Chapter I: The Political Constitution of Egypt (3)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.