they became soldiers rather from interest than inclination.

The power of Pharaoh and his barons rested entirely upon these two

classes, the priests and the soldiers; the remainder, the commonalty and

the peasantry, were, in their hands, merely an inert mass, to be

taxed and subjected to forced labour at will. The slaves were probably

regarded as of little importance; the bulk of the people consisted of

free families who were at liberty to dispose of themselves and their

goods. Every fellah and townsman in the service of the king, or of

one of his great nobles, could leave his work and his village when

he pleased, could pass from the domain in which he was born into a

different one, and could traverse the country from one end to the other,

as the Egyptians of to-day still do.

His absence entailed neither loss of goods, nor persecution of the

relatives he left behind, and he himself had punishment to fear only

when he left the Nile Valley without permission, to reside for some time

in a foreign land.* But although this independence and liberty were in

accordance with the laws and customs of the land, yet they gave rise to

inconveniences from which it was difficult to escape in practical life.

Every Egyptian, the King excepted, was obliged, in order to get on in

life, to depend on one more powerful than himself, whom he called his

master. The feudal lord was proud to recognize Pharaoh as his master,

and he himself was master of the soldiers and priests in his own petty

state.

* The treaty between Ramses and the Prince of Khiti contains

a formal extradition clause in reference to Egyptians or

Hittites, who had quitted their native country, of course

without the permission of their sovereign. The two

contracting parties expressly stipulate that persons

extradited on one side or the other shall not be punished

for having emigrated, that their property is not to be

confiscated, nor are their families to be held responsible

for their flight. From this clause it follows that in

ordinary times unauthorized emigration brought upon the

culprit corporal punishment and the confiscation of his

goods, as well as various penalties on his family. The way

in which Sinûhît makes excuses for his flight, the fact of

his asking pardon before returning to Egypt, the very terms

of the letter in which the king recalls him and assures him

of impunity, show us that the laws against emigration were

in full force under the XIIth dynasty.

** The expressions which bear witness to this fact are very

numerous: Miri nîbûf = “He who loves his master;” Aqû hâîti

ni nîbûf = “He who enters into the heart of his master,” etc.

They recur so frequently in the texts in the case of persons

of all ranks, that it was thought no importance ought to be

attached to them. But the constant repetition of the word

NIB, “master,” shows that we must alter this view, and give

these phrases their full meaning.

From the top to the bottom of the social scale every free man

acknowledged a master, who secured to him justice and protection in

exchange for his obedience and fealty. The moment an Egyptian tried to

withdraw himself from this subjection, the peace of his life was at

an end; he became a man without a master, and therefore without a

recognized protector.*

* The expression, “a man without a master,” occurs several

times in the _Berlin Papyrus_, No. ii. For instance, the

peasant who is the hero of the story, says of the lord

Mirûitensi, that he is “the rudder of heaven, the guide of

the earth, the balance which carries the offerings, the

buttress of tottering walls, the support of that which

falls, _the great master who takes whoever is without a

master_ to lavish on him the goods of his house, a jug of

beer and three loaves” each day.

Any one might stop him on the way, steal his cattle, merchandise, or

property on the most trivial pretext, and if he attempted to protest,

might beat him with almost certain impunity.

[Illustration: 095.jpg WAR-DANCE PERFORMED BY EGYPTIAN SOLDIERS BEFORE A

BATTLE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the tomb of Khîti at Beni-

Hasan. These are soldiers of the nome of Gazelle.

The only resource of the victim was to sit at the gate of the palace,

waiting to appeal for justice till the lord or the king should appear.

If by chance, after many rebuffs, his humble petition were granted, it

was only the beginning of fresh troubles. Even if the justice of the

cause were indisputable, the fact that he was a man without home or

master inspired his judges with an obstinate mistrust, and delayed the

satisfaction of his claims. In vain he followed his judges with his

complaints and flatteries, chanting their virtues in every key: “Thou

art the father of the unfortunate, the husband of the widow, the brother

of the orphan, the clothing of the motherless: enable me to proclaim

thy name as a law throughout the land. Good lord, guide without caprice,

great without littleness, thou who destroyest falsehood and causest

truth to be, come at the words of my mouth; I speak, listen and do

justice. O generous one, generous of the generous, destroy the cause of

my trouble; here I am, uplift me; judge me, for behold me a suppliant

before thee.” If he were an eloquent speaker and the judge were inclined

to listen, he was willingly heard, but his cause made no progress, and

delays, counted on by his adversary, effected his ruin. The religious

law, no doubt, prescribed equitable treatment for all devotees of

Osiris, and condemned the slightest departure from justice as one of the

gravest sins, even in the case of a great noble, or in that of the

king himself; but how could impartiality be shown when the one was the

recognized protector, the “master” of the culprit, while the plaintiff

was a vagabond, attached to no one, “a man without a master”!

The population of the towns included many privileged persons other than

the soldiers, priests, or those engaged in the service of the

temples. Those employed in royal or feudal administration, from the

“superintendent of the storehouse” to the humblest scribe, though

perhaps not entirely exempt from forced labour, had but a small part

of it to bear.* These _employés_ constituted a middle class of several

grades, and enjoyed a fixed income and regular employment: they were

fairly well educated, very self-satisfied, and always ready to declare

loudly their superiority over any who were obliged to gain their

living by manual labour. Each class of workmen recognized one or more

chiefs,--the shoemakers, their master-shoemakers, the masons, their

master-masons, the blacksmiths, their master-blacksmiths,--who

looked after their interests and represented them before the local

authorities.**

* This is a fair inference from the indirect testimony of

the Letters: the writer, in enumerating the liabilities of

the various professions, implies by contrast that the scribe

(i.e. the _employé_ in general) is not subject to them, or

is subject to a less onerous share of them than others. The

beginning and end of the instructions of Khîti would in

themselves be sufficient to show us the advantages which the

middle classes under the XIIth dynasty believed they could

derive from adopting the profession of scribe.

** The stelæ of Abydos are very useful to those who desire

to study the populations of a small town. They give us the

names of the head-men of trades of all kinds; the head-mason

Didiû, the master-mason Aa, the master-shoemaker Kahikhonti,

the head-smiths Ûsirtasen-Ûati, Hotpû, Hot-pûrekhsû.

It was said among the Greeks, that even robbers were united in a

corporation like the others, and maintained an accredited superior as

their representative with the police, to discuss the somewhat delicate

questions which the practice of their trade gave occasion to. When the

members of the association had stolen any object of value, it was

to this superior that the person robbed resorted, in order to regain

possession of it: it was he who fixed the amount required for its

redemption, and returned it without fail, upon the payment of this sum.

Most of the workmen who formed a state corporation, lodged, or at least

all of them had their stalls, in the same quarter or street, under the

direction of their chief. Besides the poll and the house tax, they were

subject to a special toll, a trade licence which they paid in products

of their commerce or industry.*

* The registers (for the most part unpublished), which are

contained in European museums show us that fishermen paid in

fish, gardeners in flowers and vegetables, etc., the taxes

or tribute which they owed to their lords. In the great

inscription of Abydos the weavers attached to the temple of

Seti I. are stated to have paid their tribute in stuffs.

[Illustration: 098.jpg TWO BLACKSMITHS WORKING THE BELLOWS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Rosellini, Monumenti Civili,

pl. 2 a.

Their lot was a hard one, if we are to believe the description which

ancient writers have handed down to us: “I have never seen a blacksmith

on an embassy--nor a smelter sent on a mission--but what I have seen

is the metal worker at his toil,--at the mouth of the furnace of his

forge,--his fingers as rugged as the crocodile,--and stinking more than

fish-spawn.--The artisan of any kind who handles the chisel,--does not

employ so much movement as he who handles the hoe;*

* The literal translation would be, “The artisan of all

kinds who handles the chisel is more motionless than he who

handles the hoe.” Both here, and in several other passages

of this little satiric poem, I have been obliged to

paraphrase the text in order to render it intelligible to

the modern reader.

[Illustration: 099.jpg STONE-CUTTERS FINISHING THE DRESSING OF LIMESTONE

BLOCKS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Rosellini, _Monumenti civili_,

pl. xlviii. 2.

--but for him his fields are the timber, his business is the metal,--and

at night when the other is free,--he, he works with his hands over and

above what he has already done,--for at night, he works at home by the

lamp.--The stone-cutter who seeks his living by working in all kinds of

durable stone,--when at last he has earned something--and his two arms

are worn out, he stops;--but if at sunrise he remain sitting,--his legs

are tied to his back.* --The barber who shaves until the evening,--when

he falls to and eats, it is without sitting down** --while running from

street to street to seek custom;--if he is constant [at work] his two

arms fill his belly--as the bee eats in proportion to its toil.--Shall

I tell thee of the mason--how he endures misery?--Exposed to all the

winds--while he builds without any garment but a belt--and while the

bunch of lotus-flowers [which is fixed] on the [completed] houses--is

still far out of his reach,***

* This is an allusion to the cruel manner in which the

Egyptians were accustomed to bind their prisoners, as it

were in a bundle, with the legs bent backward along the back

and attached to the arms. The working-day commenced then, as

now, at sunrise, and lasted till sunset, with a short

interval of one or two hours at midday for the workmen’s

dinner and siesta.

** Literally, “He places himself on his elbow.” The metaphor

seems to me to be taken from the practice of the trade

itself: the barber keeps his elbow raised when shaving and

lowers it when he is eating.

*** This passage is conjecturally translated. I suppose the

Egyptian masons had a custom analogous to that of our own,

and attached a bunch of lotus to the highest part of a

building they had just finished: nothing, however, has come

to light to confirm this conjecture.

--his two arms are worn out with work; his provisions are placed

higgledy piggledy amongst his refuse,--he consumes himself, for he has

no other bread than his fingers--and he becomes wearied all at once.--He

is much and dreadfully exhausted--for there is [always] a block [to be

dragged] in this or that building,--a block of ten cubits by six,--there

is [always] a block [to be dragged] in this or that month [as far as

the] scaffolding poles [to which is fixed] the bunch of lotus-flowers

on the [completed] houses.--When the work is quite finished,--if he has

bread, he returns home,--and his children have been beaten unmercifully

[during his absence].--The weaver within doors is worse off there than

a woman;--squatting, his knees against his chest,--he does not

breathe.--If during the day he slackens weaving,--he is bound fast as

the lotuses of the lake;--and it is by giving bread to the doorkeeper,

that the latter permits him to see the light.

[Illustration: 101.jpg A WORKSHOP OF SHOEMAKERS MANUFACTURING SANDALS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Champollion’s _Monuments de

l’Êypte et de la Nubie_. This Picture belongs to the XVIIIth

dynasty; but the sandals in it are, however, quite like

those to be seen on more ancient monuments.

The dyer, his fingers reeking--and their smell is that of

fish-spawn;--his two eyes are oppressed with fatigue,--his hand does not

stop,--and, as he spends his time in cutting out rags--he has a

hatred of garments.--The shoemaker is very unfortunate;--he moans

ceaselessly,--his health is the health of the spawning fish,--and he

gnaws the leather.--The baker makes dough,--subjects the loaves to the

fire;--while his head is inside the oven,--his son holds him by the

legs;--if he slips from the hands of his son,--he falls there into the

flames.” These are the miseries inherent to the trades themselves: the

levying of the tax added to the catalogue a long sequel of vexations

and annoyances, which were renewed several times in the year at regular

intervals.

[Illustration: 101.jpg THE BAKER MAKING HIS BREAD AND PLACING IT IN THE

OVEN]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the painted picture in one of

the small antechambers of the tomb of Ramses III., at Bab-

el-Molûk.

Even at the present day, the fellah does not pay his contributions

except under protest and by compulsion, but the determination not to

meet obligations except beneath the stick, was proverbial from ancient

times: whoever paid his dues before he had received a merciless beating

would be overwhelmed with reproaches by his family, and jeered at

without pity by his neighbours. The time when the tax fell due, came

upon the nomes as a terrible crisis which affected the whole population.

For several days there was nothing to be heard but protestations,

threats, beating, cries of pain from the tax-payers, and piercing

lamentations from women and children. The performance over, calm was

re-established, and the good people, binding up their wounds, resumed

their round of daily life until the next tax-gathering.

The towns of this period presented nearly the same confined and

mysterious appearance as those of the present day.*

* I have had occasion to make “soundings” or excavations at

various points in very ancient towns and villages, at

Thebes, Abydos and Mataniyeh, and I give here a _résumé_ of

my observations. Professor Petrie has brought to light and

regularly explored several cities of the XIIth and XVIIIth

dynasties, situated at the entrance to the Fayûm. I have

borrowed many points in my description from the various

works which he has published on the subject, _Kahun, Gurob

and Hawara,_ 1890; and _Illahun, Kahun and Gurob_, 1891.

[Illustration: 103.jpg THE HOUSE OF A GREAT EGYPTIAN LORD]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a water-colour by Boussac, _Le

Tombeau d’Anna_ in the _Mémoires de la Mission Française_.

The house was situated at Thebes, and belonged to the

XVIIIth dynasty. The remains of the houses brought to light

by Mariette at Abydos belong to the same type, and date back

to the XIIth dynasty. By means of these, Mariette was

enabled to reconstruct an ancient Egyptian house at the

Paris Exhibition of 1877. The picture of the tomb of Anna

reproduces in most respects, we may therefore assume, the

appearance of a nobleman’s dwelling at all periods. At the

side of the main building we see two corn granaries with

conical roofs, and a great storehouse for provisions.

They were grouped around one or more temples, each of which was

surrounded by its own brick enclosing wall, with its enormous gateways:

the gods dwelt there in real castles, or, if this word appears too

ambitious, redouts, in which the population could take refuge in cases

of sudden attack, and where they could be in safety.

[Illustration: 104.jpg PLAN OF A PART OF THE ANCIENT TOWN OF KAHUN]

From a plan made and published by Professor Flinders Petrie,

_Illahun, Kahun and Gurob_, pl. xiv.

The towns, which had all been built at one period by some king or

prince, were on a tolerably regular ground plan; the streets were paved

and fairly wide; they crossed each other at right angles, and were

bordered with buildings on the same line of frontage. The cities of

ancient origin, which had increased with the chance growth of centuries,

presented a totally different aspect.

[Illustration: 105.jpg STELE OF SÎTÛ, REPRESENTING THE FRONT OF A HOUSE]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey. The

monument is the stele of Sîtû (IVth dynasty), in the Gîzeh

Museum.

A network of lanes and blind alleys, narrow, dark, damp, and badly

built, spread itself out between the houses, apparently at random: here

and there was an arm of a canal, all but dried up, or a muddy pool where

the cattle came to drink, and from which the women fetched the water for

their households; then followed an open space of irregular shape, shaded

by acacias or sycamores, where the country-folk of the suburbs held

their market on certain days, twice or thrice a month; then came

waste ground covered with filth and refuse, over which the dogs of

the neighbourhood fought with hawks and vultures. The residence of

the prince or royal governor, and the houses of rich private persons,

covered a considerable area, and generally presented to the street a

long extent of bare walls, crenellated like those of a fortress: the

only ornament admitted on them consisted of angular grooves, each

surmounted by two open lotus flowers having their stems intertwined.

[Illustration: 106.jpg A STREET IN THE HIGHER QUARTER OF MODERN SIÛT]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph, taken in 1884, by Emil

Brugsch-Bey.

Within these walls domestic life was entirely secluded, and as it were

confined to its own resources; the pleasure of watching passers-by was

sacrificed to the advantage of not being seen from outside. The entrance

alone denoted at times the importance of the great man who concealed

himself within the enclosure. Two or three steps led up to the door,

which sometimes had a columned portico, ornamented with statues, lending

an air of importance to the building. The houses of the citizens were

small, and built of brick; they contained, however, some half-dozen

rooms, either vaulted, or having flat roofs, and communicating with each

other usually by arched doorways.

[Illustration: 107.jpg A HALL WITH COLUMNS IN ONE OF THE XIIth DYNASTY

HOUSES AT GUROB]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Professor Petrie,

_Elahun, Kahun and Gurob_, pl. xvi. 3.

A few houses boasted of two or three stories; all possessed a terrace,

on which the Egyptians of old, like those of to-day, passed most

of their time, attending to household cares or gossiping with their

neighbours over the party wall or across the street. The hearth was

hollowed out in the ground, usually against a wall, and the smoke

escaped through a hole in the ceiling: they made their fires of sticks,

wood charcoal, and the dung of oxen and asses. In the houses of the

rich we meet with state apartments, lighted in the centre by a square

opening, and supported by rows of wooden columns; the shafts, which were

octagonal, measured ten inches in diameter, and were fixed into flat

circular stone bases.

[Illustration: 108a.jpg WOODEN HEAD-REST]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a head-rest in my possession

obtained at Gebelên (XIth dynasty): the foot of the head-

rest is usually solid, and cut out of a single piece of

wood.

[Illustration: 108b.jpg PIGEON ON WHEELS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Petrie, _Hawara,

Biahmu, and Arsinoe_, pl. xiii. 21. The original, of rough

wood, is now in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford.

The family crowded themselves together into two or three rooms in

winter, and slept on the roof in the open air in summer, in spite of

risk from affections of the stomach and eyes; the remainder of the

dwelling was used for stables or warehouses. The store-chambers

were often built in pairs; they were of brick, carefully limewashed

internally, and usually assumed the form of an elongated cone, in

imitation of the Government storehouses. For the valuables which

constituted the wealth of each household--wedges of gold or silver,

precious stones, ornaments for men or women--there were places of

concealment, in which the possessors attempted to hide them from robbers

or from the tax-collectors. But the latter, accustomed to the craft of

the citizens, evinced a peculiar aptitude for ferreting out the hoard:

they tapped the walls, lifted and pierced the roofs, dug down into the

soil below the foundations, and often brought to light, not only the

treasure of the owner, but all the surroundings of the grave and human

corruption. It was actually the custom, among the lower and middle

classes, to bury in the middle of the house children who had died at the

breast. The little body was placed in an old tool or linen box, without

any attempt at embalming, and its favourite playthings and amulets were

buried with it: two or three infants are often found occupying the same

coffin. The playthings were of an artless but very varied character;

dolls of limestone, enamelled pottery or wood, with movable arms and

wigs of artificial hair; pigs, crocodiles, ducks, and pigeons on wheels,

pottery boats, miniature sets of household furniture, skin balls filled

with hay, marbles, and stone bowls. However, strange it may appear, we

have to fancy the small boys of ancient Egypt as playing at bowls

like ours, or impudently whipping their tops along the streets without

respect for the legs of the passers-by.

[Illustration: 109.jpg APPARATUS FOR STRIKING A LIGHT]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch published in Fl.

Petrie, _Illahun, Kdhun and Gurob,_ pl. vii. The bow is

represented in the centre; on the left, at the top, is the

nut; below it the fire-stick, which was attached to the end

of the stock; at the bottom and right, two pieces of wood

with round carbonized holes, which took fire from the

friction of the rapidly rotating stick.

Some care was employed upon the decoration of the chambers. The

rough-casting of mud often preserves its original grey colour;

sometimes, however, it was limewashed, and coloured red or yellow, or

decorated with pictures of jars, provisions, and the interiors as well

as the exteriors of houses.

[Illustration: 110.jpg MITRAL PAINTINGS IN THE RUINS OF AN ANCIENT HOUSE

AT KAHUN]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the facsimile in Petrie’s

_Illahun, Kahun and Gurob_, pl. xvi. 6.

The bed was not on legs, but consisted of a low framework, like the

“angarebs” of the modern Nubians, or of mats which were folded up in the

daytime, but upon which they lay in their clothes during the night, the

head being supported by a head-rest of pottery, limestone, or wood: the

remaining articles of furniture consisted of one or two roughly hewn

seats of stone, a few lion-legged chairs or stools, boxes and trunks

of varying sizes for linen and implements, kohl, or perfume, pots of

ababaster or porcelain, and lastly, the fire-stick with the bow by which

it was set in motion, and some roughly made pots and pans of clay or

bronze.

[Illustration: 111.jpg WOMAN GRINDING GRAIN]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Béchard (cf.

Mariette, _Alburn photographique du Musée de Boulaq_, pl.

20; Maspero, _Guide du Visiteur_, P- 220, Nos. 1012, 1013).

Men rarely entered their houses except to eat and sleep; their

employments or handicrafts were such as to require them for the most

part to work out-of-doors. The middle-class families owned, almost

always, one or two slaves--either purchased or born in the house--who

did all the hard work: they looked after the cattle, watched over the

children, acted as cooks, and fetched water from the nearest pool or

well. Among the poor the drudgery of the household fell entirely upon

the woman. She spun, wove, cut out and mended garments, fetched fresh

water and provisions, cooked the dinner, and made the daily bread. She

spread some handfuls of grain upon an oblong slab of stone, slightly

hollowed on its upper surface, and proceeded to crush them with a

smaller stone like a painter’s muller, which she moistened from time to

time. For an hour and more she laboured with her arms, shoulders, loins,

in fact, all her body; but an indifferent result followed from the great

exertion. The flour, made to undergo several grindings in this rustic

mortar, was coarse, uneven, mixed with bran, or whole grains, which had

escaped the pestle, and contaminated with dust and abraded particles

of the stone. She kneaded it with a little water, blended with it, as a

sort of yeast, a piece of stale dough of the day before, and made from

the mass round cakes, about half an inch thick and some four inches in

diameter, which she placed upon a flat flint, covering them with hot

ashes. The bread, imperfectly raised, often badly cooked, borrowed, from

the organic fuel under which it was buried, a special odour, and a taste

to which strangers did not readily accustom themselves. The impurities

which it contained were sufficient in the long run to ruin the strongest

teeth; eating it was an action of grinding rather than chewing, and old

men were not unfrequently met with whose teeth had been gradually worn

away to the level of the gums, like those of an aged ass or ox.*

* The description of the woman grinding grain and kneading

dough is founded on statues in the Gîzeh Museum. All the

European museums possess numerous specimens of the bread in

question, and the effect which it produces in the long run

on the teeth of those who habitually used it as an article

of diet, has been observed in mummies of the most important

personages.

Movement and animation were not lacking at certain hours of the day,

particularly during the morning, in the markets and in the neighbourhood

of the temples and government buildings: there was but little traffic

anywhere else; the streets were silent, and the town dull and sleepy. It

woke up completely only three or four times a year, at seasons of solemn

assemblies “of heaven and earth:” the houses were then opened and their

inhabitants streamed forth, the lively crowd thronging the squares and

crossways. To begin with, there was New Year’s Day, quickly followed

by the Festival of the Bead, the “Ûagaît.” On the night of the 17th

of Thot, the priests kindled before the statues in the sanctuaries and

sepulchral chapels, the fire for the use of the gods and doubles during

the twelve ensuing months. Almost at the same moment the whole country

was lit up from one end to the other: there was scarcely a family,

however poor, who did not place in front of their door a new lamp in

which burned an oil saturated with salt, and who did not spend the whole

night in feasting and gossiping.*

* The night of the 17th Thot--which, according to our

computation, would be the night of the 16th to the 17th

--was, as may be seen from the Great Inscription of Siût,

appointed for the ceremony of “lighting the fire” before the

statues of the dead and of the gods. As at the “Feast of

Lamps”

The festivals of the living gods attracted considerable crowds, who

came not only from the nearest nomes, but also from great distances in

caravans and in boats laden with merchandise, for religious sentiment

did not exclude commercial interests, and the pilgrimage ended in a

fair.

[Illustration: 114.jpg TWO WOMEN WEAVING LINEN AT A HORIZANTAL LOOM]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a picture on the tomb of Khnûm-

hotpû at Beni-Hasan. This is the loom which was

reconstructed in 1889 for the Paris Exhibition, and which is

now to be seen in the galleries of the Trocadero.

For several days the people occupied mentioned by Herodotus, the

religious ceremony was accompanied by a general illumination which

lasted all the night; the object of this, probably, was to facilitate

the visit which the souls of the dead were supposed to pay at this time

to the family residence themselves solely in prayers, sacrifices, and

processions, in which the faithful, clad in white, with palms in their

hands, chanted hymns as they escorted the priests on their way. “The

gods of heaven exclaim ‘Ah! ah! ‘in satisfaction, the inhabitants of

the earth are full of gladness, the Hâthors beat their tabors, the great

ladies wave their mystic whips, all those who are gathered together in

the town are drunk with wine and crowned with flowers; the tradespeople

of the place walk joyously about, their heads scented with perfumed

oils, all the children rejoice in honour of the goddess, from the rising

to the setting of the sun.” *

* The people of Dendera crudely enough called this the

“Feast of Drunkenness.” From what we know of the earlier

epochs, we are justified in making this description a

general one, and in applying it, as I have done here, to the

festivals of other towns besides Dendera.

The nights were as noisy as the days: for a few hours, they made up

energetically for long months of torpor and monotonous existence. The

god having re-entered the temple and the pilgrims taken their departure,

the regular routine was resumed and dragged on its tedious course,

interrupted only by the weekly market. At an early hour on that day,

the peasant folk came in from the surrounding country in an interminable

stream, and installed themselves in some open space, reserved from time

immemorial for their use. The sheep, geese, goats, and large-horned

cattle were grouped in the centre, awaiting purchasers.

Market-gardeners, fishermen, fowlers and gazelle-hunters, potters, and

small tradesmen, squatted on the roadsides or against the houses, and

offered their wares for the inspection of their customers, heaped up

in reed baskets, or piled on low round tables: vegetables and fruits,

loaves or cakes baked during the night, meat either raw or cooked in

various ways, stuffs, perfumes, ornaments,--all the necessities and

luxuries of daily life. It was a good opportunity for the workpeople, as

well as for the townsfolk, to lay in a store of provisions at a cheaper

rate than from the ordinary shops; and they took advantage of it, each

according to his means.

Business was mostly carried on by barter. The purchasers brought with

them some product of their toil--a new tool, a pair of shoes, a reed

mat, pots of unguents or cordials; often, too, rows of cowries and

a small box full of rings, each weighing a “tabnû,” made of copper,

silver, or even gold, all destined to be bartered for such things as

they needed. When it came to be a question of some large animal or of

objects of considerable value, the discussions which arose were keen and

stormy: it was necessary to be agreed not only as to the amount, but

as to the nature of the payment to be made, and to draw up a sort of

invoice, or in fact an inventory, in which beds, sticks, honey, oil,

pick-axes, and garments, all figure as equivalents for a bull or

a she-ass. Smaller retail bargains did not demand so many or such

complicated calculations. Two townsfolk stop for a moment in front of

a fellah who offers onions and corn in a basket for sale. The first

appears to possess no other circulating medium than two necklaces

made of glass beads or many-coloured enamelled terra-cotta; the other

flourishes about a circular fan with a wooden handle, and one of those

triangular contrivances used by cooks for blowing up the fire. “Here is

a fine necklace which will suit you,” cries the former, “it is just what

you are wanting;” while the other breaks in with: “Here is a fan and a

ventilator.” The fellah, however, does not let himself be disconcerted

by this double attack, and proceeding methodically, he takes one of the

necklaces to examine it at his leisure: “Give it to me to look at,

that I may fix the price.” The one asks too much, the other offers too

little; after many concessions, they at last come to an agreement,

and settle on the number of onions or the quantity of grain which

corresponds exactly with the value of the necklace or the fan. A little

further on, a customer wishes to get some perfumes in exchange for a

pair of sandals, and conscientiously praises his wares: “Here,” says

he, “is a strong pair of shoes.” But the merchant has no wish to be shod

just then, and demands a row of cowries for his little pots: “You have

merely to take a few drops of this to see how delicious it is,” he urges

in a persuasive tone. A seated customer has two jars thrust under his

nose by a woman--they probably contain some kind of unguent: “Here is

something which smells good enough to tempt you.” Behind this group two

men are discussing the relative merits of a bracelet and a bundle of

fish-hooks; a woman, with a small box in her hand, is having an argument

with a merchant selling necklaces; another woman seeks to obtain a

reduction in the price of a fish which is being scraped in front of her.

Exchanging commodities for metal necessitated two or three operations

not required in ordinary barter. The rings or thin bent strips of metal

which formed the “tabnû” and its multiples,* did not always contain the

regulation amount of gold or silver, and were often of light weight.

* The rings of gold in the Museum at Leyden, which were used

as a basis of exchange, are made on the Chaldæo-Babylonian

pattern, and belong to the Asiatic system.

[Illustration: 118.jpg one of the forms of egyptian scales]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after a sketch by Rosellini

They had to be weighed at every fresh transaction in order to estimate

their true value, and the interested parties never missed this excellent

opportunity for a heated discussion: after having declared for a quarter

of an hour that the scales were out of order, that the weighing had been

carelessly performed, and that it should be done over again, they at

last came to terms, exhausted with wrangling, and then went their way

fairly satisfied with one another.* It sometimes happened that a clever

and unscrupulous dealer would alloy the rings, and mix with the precious

metal as much of a baser sort as would be possible without danger of

detection. The honest merchant who thought he was receiving in payment

for some article, say eight tabnû of fine gold, and who had handed to

him eight tabnû of some alloy resembling gold, but containing one-third

of silver, lost in a single transaction, without suspecting it, almost

one-third of his goods. The fear of such counterfeits was instrumental

in restraining the use of tabnû for a long time among the people, and

restricted the buying and selling in the markets to exchange in natural

products or manufactured objects.

* The weighing of rings is often represented on the

monuments from the XVIIIth dynasty onwards. I am not

acquainted with any instance of this on the bas-reliefs of

the Ancient Empire. The giving of false weight is alluded to

in the paragraph in the “Negative Confession,” in which the

dead man declares that he has not interfered with the beam

of the scales (cf. vol. i. p. 271) _civili,_ pl. lii. 1. As

to the construction of the Egyptian scales, and the working

of their various parts, see Flinders Petrie’s remarks in _A

Season in Egypt_, P- 42, and the drawings which he has

brought together on pl. xx. of the same work.

[Illustration: 118b.jpg SCENES IN A BAZAAR]

We must, perhaps, agree with Fr. Lenormant, in his conclusion that the

only kind of national metal of exchange in use in Egypt was a copper

wire or plate bent thus [--]. this being the sign invariably used in the

hieroglyphics in writing the word _tàbnû_.

The present rural population of Egypt scarcely ever live in isolated

and scattered farms; they are almost all concentrated in hamlets and

villages of considerable extent, divided into quarters often at some

distance from each other. The same state of things existed in ancient

times, and those who would realize what a village in the past was

like, have only to visit any one of the modern market towns scattered

at intervals along the valley of the Nile:--half a dozen fairly built

houses, inhabited by the principal people of the place; groups of brick

or clay cottages thatched with durra stalks, so low that a man standing

upright almost touches the roof with his head; courtyards filled with

tall circular mud-built sheds, in which the corn and durra for the

household is carefully stored, and wherever we turn, pigeons, ducks,

geese, and animals all living higgledly-piggledly with the family. The

majority of the peasantry were of the lower class, but they were not

everywhere subjected to the same degree of servitude. The slaves,

properly so called, came from other countries; they had been bought from

foreign merchants, or they had been seized in a raid and had lost their

liberty by the fortune of war.* Their master removed them from place

to place, sold them, used them as he pleased, pursued them if they

succeeded in escaping, and had the right of recapturing them as soon as

he received information of their whereabouts. They worked for him under

his overseer’s orders, receiving no regular wages, and with no hope of

recovering their liberty.**

* The first allusion to prisoners of war brought back to

Egypt, is found in the biography of Uni. The method in which

they were distributed among the officers and soldiers is

indicated in several inscriptions of the New Empire, in that

of Ahmosis Pannekhabît, in that of Ahmosis si-Abîna, where

one of the inscriptions contains a list of slaves, some of

whom are foreigners, in that of Amenemhabi. We may form

some idea of the number of slaves in Egypt from the fact

that in thirty years Ramses III. presented 113,433 of them

to the temples alone. The “Directors of the Royal Slaves,”

at all periods, occupied an important position at the court

of the Pharaohs.

** A scene reproduced by Lepsius shows us, about the time of

the VIth dynasty, the harvest gathered by the “royal slaves”

in concert with the tenants of the dead man. One of the

petty princes defeated by the Ethiopian Piônkhi Miamûn

proclaims himself to be “one of the royal slaves who pay

tribute in kind to the royal treasury.” Amten repeatedly

mentions slaves of this kind, “sûtiû.”

Many chose concubines from their own class, or intermarried with the

natives and had families: at the end of two or three generations their

descendants became assimilated with the indigenous race, and were

neither more nor less than actual serfs attached to the soil, who were

made over or exchanged with it.* The landed proprietors, lords, kings,

or gods, accommodated this population either in the outbuildings

belonging to their residences, or in villages built for the purpose,

where everything belonged to them, both houses and people.

* This is the status of serfs, or _mirîtiû,_ as shown in the

texts of every period. They are mentioned along with the

fields or cattle attached to a temple or belonging to a

noble. Ramses II. granted to the temple of Abydos “an

appanage in cultivated lands, in serfs (_mirîtiû_), in

cattle.” The scribe Anna sees in his tomb “stalls of bulls,

of oxen, of calves, of milch cows, as well as serfs, in the

mortmain of Amon.” Ptolemy I. returned to the temple at Bûto

“the domains, the boroughs, the serfs, the tillage, the

water supply, the cattle, the geese, the flocks, all the

things” which Xerxes had taken away from Kabbisha. The

expression passed into the language, as a word used to

express the condition of a subject race: “I cause,” said

Thûtmosis III., “Egypt to be a sovereign (_hirît_) to whom

all the earth is a slave” (_mirîtû_).

[Illustration: 123.jpg PART OF THE MODERN VILLAGE OF KARNAK, TO THE WEST

OF THE TEMPLE OF APÎT]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Beato, taken in 1886.

The condition of the free agricultural labourer was in many respects

analogous to that of the modern fellah. Some of them possessed no other

property than a mud cabin, just large enough for a man and his wife,

and hired themselves out by the day or the year as farm servants. Others

were emboldened to lease land from the lord or from a soldier in the

neighbourhood. The most fortunate acquired some domain of which they

were supposed to receive only the product, the freehold of the property

remaining primarily in the hands of the Pharaoh, and secondarily in

that of lay or religious feudatories who held it of the sovereign: they

could, moreover, bequeath, give, or sell these lands and buy fresh ones

without any opposition. They paid, besides the capitation tax, a ground

rent proportionate to the extent of their property, and to the kind of

land of which it consisted.*

* The capitation tax, the ground rent, and the house duty of

the time of the Ptolemies, already existed under the rule of

the native Pharaohs. Brugsch has shown that these taxes are

mentioned in an inscription of the time of Ameuôthes III.

It was not without reason that all the ancients attributed the invention

of geometry to the Egyptians. The perpetual encroachments of the Nile

and the displacements it occasioned, the facility with which it effaced

the boundaries of the fields, and in one summer modified the whole face

of a nome, had forced them from early times to measure with the greatest

exactitude the ground to which they owed their sustenance. The territory

belonging to each town and nome was subjected to repeated surveys made

and co-ordinated by the Royal Administration, thus enabling Pharaoh

to know the exact area of his estates. The unit of measurement was the

arura; that is to say, a square of a hundred cubits, comprising in

round numbers twenty-eight ares.* A considerable staff of scribes and

surveyors was continually occupied in verifying the old measurements

or in making fresh ones, and in recording in the State registers any

changes which might have taken place.** Each estate had its boundaries

marked out by a line of stelas which frequently bore the name of the

tenant at the time, and the date when the landmarks were last fixed.***

* [One “are” equals 100 square metres.--Tr.]

** We learn from the expressions employed in the great

inscription of Beni-Hasan (11. 13--58, 131-148) that the

cadastral survey had existed from the very earliest times;

there are references in it to previous surveys. We find a

surveying scene on the tomb of Zosirkerîsonbû at Thebes,

under the XVIIIth dynasty. Two persons are measuring a field

of wheat by means of a cord; a third notes down the result

of their work.

*** The great inscription of Beni-Hasan tells us of the

stelæ which bounded the principality of the Gazelle on the

North and South, and of those in the plain which marked the

northern boundary of the nome of the Jackal; we also possess

three other stelo which were used by Amenôthes IV. to

indicate the extreme limits of his new city of Khûtniaton.

In addition to the above stele, we also know of two others

belonging to the XIIth dynasty which marked the boundaries

of a private estate, and which are reproduced, one on plate

106, the other in the text of _Monuments divers_, p. 30;

also the stele of Bûhani under Thûtmosis IV.

[Illustration: 125.jpg a boundary stele]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph given by Mariette,

Monuments divers, pl. 47 a. The stele marked the boundary of

the estate given to a priest of the Theban Amon by Pharaoh

Thûtmosis IV. of the XVIIIth dynasty. The original is now in

the Museum at Gizeh.

Once set up, the stele received a name which gave it, as it were, a

living and independent personality. It sometimes recorded the nature

of the soil, its situation, or some characteristic which made it

remarkable--the “Lake of the South,” the “Eastern Meadow,” the “Green

Island,” the “Fisher’s Pool,” the “Willow Plot,” the “Vineyard,” the

“Vine Arbour,” the “Sycamore;” sometimes also it bore the name of

the first master or the Pharaoh under whom it had been erected--the

“Nurse-Phtahhotpû,” the “Verdure-Kheops,” the “Meadow-Didifrî,” the

“Abundance-Sahûri,” “Khafri-Great-among-the Doubles.” Once given, the

name clung to it for centuries, and neither sales, nor redistributions,

nor revolutions, nor changes of dynasty, could cause it to be forgotten.

The officers of the survey inscribed it in their books, together with

the name of the proprietor, those of the owners of adjoining lands,

and the area and nature of the ground. They noted down, to within a

few cubits, the extent of the sand, marshland, pools, canals, groups

of palms, gardens or orchards, vineyards and cornfields,* which it

contained.

* See in the great inscription of Beni-Hasan the passage in

which are enumerated at full length, in a legal document,

the constituent parts of the principality of the Gazelle,

“its watercourses, its fields, its trees, its sands, from

the river to the mountain of the West” (11. 46-53).

The cornland in its turn was divided into several classes, according to

whether it was regularly inundated, or situated above the highest rise

of the water, and consequently dependent on a more or less costly system

of artificial irrigation. All this was so much information of which the

scribes took advantage in regulating the assessment of the land-tax.

Everything tends to make us believe that this tax represented one-tenth

of the gross produce, but the amount of the latter varied. It depended

on the annual rise of the Nile, and it followed the course of it with

almost mathematical exactitude: if there were too much or too little

water, it was immediately lessened, and might even be reduced to nothing

in extreme cases. The king in his capital and the great lords in their

fiefs had set up nilo-meters, by means of which, in the critical weeks,

the height of the rising or subsiding flood was taken daily. Messengers

carried the news of it over the country: the people, kept regularly

informed of what was happening, soon knew what kind of season to expect,

and they could calculate to within very little what they would have to

pay. In theory, the collecting of the tax was based on the actual amount

of land covered by the water, and the produce of it was constantly

varying. In practice it was regulated by taking the average of preceding

years, and deducting from that a fixed sum, which was never departed

from except in extraordinary circumstances.*

* We know that this was so, in so far as the Roman period is

concerned, from a passage in the edict of Tiberius

Alexander. The practice was such a natural one, that I have

no hesitation in tracing it back to the time of the Ancient

Empire; repeatedly condemned as a piece of bad

administration, it reappeared continually. At Beni-Hasan,

the nomarch Amoni boasts that, “when there had been abundant

Niles, and the owners of wheat and barley crops had thriven,

he had not increased the rate of the land-tax,” which seems

to indicate that, so far as he was concerned, he had fixed

the tax to pay his dues without difficulty.

[Illustration: 128.jpg THE LEVYING OF THE TAX: THE TAXPAYER IN THE

SCRIBE’S OFFICE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a picture at Beni-Hasan. This

picture and those which follow it represent a census in the

principality of the Gazelle under the XIIth dynasty as well

as the collection of a tax.

The year would have to be a very bad one before the authorities would

lower the ordinary rate: the State in ancient times was not more willing

to deduct anything from its revenue than the modern State would be.*

* The two decrees of Rosetta and of Canopus, however,

mention reductions granted by the Ptolemies after an

insufficient rise of the Nile.

The payment of taxes was exacted in wheat, durra, beans, and field

produce, which were stored in the granaries of the nome. It would seem

that the previous deduction of one-tenth of the gross amount of the

harvest could not be a heavy burden, and that the wretched fellah ought

to have been in a position on land at a permanent figure, based on the

average of good and bad harvests.

It was not so, however, and the same writers who have given us such a

lamentable picture of the condition of the workmen in the towns, have

painted for us in even darker colours the miseries which overwhelmed the

country people. “Dost thou not recall the picture of the farmer, when

the tenth of his grain is levied? Worms have destroyed half of the

wheat, and the hippopotami have eaten the rest; there are swarms of rats

in the fields, the grasshoppers alight there, the cattle devour, the

little birds pilfer, and if the farmer lose sight for an instant of

what remains upon the ground, it is carried off by robbers;* the thongs,

moreover, which bind the iron and the hoe are worn out, and the team has

died at the plough. It is then that the scribe steps out of the boat at

the landing-place to levy the tithe, and there come the keepers of

the doors of the granary with cudgels and the negroes with ribs of

palm-leaves, who come crying: ‘Come now, corn!’ There is none, and they

throw the cultivator full length upon the ground; bound, dragged to the

canal, they fling him in head first;** his wife is bound with him, his

children are put into chains; the neighbours, in the mean time, leave

him and fly to save their grain.”

* This last danger survives even to the present day. During

part of the year the fellahîn spend the night in their

fields; if they did not see to it, their neighbours would

not hesitate to come and cut their wheat before the harvest,

or root up their vegetables while still immature.

** The same kind of torture is mentioned in the decree of

Harmhabi, in which the lawless soldiery are represented as

“running from house to house, dealing blows right and left

with their sticks, ducking the fellahîn head downwards in

the water, and not leaving one of them with a whole skin.”

This treatment was still resorted to in Egypt not long ago,

in order to extract money from those taxpayers whom beatings

had failed to bring to reason.

One might be tempted to declare that the picture is too dark a one to be

true, did one not know from other sources of the brutal ways of filling

the treasury which Egypt has retained even to the present day. In the

same way as in the town, the stick facilitated the operations of the

tax-collector in the country: it quickly opened the granaries of the

rich, it revealed resources to the poor of which he had been ignorant,

and it only failed in the case of those who had really nothing to give.

Those who were insolvent were not let off even when they had been more

than half killed: they and their families were sent to prison, and they

had to work out in forced labour the amount which they had failed to pay

in current merchandise.*

* This is evident from a passage in the _Sallier Papyrus n°

I_, quoted above, in which we see the taxpayer in fetters,

dragged out to clean the canals, his whole family, wife and

children, accompanying him in bonds.

[Illustration: 130.jpg LEVYING THE TAX: THE TAXPAYER IN THE HANDS OF THE

EXACTORS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a picture on the tomb of Khîti

at Beni-Hasan (cf. Champollion, _Monuments de l’Egypte_, pl.

cccxc. 4; Rosellini, _Monumenti civili_, pl. cxxiv. b).

The collection of the taxes was usually terminated by a rapid revision

of the survey. The scribe once more recorded the dimensions and

character of the domain lands in order to determine afresh the amount

of the tax which should be imposed upon them. It often happened, indeed,

that, owing to some freak of the Nile, a tract of ground which had been

fertile enough the preceding year would be buried under a gravel bed, or

transformed into a marsh. The owners who thus suffered were allowed an

equivalent deduction; as for the farmers, no deductions of the burden

were permitted in their case, but a tract equalling in value that of the

part they had lost was granted to them out of the royal or seignorial

domain, and their property was thus made up to its original worth.

[Illustration: 131.jpg LEVYING THE TAX: THE BASTINADO]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a picture on the tomb of Khîti

at Beni-Hasan.

What the collection of the taxes had begun was almost always brought

to a climax by the _corvées_. However numerous the royal and seignorial

slaves might have been, they were insufficient for the cultivation of

all the lands of the domains, and a part of Egypt must always have lain

fallow, had not the number of workers been augmented by the addition of

those who were in the position of freemen.

This excess of cultivable land was subdivided into portions of equal

dimensions, which were distributed among the inhabitants of neighbouring

villages by the officers of a “regent” nominated for that purpose. Those

dispensed from agricultural service were--the destitute, soldiers on

service and their families, certain _employés_ of the public works, and

servitors of the temple;* all other country-folk without exception

had to submit to it, and one or more portions were allotted to each,

according to his capabilities.** Orders issued at fixed periods called

them together, themselves, their servants and their beasts of burden, to

dig, sow, keep watch in the fields while the harvest was proceeding, to

cut and carry the crops, the whole work being done at their own expense

and to the detriment of their own interests.***

* That the scribes, i.e. the employés of the royal or

princely government, were exempt from enforced labour, is

manifest from the contrast drawn by the letter-writers of

the Sallier and Anastasi Papyri between themselves and the

peasants, or persons belonging to other professions who were

liable to it. The circular of Dorion defines the classes of

soldiers who were either temporarily or permanently exempt

under the Greek kings.

** Several fragments of the Turin papyri contain memoranda

of enforced labour performed on behalf of the temples, and

of lists of persons liable to be called on for such labour.

*** All these details are set forth in the Ptolemaic period,

in the letter to Dorion which refers to a royal edict. As

Signor Lumbroso has well remarked, the Ptolemies merely

copied exactly the misdeeds of the old native governments.

Indeed, we come across frequent allusions to the enforced

labour of men and beasts in inscriptions of the Middle

Empire at Beni-Hasan or at Siût; many of the pictures on the

Memphite tombs show bands of such labourers at work in the

fields of the great landowners or of the king.

[Illustration: 132.jpg COLLOSAL STATUE OF A KING]

As a sort of indemnity, a few allotments were left uncultivated for

their benefit; to these they sent their flocks after the subsidence of

the inundation, for the pasturage on them was so rich that the sheep

were doubly productive in wool and offspring. This was a mere apology

for a wage: the forced labour for the irrigation brought them no

compensation. The dykes which separate the basins, and the network

of canals for distributing the water and irrigating the land, demand

continual attention: every year some need strengthening, others

re-excavating or cleaning out. The men employed in this work pass whole

days standing in the water, scraping up the mud with both hands in order

to fill the baskets of platted leaves, which boys and girls lift on to

their heads and carry to the top of the bank: the semi-liquid contents

ooze through the basket, trickle over their faces and soon coat their

bodies with a black shining mess, disgusting even to look at. Sheikhs

preside over the work, and urge it on with abuse and blows. When the

gangs of workmen had toiled all day, with only an interval of two hours

about noon for a siesta and a meagre pittance of food, the poor wretches

slept on the spot, in the open air, huddled one against another and but

ill protected by their rags from the chilly nights. The task was so hard

a one, that malefactors, bankrupts, and prisoners of war were condemned

to it; it wore out so many hands that the free peasantry were scarcely

ever exempt. Having returned to their homes, they were not called until

the next year to any established or periodic _corvée_, but many an

irregular one came and surprised them in the midst of their work, and

forced them to abandon all else to attend to the affairs of king or

lord. Was a new chamber to be added to some neighbouring temple, were

materials wanted to strengthen or rebuild some piece of wall which had

been undermined by the inundation, orders were issued to the engineers

to go and fetch a stated quantity of limestone or sandstone, and the

peasants were commanded to assemble at the nearest quarry to cut

the blocks from it, and if needful to ship and convey them to their

destination. Or perhaps the sovereign had caused a gigantic statue of

himself to be carved, and a few hundred men were requisitioned to haul

it to the place where he wished it to be set up. The undertaking ended

in a gala, and doubtless in a distribution of food and drink: the

unfortunate creatures who had been got together to execute the work

could not always have felt fitly compensated for the precious time they

had lost, by one day of drunkenness and rejoicing.

[Illustration: 136.jpg COLORED SCULPTURES IN THE PALACE]

We may ask if all these corvées were equally legal? Even if some of them

were illegal, the peasant on whom they fell could not have found the

means to escape from them, nor could he have demanded legal reparation

for the injury which they caused him. Justice, in Egypt and in the whole

Oriental world, necessarily emanates from political authority, and is

only one branch of the administration amongst others, in the hands

of the lord and his representatives. Professional magistrates were

unknown--men brought up to the study of law, whose duty it was to ensure

the observance of it, apart from any other calling--but the same men

who commanded armies, offered sacrifices, and assessed or received

taxes, investigated the disputes of ordinary citizens, or settled the

differences which arose between them and the representatives of the

lords or of the Pharaoh. In every town and village, those who held by

birth or favour the position of governor were ex-officio invested with

the right of administering justice. For a certain number of days in the

month, they sat at the gate of the town or of the building which served

as their residence, and all those in the town or neighbourhood possessed

of any title, position, or property, the superior priesthood of the

temples, scribes who had advanced or grown old in office, those

in command of the militia or the police, the heads of divisions or

corporations, the “qonbîtiû,” the “people of the angle,” might if

they thought fit take their place beside them, and help them to decide

ordinary lawsuits. The police were mostly recruited from foreigners and

negroes, or Bedouin belonging to the Nubian tribe of the Mâzaiû. The

litigants appeared at the tribunal, and waited under the superintendence

of the police until their turn came to speak: the majority of the

questions were decided in a few minutes by a judgment by which there was

no appeal; only the more serious cases necessitated a cross-examination

and prolonged discussion. All else was carried on before this

patriarchal jury as in our own courts of justice, except that

the inevitable stick too often elucidated the truth and cut short

discussions: the depositions of the witnesses, the speeches on both

sides, the examination of the documents, could not proceed without the

frequent taking of oaths “by the life of the king” or “by the favour of

the gods,” in which the truth often suffered severely. Penalties were

varied somewhat--the bastinado, imprisonment, additional days of work

for the corvée, and, for grave offences, forced labour in the Ethiopian

mines, the loss of nose and ears, and finally, death by strangulation,

by beheading,* by empalement, and at the stake.

* The only known instance of an execution by hanging is that

of Pharaoh’s chief baker, in Gen. xl. 19, 22, xli. 13; but

in a tomb at Thebes we see two human victims executed by

strangulation. The Egyptian hell contains men who have been

decapitated, and the block on which the damned were beheaded

is frequently mentioned in the texts.

Criminals of high rank obtained permission to carry out on themselves

the sentence passed upon them, and thus avoided by suicide the shame of

public execution. Before tribunals thus constituted, the fellah who came

to appeal against the exactions of which he was the victim had little

chance of obtaining a hearing: had not the scribe who had overtaxed him,

or who had imposed a fresh corvée upon him, the right to appear among

the Judges to whom he addressed himself? Nothing, indeed, prevented

him from appealing from the latter to his feudal lord, and from him to

Pharaoh, but such an appeal would be for him a mere delusion. When he

had left his village and presented his petition, he had many delays

to encounter before a solution could be arrived at; and if the adverse

party were at all in favour at court, or could command any influence,

the sovereign decision would confirm, even if it did not aggravate, the

sentence of the previous judges. In the mean while the peasants’

land remained uncultivated, his wife and children bewailed their

wretchedness, and the last resources of the family were consumed in

proceedings and delays: it would have been better for him at the outset

to have made up his mind to submit without resistance to a fate from

which he could not escape.

In spite of taxes, requisitions, and forced labour, the fellahîn came

off fairly well, when the chief to whom they belonged proved a kind

master, and did not add the exactions of his own personal caprice to

those of the State. The inscriptions which princes caused to be devoted

to their own glorification, are so many enthusiastic panegyrics dealing

only with their uprightness and kindness towards the poor and lowly.

Every one of them represents himself as faultless: “the staff of support

to the aged, the foster father of the children, the counsellor of the

unfortunate, the refuge in which those who suffer from the cold in

Thebes may warm themselves, the bread of the afflicted which never

failed in the city of the South.” Their solicitude embraced everybody

and everything: “I have caused no child of tender age to mourn; I have

despoiled no widow; I have driven away no tiller of the soil; I have

taken no workmen away from their foreman for the public works; none

have been unfortunate about me, nor starving in my time. When years of

scarcity arose, as I had cultivated all the lands of the nome of the

Gazelle to its northern and southern boundaries, causing its inhabitants

to live, and creating provisions, none who were hungry were found there,

for I gave to the widow as well as to the woman who had a husband, and I

made no distinction between high and low in all that I gave. If, on the

contrary, there were high Niles, the possessors of lands became rich in

all things, for I did not raise the rate of the tax upon the fields.”

The canals engrossed all the prince’s attention; he cleaned them out,

enlarged them, and dug fresh ones, which were the means of bringing

fertility and plenty into the most remote corners of his property. His

serfs had a constant supply of clean water at their door, and were no

longer content with such food as durra; they ate wheaten bread daily.

His vigilance and severity were such that the brigands dared no longer

appear within reach of his arm, and his soldiers kept strict discipline:

“When night fell, whoever slept by the roadside blessed me, and was [in

safety] as a man in his own house; the fear of my police protected him,

the cattle remained in the fields as in the stable; the thief was as the

abomination of the god, and he no more fell upon the vassal, so that the

latter no more complained, but paid exactly the dues of his domain, for

love” of the master who had procured for him this freedom from care.

This theme might be pursued at length, for the composers of epitaphs

varied it with remarkable cleverness and versatility of imagination. The

very zeal which they display in describing the lord’s virtues betrays

how precarious was the condition of his subjects. There was nothing to

hinder the unjust prince or the prevaricating officer from ruining and

ill-treating as he chose the people who were under his authority. He

had only to give an order, and the corvée fell upon the proprietors of a

village, carried off their slaves and obliged them to leave their lands

uncultivated; should they declare that they were incapable of paying

the contributions laid on them, the prison opened for them and their

families. If a dyke were cut, or the course of a channel altered, the

nome was deprived of water: prompt and inevitable ruin came upon the

unfortunate inhabitants, and their property, confiscated by the treasury

in payment of the tax, passed for a small consideration into the hands

of the scribe or of the dishonest administrator. Two or three years of

neglect were almost enough to destroy a system of irrigation: the canals

became filled with mud, the banks crumbled, the inundation either failed

to reach the ground, or spread over it too quickly and lay upon it

too long. Famine soon followed with its attendant sicknesses: men and

animals died by the hundred, and it was the work of nearly a whole

generation to restore prosperity to the district.

The lot of the fellah of old was, as we have seen, as hard as that

of the fellah of to-day. He himself felt the bitterness of it, and

complained at times, or rather the scribes complained for him, when with

selfish complacency they contrasted their calling with his. He had to

toil the whole year round,--digging, sowing, working the shadouf from

morning to night for weeks, hastening at the first requisition to the

corvée, paying a heavy and cruel tax,--all without even the certainty

of enjoying what remained to him in peace, or of seeing his wife and

children profit by it. So great, however, was the elasticity of his

temperament that his misery was not sufficient to depress him: those

monuments upon which his life is portrayed in all its minutias,

represent him as animated with inexhaustible cheerfulness. The summer

months ended, the ground again becomes visible, the river retires into

its bed, the time of sowing is at hand: the peasant takes his team and

his implements with him and goes off to the fields. In many places, the

soil, softened by the water, offers no resistance, and the hoe easily

turns it up; elsewhere it is hard, and only yields to the plough. While

one of the farm-servants, almost bent double, leans his whole weight

on the handles to force the ploughshare deep into the soil, his comrade

drives the oxen and encourages them by his songs: these are only two

or three short sentences, set to an unvarying chant, and with the time

beaten on the back of the nearest animal. Now and again he turns round

towards his comrade and encourages him: “Lean hard!”--“Hold fast!”

[Illustration: 142a.jpg TWO FELLAHÎN WORK THE SHADOUF IN A GARDEN]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

The sower follows behind and throws handfuls of grain into the furrow: a

flock of sheep or goats brings up the rear, and as they walk, they tread

the seed into the ground. The herdsmen crack their whips and sing some

country song at the top of their voices,--based on the complaint of some

fellah seized by the corvée to clean out a canal. “The digger is in the

water with the fish,--he talks to the silurus, and exchanges greetings

with the oxyrrhynchus:--West! your digger is a digger from the West!”*

* The silurus is the electrical fish of the Nile. The text

ironically hints that the digger, up to his waist in water,

engaged in dredging the dykes or repairing a bank swept away

by an inundation, is liable at any moment to salute, i.e. to

meet with a silurus or an oxyrrhynchus ready to attack him;

he is doomed to death, and this fact the couplet expresses

by the words, “West! your digger is a digger from the West.”

The West was the region of the tombs; and the digger, owing

to the dangers of his calling, was on his way thither.

[Illustration: 142b.jpg CUTTING AND CARRYING THE HARVEST]

All this takes place under the vigilant eye of the master: as soon as

his attention is relaxed, the work slackens, quarrels arise, and

the spirit of idleness and theft gains the ascendency. Two men have

unharnessed their team. One of them quickly milks one of the cows, the

other holds the animal and impatiently awaits his turn: “Be quick, while

the farmer is not there.” They run the risk of a beating for a potful

of milk. The weeks pass, the corn has ripened, the harvest begins. The

fellahîn, armed with a short sickle, cut or rather saw the stalks, a

handful at a time. As they advance in line, a flute-player plays them

captivating tunes, a man joins in with his voice marking the rhythm by

clapping his hands, the foreman throwing in now and then a few words of

exhortation: “What lad among you, when the season is over, can say:

‘It is I who say it, to thee and to my comrades, you are all of you but

idlers!’--Who among you can say: ‘An active lad for the job am I!’” A

servant moves among the gang with a tall jar of beer, offering it to

those who wish for it. “Is it not good!” says he; and the one who drinks

answers politely: “‘Tis true, the master’s beer is better than a cake

of durra!” The sheaves once bound, are carried to the singing of fresh

songs addressed to the donkeys who bear them: “Those who quit the ranks

will be tied, those who roll on the ground will be beaten,--Geeho!

then.” And thus threatened, the ass trots forward. Even when a tragic

element enters the scene, and the bastinado is represented, the

sculptor, catching the bantering spirit of the people among whom he

lives, manages to insinuate a vein of comedy. A peasant, summarily

condemned for some misdeed, lies flat upon the ground with bared back:

two friends take hold of his arms, and two others his legs, to keep him

in the proper position. His wife or his son intercedes for him to the

man with the stick: “For mercy’s sake strike on the ground!” And as a

fact, the bastinado was commonly rather a mere form of chastisement than

an actual punishment: the blows, dealt with apparent ferocity, missed

their aim and fell upon the earth; the culprit howled loudly, but was

let off with only a few bruises.

An Arab writer of the Middle Ages remarks, not without irony, that the

Egyptians were perhaps the only people in the world who never kept any

stores of provisions by them, but each one went daily to the market to

buy the pittance for his family. The improvidence which he laments

over in his contemporaries had been handed down from their most remote

ancestors. Workmen, fellahîn, _employés_, small townsfolk, all lived

from hand to mouth in the Egypt of the Pharaohs. Pay-days were almost

everywhere days of rejoicing and extra eating: no one spared either

the grain, oil, or beer of the treasury, and copious feasting continued

unsparingly, as long as anything was left of their wages. As their

resources were almost always exhausted before the day of distribution

once more came round, beggary succeeded to fulness of living, and a part

of the population was literally starving for several days. This almost

constant alternation of abundance and dearth had a reactionary

influence on daily work: there were scarcely any seignorial workshops or

undertakings which did not come to a standstill every month on account

of the exhaustion of the workmen, and help had to be provided for the

starving in order to avoid popular seditions. Their improvidence,

like their cheerfulness, was perhaps an innate trait in the national

character: it was certainly fostered and developed by the system of

government adopted by Egypt from the earliest times. What incentive was

there for a man of the people to calculate his resources and to lay up

for the future, when he knew that his wife, his children, his cattle,

his goods, all that belonged to him, and himself to boot, might be

carried off at any moment, without his having the right or the power

to resent it? He was born, he lived, and he died in the possession of a

master.

[Illustration: 147.jpg A FLOCK OF GOATS AND THE SONG OF A GOATHERD]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Émil Brugsch-

Bey. The picture is taken from the tomb of Ti.

The lands or houses which his father had left him, were his merely on

sufferance, and he enjoyed them only by permission of his lord. Those

which he acquired by his own labour went to swell his master’s domain.

If he married and had sons, they were but servants for the master from

the moment they were brought into the world. Whatever he might enjoy

to-day, would his master allow him possession of it to-morrow? Even life

in the world beyond did not offer him much more security or liberty:

he only entered it in his master’s service and to do his bidding; he

existed in it on tolerance, as he had lived upon this earth, and he

found there no rest or freedom unless he provided himself abundantly

with “respondents” and charmed statuettes. He therefore concentrated his

mind and energies on the present moment, to make the most of it as of

almost the only thing which belonged to him: he left to his master the

task of anticipating and providing for the future. In truth, his masters

were often changed; now the lord of one town, now that of another; now a

Pharaoh of the Memphite or Theban dynasties, now a stranger installed

by chance upon the throne of Horns. The condition of the people never

changed; the burden which crushed them was never lightened, and whatever

hand happened to hold the stick, it never fell the less heavily upon

their backs.

[Illustration: 148.jpg TAILPIECE]

Volume II., Part B.

_THE MEMPHITE EMPIRE_

_THE ROYAL PYRAMID BUILDERS: KHEOPS, KHEPHREN, MYKERINOS--MEMPHITE

LITERATURE AND ART--EXTENSION OF EGYPT TOWARDS THE SOUTH, AND THE

CONQUEST OP NUBIA BY THE PHARAOHS._

_Snofrûi--The desert which separates Africa from Asia: its physical

configuration, its inhabitants, their incursions into Egypt, and their

relations with the Egyptians--The peninsula of Sinai: the turquoise

and copper mines, the mining works of the Pharaohs--The two tombs of

Snofrûi: the pyramid and the mastabas of Mêdûm, the statues of Bahotpû

and his wife Nofrît._

_Kheops, Ehephren, and Myherinos--The Great Pyramid: its construction

and internal arrangements--The pyramids of Khephren and Myherinos; the

rifling of them--Legend about the royal pyramid builders: the impiety

of Kheops and Khephren, the piety of Myherinos; the brick pyramid of

Asychis--The materials employed in building, and the quarries of Turah;

the plans, the worship of the royal “double;” the Arab legends about

the guardian genii of the pyramids._

_The kings of the fifth dynasty: Ùsirkaf, Sahûri, Kalciû, and the

romance about their advent--The relations of the Delta to the peoples

of the North: the shipping and maritime commerce of the Egyptians--Nubia

and its tribes: the Ûaûaiû and the Mazaiû, Pûanît, the dwarfs and

the Danga--Egyptian literature: the Proverbs of Phtahhotpû--The arts:

architecture, statuary and its chief examples, bas-reliefs, painting,

industrial art._

_The development of Egyptian feudalism, and the advent of the sixth

dynasty: Ati, Imhotpâ, Teti--Papi I. and his minister Uni: the affair

of Queen Amitsi; the wars against the Hirû-Shâîtû and the country of

Tiba--Metesûphis I. and the second Papi: progress of the Egyptian power

in Nubia--the lords of Elephantine; Hirkhûf, Papinakhîti: the way

for conquest prepared by their explorations, the occupation of the

Oases--The pyramids of Saqqâra: Metesûphis the Second--Nitokris and the

legend concerning her--Preponderance of the feudal lords, and fall of

the Memphite dynasty._

[Illustration: 151.jpg PAGE IMAGE]