IV. EGYPT, THE KINGDOM OF THE TWO LANDS

The ancient Egyptians said that Menes, who first ruled at This,[131] brought the whole of the land under his control. They designated him as the first king of a first dynasty and thus unequivocally marked the unification of their land as the beginning of their history. If we allow for the telescoping of events by which tradition often credits a single person with the achievements of two or more generations, we may say that archaeological discoveries have corroborated this tradition. The establishment of the single monarchy appears, indeed, as the political aspect of the birth of Egyptian civilization.

We possess contemporary monuments on which two Upper Egyptian kings—“Scorpion”[132] and Narmer—record their conquests in the north country. A votive macehead (Fig. 26) shows the earlier of the two—Scorpion—at the opening of a canal. He wears the tall white crown which in historical times symbolized dominion over Upper Egypt. Above this main scene appear emblems of divinities placed on standards which serve as gallows to rekhyt birds; these birds, in all probability, designate inhabitants of Lower Egypt.[133] 91 Scorpion seems to have subjected the whole Nile valley, for his monuments have been found as far north as the quarries of Turah, near Cairo.

Narmer, however, extended his power even over the marshlands of the Delta and appears, therefore, as the true prototype of the legendary Menes. Among several monuments of his which have been preserved, a large votive palette of slate (Figs. 27, 28) is the most important. It seems to be a concrete record of the unification of Egypt or, at least, of an important stage in its realization. On one side, Narmer, wearing the crown of Upper Egypt, destroys a chieftain of the northern marshes. On the other side, the king, now wearing the crown of Lower Egypt, inspects a number of beheaded enemies. Thus Narmer is shown as the first “Lord of the Two Lands.”

But it would be a mistake to read the Narmer palette as a mere tale of conquest. The “unification of the Two Lands” was, to the Egyptians, not only the beginning of their history, but also the manifestation of a preordained order which extended far beyond the political sphere and bound society and nature in an indestructible harmony. Of this order Pharaoh was the champion. Throughout historical times the texts proclaimed this conviction, and pictorial art expressed it by great compositions in which the towering figure of the king destroys, single-handed, the misguided wretches who have sided with chaos in opposing Pharaoh’s 92 regimen. It is significant that this aspect of Pharaoh’s power should be expressed in art for the first time in the reign of Narmer.[134]

To appreciate the novelty of the design of the Narmer palette, we must investigate its antecedents. Material and shape proclaim it as a specimen of a common type of toilet article: throughout predynastic times slate palettes (Fig. 4) had been used for the grinding of a green powder which, put on the lids, protected the eyes against glare and infection. On the Narmer palette, too, a round space is set aside for this purpose, even though the size of the object seems to preclude actual use. Now palettes, as well as combs, knife-handles, and so on, had been embellished with reliefs during the last phase of the predynastic period. Among such decorated objects, two treat new subjects. The first, an ivory knife-handle found at Gebel el Arak in Upper Egypt (Figs. 23, 24), shows, on one side, the pursuit of game, a motif which recurs on other objects of the same age; on the other side is depicted a battle. The second, the Hunters’ palette (Fig. 25), shows two groups of men who have joined forces in an attempt to destroy lions, perhaps because these infested wasteland which had to be reclaimed. The two groups are identified by standards carried in their midst.

The battle scene and the hunting scene are without parallels in predynastic times. But they are likewise unconnected with later Egyptian art. Their novelty consists in the rendering of communal action, their un-Egyptian character in the manner of that rendering. Both knife-handle and palette present a faithful record 93 of the actual course of events: groups of men are engaged in combat or move together towards game. We must suppose that some of the figures stand for leaders or chieftains, but there is nothing by which we can identify them. Each scene shows the melee characteristic of the occasion. But to the Egyptian of historical times such a veristic rendering was totally unacceptable. It hid the true significance of occurrences by merely rendering their outward appearance. However large the masses that moved in battle, built temples or pyramids, went into the deserts to quarry stone or mine gold, they were moved by the will of their divine ruler. Art was adequate to its purpose only if it stressed this fact. It did so by using, throughout two and a half millennia, variants of Narmer’s composition. Note that on the macehead of Scorpion, the classical Egyptian viewpoint is not yet rendered in its purity: men are shown to assist the ruler;[135] and the strangled rekhyt-birds swing from the standards of the gods. On some other fragments which antedate Narmer[136] the divine standards are provided with hands to show their active participation in a ruler’s victory. But on the Narmer palette, as on all monuments of historical times, Pharaoh acts alone. The standards of the gods have become adjuncts to his progress (Fig. 28), and men are merely followers; no act of theirs can be significant beside his own.

If the characteristic Egyptian conception of kingship first received pictorial expression under Narmer, it found its first literary embodiment in a famous text which, from internal evidence, must likewise be assigned 94 to the formative years of Egypt.[137] This is the so-called Memphite Theology. The lasting value of the theory of kingship which it expounded is shown by the fact that the only copy now extant was made as late as the reign of king Shabaka in the eighth century B.C. Moreover, it relates the theory with an act of Menes, the founding of Memphis. The text concerns us, therefore, because of the date of its inception; the act which it presupposes; and the interpretation which it offers.

The significance of the age of our text is evident. In view of the overriding importance of the institution of kingship for Egyptian society, the formulation of a theory of kingship at the very beginning of the monarchy aptly illustrates the emergence of the “form” of Egyptian civilization at that critical time.

Reference to the founding of Memphis is made in our text by implication: its tenor is to emphasize the profound significance of the city. Thus the content corroborates the linguistic evidence for an early date of the document, since a trustworthy tradition, preserved by Herodotus, ascribed the founding of Memphis to Menes. The text expounds the theology of the new foundation. Of the actual course of events the following account survived into Greek times: it was believed that Menes threw up a dike across the western part of the valley north of the Fayum, thus compelling a branch of the Nile to rejoin the main stream, and reclaiming fifty miles of valley. On the newly won land he then founded a royal castle, a little to the south of modern Cairo. It was called “The White Walls,” and thus characterized as an Upper Egyptian foundation—for white was the colour of the mother-goddess 95 Nekhbet, the protectress of Upper Egypt and of the king’s house. But the new settlement was not really a capital of the united country. The successors of Menes in the First and Second dynasties did not even reside there. They seem to have maintained their residence at This and were buried in neighbouring Abydos,[138] within the district whence their ancestors had come. Memphis was originally—and remained for fifteen hundred years almost exclusively (see pp. 97 f.)—a sacred city, the locus where events of unparalleled importance for the Egyptian commonwealth had taken place. The Memphite Theology deals precisely with these events.

We have elsewhere attempted to elucidate the text, which is too abstruse to be discussed here.[139] It translates history into mythology and purports to reveal thereby the transcendent significance of Menes’ achievement. Later generations acknowledged the validity of these early teachings by their deeds: each new king came to Memphis to celebrate the “Union of the Two Lands” and to perform the “Circuit of the White Wall,” as Menes was thought to have done when he had constructed his royal castle.[140]

The state which Menes created was habitually referred to as “The Two Lands,” a designation apt to be misunderstood; we meet here—as so often in Egypt—a term with cosmological rather than political connotations. 96 We have shown elsewhere[141] that the dualistic mould of the “Kingdom of Upper and Lower Egypt” satisfied the Egyptian mode of thought which conceived totality as an equilibrium of opposites. A meaningful symmetry was imposed upon the unified land, but it had no basis in fact, for Scorpion and Narmer conquered the north piecemeal, as far as we know. Nor is there any sign of resentment against the north. On the contrary, northerners were found among the highest in the land: two queens of the First Dynasty reveal a Delta origin by their names, and officials of that dynasty, buried near their royal masters at Abydos, exemplify the Lower Egyptian physical type.[142]

The outside world did not challenge the exalted view of their state which the Egyptians entertained. None of their neighbours threatened the safety of “The Two Lands”; all of them disposed of natural resources which seemed predestined to be offered as tribute to the divine ruler of Egypt. We have seen that the southern littoral of the Mediterranean was not a desert in antiquity. Narmer’s successors had to consolidate their northern frontiers even though they prevailed with ease over the neighbouring populations. Some had to fight the Libyans in the west. At the malachite mines in Sinai, Semerkhet recorded his victory over the local Bedouin on a rock-stela repeating the main motif of Narmer’s palette. Another king of the First Dynasty had an ivory gaming piece engraved with the picture of a bound Syrian captive. The roofing beams of the royal tombs at Abydos consist of coniferous wood imported from the Lebanon. Jugs of Syrian and Palestinian manufacture have been found 97 in these tombs and in those of dignitaries buried at Saqqara: they probably served as containers of olive oil. Gold, ivory, ostrich feathers, and ebony came through Nubia from inner Africa.

However, in this phase of Egyptian civilization, signs of contact with a yet more distant region are also found. They differ in character from those we have just mentioned. Libya, Sinai, and Syria supplied the Nile valley with much-needed raw materials; but Sumer supplied ideas. Imported Mesopotamian cylinder seals have been found in Egypt, and the same odd form of seal was adopted in Egypt. The earliest Egyptian brick buildings resemble the Protoliterate temples of Mesopotamia in all significant matters of technique. Egyptian art—even in the Narmer palette—used Mesopotamian motifs. Even writing seems to have been due to the stimulus derived from acquaintance with Mesopotamian writing of the end of the Protoliterate period.

We have dealt with these matters in an Appendix. For although it is certain that contact between the two great centres of the Near East took place, it did not affect the social and political sphere with which we are concerned here. In fact, if we look back over the evidence presented in this chapter, the autochthonous character of the Egyptian development is unmistakable. The basic structure of the society which emerged was the direct opposite of that which came into being in Mesopotamia. In Egypt the great change did not lead to a concentration of social activity in urban centres. It is true that there were cities in Egypt, but, with the single exception of the capital, these were no more than market towns for the countryside. Paradoxically enough, the capital was less permanent than the towns in the provinces, for in principle it served for only a single reign. Each pharaoh took up residence 98 near the site chosen for his tomb, where, during the best part of his lifetime, the work on the pyramid and its temple continued, while the government functioned in the neighbouring city. But after his death the place was abandoned to the priests and officials who maintained his cult and managed his mortuary estate, unless the new king decided to continue in residence because the adjoining desert offered a suitable site for his own tomb. Until the middle of the second millennium B.C. (when Thebes assumed a metropolitan character) there was no truly permanent capital in Egypt, a situation which clearly demonstrates the insignificant role played by the concept of the city in the political thought of the Egyptians.[143] In Mesopotamia, on the other hand, even the most powerful rulers of the land styled themselves rulers of cities and functioned as such, in Akkad or Ur, in Babylon or in Assur.

The contrast in social structure and the divergent conceptions of kingship can be seen as correlated. The city as the ultimate form of political organization is inconceivable without a ruler who remains potentially one among many; conversely, absolute power entails a unified realm. We did, therefore, not lose sight of our theme when we discussed in this chapter the origin of the myths and rites of kingship under Menes; nor is it due to the accident of discovery that we studied the birth of Egyptian civilization with the aid of royal monuments. For Pharaoh symbolized the community in its temporal and transcendent aspects, and, 99 for the Egyptians, civilized life gravitated around the divine king.

Our discussion of the rise of the monarchical society of Egypt must now be complemented by a concrete description. The administration of the country[144] functioned on the strength of delegated royal power. Pharaoh was the living fount of law, governing by decrees which were formulated as inspired decisions.[145] In early times the government assumed a somewhat patriarchal character. Sons and other close relatives of Pharaoh acted as his principal advisors and aids. Distant relatives and descendants of past rulers were found in minor government posts. At first no single minister stood between the king and the various branches of the administration. There was no Grand Vizier. Under the Fourth Dynasty, however, the vizierate was introduced as the apex of the bureaucracy; but it was, at first, occupied by a prince of royal blood.

Even in later times the king reserved certain prerogatives, such as the imposition of the death penalty and 100 of mutilations; and the vizier had an audience each morning to report on the state of the land. Nevertheless, the vizier’s power of initiative was very great. He was Chief Justice, Head of the Archives, and, in fact, of every government department. His messengers travelled through the country carrying his orders to the local administrators and reporting back to him on the conditions they observed. One of his designations was “to whom is reported all that is and is not.” In view of the overwhelming importance of agriculture for the state, every transaction involving land had to be registered at the Vizier’s office. After the Sixth Dynasty the vizier was, probably for practical reasons, “Mayor of the Town,” that is, head and military governor of the royal residence.

The administration which functioned under the vizier was divided into several departments. First among these was the Exchequer, headed by the “Treasurer of the god (i.e. king).” This was the central depot for all imposts and duties owed to the state. In view of the ideal form of the Dual Monarchy it was called “The Two White Houses,” but in practice there was no division. It had branches with storehouses throughout the country where the dues were collected and from where the central treasury was supplied. The administration was highly centralized; and the Treasurer was responsible, not only for the collection and disposal of the native produce paid in as taxes, but also for the royal expeditions which, as we shall see, brought new materials such as copper, malachite, wood, or gold, from abroad. Therefore he sometimes bore the title “general” or “admiral” and had troops and ships at his disposal.

The second important government department was the Ministry of Agriculture, in which a “Chief of the Fields” dealt with purely agricultural matters, while 101 a “Master of (the King’s) Largesse” was concerned with everything pertaining to livestock.

These government departments were not rigidly separated, and an administrative career was likely to take a man through all of them, as well as through the local administration. Promising young men, or sons of those whom the king trusted or favoured, were educated at court, and then acquired administrative experience by passing through a succession of posts which they filled with the assistance of knowledgeable scribes of the relevant departments. Methen (Fourth Dynasty) was a Royal Kinsman who acted successively as Scribe of the Exchequer, apparently also as Physician, then as District Chief, Judge, Supervisor of all the flax of the king, to end as nomarch or ruler of a province. In this last function he administered three provinces in succession—which proves that the administration was independent of local worthies. At the end of the Old Kingdom the nomarchs had achieved some sort of permanence by regularly obtaining their offices for their sons as their successors, and so they developed into a landed gentry. At first, however, they were royal officials who were moved from one post to another, who had no pretence to independence and no local ties. Their affinities and interests—as those of all officials—were with the court; and Methen remained until the end “Master of the King’s Hunt,” a purely courtly function.

Neither the several departments of the government nor the central and local administrations were clearly delimited, and their province remained ill-defined until the end. It has been pointed out, for instance,[146] that, under the New Kingdom, tribute from abroad could be received upon arrival in Egypt by the “Treasurer of the god” as head of the Exchequer, by 102 the “Supervisor of the Treasury,” his subordinate, by lower officials of the Exchequer, by the vizier, by high military commanders, or by the chief priest of Amon. This fluidity of competence is simply due to the fact that all authority was delegated royal power and hence comprehensive in its very nature. There was similarly a vagueness of demarcation between the central and the local authorities; and when Seti I (Nineteenth Dynasty) issued a decree commanding that the temple of Abydos should receive its shipments of gold from Nubia without being subject to tolls and other dues normally levied from ships in transit, he had to address his decree to twelve different classes of officials, starting with the vizier and so down to “the mayors and the controllers of camps in Upper and Lower Egypt ... every inspector belonging to the king’s estate and every person sent on a mission to Nubia.”[147] For local officers, no less than those of the central government, represented Pharaoh. A nomarch of the Fifth Dynasty, Nesutnefer,[148] is marked by his titles as “Leader of the Land (i.e. province),” which probably meant that he was the head of the provincial administration in all its branches. He was “Chief of Fortifications,” which meant that he was head of the police as well as responsible for the guarding of the frontiers of his province against desert tribes. He was “Ruler of the King’s People,” namely, of the serfs and tenants, bailiffs and stewards, craftsmen, scribes, fishermen, and so on, who were employed on the royal domains within his province, whether they were free or bond. Finally, he was called “Chief of Commands,” which meant that orders from the king or the vizier went to him and that he was responsible for their being carried out in his province.

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In the nomarchs we find an element most dangerous to the unity of the state. Under the Old Kingdom there was, at first, no question of any power opposing the king. Nesutnefer, whose office we have just described, was twice transferred to another province. But the kings rewarded their faithful servants with gifts of land; and, at the same time, officials pressed for hereditary appointments. Officially this claim was never admitted, but in practice there was an advantage in letting a son succeed his father, since the loyalty of the incumbent of an office was then ensured and his successor was certain to receive most careful professional training. However, the two tendencies together changed the relation between the great officials and the king in the course of time. Hereditary offices and property turned the officials into landed proprietors who were no longer entirely dependent upon their function at court,[149] although, as long as the central power remained strong, Pharaoh could cancel all rights to land or to office at any time. Nevertheless, when the central administration collapsed completely at the end of the Sixth Dynasty, the hereditary landowners were in a position to assume responsibility for the maintenance of rule and order in their districts. The manors of their estates were turned into miniature courts. This situation flouted every native theory and practice of government, and it did not outlast the period of confusion. The kings of the Twelfth Dynasty restored centralized government.

It is possible to gain a clear idea of the mentality of the Egyptian official, since many texts define the norms of his behaviour. The ideal official was “the silent 104 man,” who is respectful of established authority and just, since maat (which means truth, justice, rightness) is part of that world order of which his royal master is the champion. The “silent man”[150] is, therefore, not the meek sufferer, but the wise, self-possessed, well-adapted man, modest and self-effacing up to a point, but deliberate and firm in the awareness that he is thoroughly in harmony with the world in which he lives.

We cannot draw a corresponding picture of the common people of Egypt. Since they were illiterate, they are known to us only in descriptions of peasant life from the schools of scribes; and these are tendentious, singing the advantages of a “soft” job as an encouragement to the pupils involved in the arduous task of mastering the script. Notwithstanding the smug complacency of these texts and the evident satisfaction which the writers found in parodying every employment other than their own, the section dealing with the peasantry is worth quoting since it pictures well enough the farmer’s lot under inefficient or corrupt administrators:

Remember you not the condition of the cultivator faced with the registering of the harvest tax, when the snake has carried off half the corn and the hippopotamus has devoured the rest? The mice abound in the fields. The locusts descend. The cattle devour. The sparrows bring disaster upon the cultivator. The remainder that is on the threshing floor is at an end, it falls to the thieves. The value of the hired cattle (?) is lost. The yoke of oxen has died while threshing and ploughing.

And now the scribe lands on the river bank and is about to register the harvest tax. The janitors carry staves and the Nubians (policemen) rods of palm, and they say, “Hand over the corn,” though there is none. The cultivator is 105 beaten all over, he is bound and thrown into the well, soused, and dipped head downwards. His wife has been bound in his presence, his children are in fetters. His neighbours abandon him and are fled.[151]

If such brutality had been the rule, it is clear that Egyptian society could not have survived. Agriculturalists are inevitably the prey of occasional calamities because they are dependent on weather and water. But if disasters follow one another frequently without relief, or if oppression by those in power exceeds a certain limit, there is no inducement for the peasant to continue his labours at all. He takes to flight or to revolt. We have seen why the texts used in the scribal schools emphasized the shadow-side of the peasant’s lot. Moreover, we should remember that the humdrum normal life of the rural population offered no interest to the literati. The elementary satisfactions of a life wedded to nature, its crafty game of hiding assets from the bureaucrats, its tough endurance of injustice, the latent power of its indispensability—all these did not supply the scribal schools with material for the florid compositions which were their pride.

It was otherwise with the sculptors and painters. These men, charged with depicting on the walls of the great tombs the various rural activities from which the sustenance of the owner, in the next world, as in this, derived,[152] rendered these with the liveliest interest. Their work (Figs. 29, 30) presents to us a gay, light-hearted people, resembling in many respects the modern fellahin who similarly live on the verge of poverty under hardship and oppression. In the tombs we 106 see fishermen and herdsmen at their tasks, joking with one another (the words are sometimes rendered over their images). Harvesters move in a row, rhythmically swinging their sickles to the tune of a song which is accompanied by a man with a long reed pipe (Fig. 29).[153] Women bring food to their menfolk; two little girls squabble, while a third draws a thorn from the foot of her friend; a shepherd dozes under a tree, his dog asleep beside him (Fig. 30);[154] another herdsman refreshes himself from a goatskin bottle.

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None of these people was free; not a single Egyptian was, in our sense of the word, free. No individual could call in question a hierarchy of authority which culminated in a living god. But it must not be forgotten that the reverse of freedom, isolation of the individual with or without “inalienable rights,” was likewise lacking in Egypt. And servitude loses much of its sting if authority rests with those to whom faith has attributed the power of safeguarding the existence of society. Moreover, if it was true that all were at the disposal of the divine ruler and his officials, it was also true that even the lowliest might appeal to him[155] and claim what was “right”—maat (justice, right, and truth)—by which the ruler and the other gods were said to live and which informed, or was supposed to inform, his functionaries.

There were no castes, and men of simple origin might rise to the highest posts. The life-story of one Uni under three successive kings of the Sixth Dynasty shows that even lower officials, without influential relations, could rise to the highest offices once their ability and integrity had been recognized. The talented and industrious were not frustrated by a rigid class distinction or by a colour bar. A Nubian, frankly calling himself Panehsi, “the Nubian,” or “negro,” might be found in the highest places. The educated men were assigned by Pharaoh to whatever offices he 108 thought fit. The common people were mostly tied to the land which they tilled for their own living and for the maintenance of the state. We do not know whether or not they were serfs. We do know that they had to turn in a considerable proportion of their produce as taxes and that they were liable to corvée. A proportion of the young men of all villages and estates was levied for the army, which was really a militia, but functioned much more frequently as a labour corps, available for all kinds of public works. It was this “army” which was sent on quarrying and mining expeditions, which dug the canals and built the temples and the royal tombs. If additional labour was needed to undertake special tasks or to expedite those in hand, the population at large could be drafted. For instance, the number of men required for the building of pyramids ran into many thousands, and it is likely that the stone-cutters and their crews of unskilled helpers worked continuously in the quarries, the masons and their navvies on the site, but that during the inundation special levies were drafted to transport the stone from Tura, on the east bank, to Gizeh or Saqqara on the west bank of the Nile. For this purpose it was convenient that in summer, when the arable land was flooded, all agricultural labour came to a standstill, and the water covering the fields facilitated transport to the very foot of the desert plateau.[156]

We have some evidence of the life which these labourers lived. Three places are known where workmen were housed. Near the pyramid of Chephren at Gizeh there are, around a court, extensive barracks consisting of ninety-one galleries, each 88 feet long, 9½ feet wide, and 7 feet high. Petrie estimated that 109 these could house 4000 men. Near the pyramid of Senusert II at Lahun there is a walled town covering an area 900 by 1200 feet. And at Tell el Amarna, near the northern group of rock tombs, is a walled village measuring only 210 by 210 feet (Fig. 31).[157] Its layout is dreary, with identical houses built back to back along straight streets. Each house consists of a court serving for kitchen and workshop, a central room as living-room, and two little bedrooms at the back. The enclosure wall has but one gate, opening on a square where the men no doubt mustered before being marched off to work. At one end of the square there is a larger house for the foreman or commandant. Described in this way the settlement makes the impression of a penal colony. But when one visits the site or reads the excavation report with some care, that impression changes. One is struck by the variations which one observes in going from house to house. Although the plans are identical, the tenants had made many changes to suit their individual needs and predilections. The internal arrangements are hardly ever the same. The objects found in the houses also show considerable variety and do not suggest penury or gloom. In one room was discovered a gay, painted frieze of dancing figures of the god Bes, the popular genius of music and love. One gets a distinct impression at the site that lack of freedom neither interfered with the home life of these workers nor destroyed their gaiety.

Abuses naturally existed. Royal decrees granting freedom from corvée, or levy, to the personnel of certain shrines explicitly protected these men against removal to other parts of the country, and show incidentally 110 that common folk were exposed to this hazard. The small man was dependent on the protection of a man of influence whose client he might become if he was not already his serf. At this distance of time we cannot distinguish grades of servitude. It has been suggested that the best land of the large estates was worked with serfs while the less productive fields were let out to peasants who paid a fixed rent in produce; but the categories are not clearly distinguishable. Slaves, however, as distinct from serfs, did not play an important part in the economy of Egypt. It is doubtful whether they were kept in any numbers at all before the New Kingdom.[158] At that time the Syrian campaigns resulted in large numbers of captives who were used on royal and temple domains and in stone quarries. In earlier times captive Nubians may have been employed occasionally, but such isolated slaves served in families or at court as domestics, entertainers, dancers, or musicians and lived (one suspects) very much like the other servants. It has been pointed out[159] that the successful growing of grain requires a personal interest on the part of the cultivator, which slave labour lacks.

The craftsmen, too, were usually serving some great lord. Large numbers were employed by the king. We know, in fact, that the country was drained of talent for the benefit of the royal residence. The graves at Qau el Kebir—a cemetery in Middle Egypt used throughout the third millennium—show the scantiest equipment, and that of the poorest quality of craftsmanship, during the flourishing period of the Old Kingdom when the pyramids were being built. When 111 the central government had collapsed in the First Intermediate period, both the quality and the intrinsic value of the grave goods at Qau increased greatly. When craftsmen worked for the court, it is almost certain that they, too, were not free agents selling their wares or their services where they pleased. But we must, once more, guard against exaggerating their lot; they were not slaves. We happen, for instance, to know something of the extensive linen factories of Pharaoh. Under the Sixth Dynasty a royal weaving establishment in the north was under the management of one Seneb, a dwarf who, having worked himself up from the ranks, married a woman of the class of “Royal Kinsman” and could afford to build himself a fine tomb at Gizeh, from which we get our information.[160] One of the scenes in this tomb depicts the giving of rewards to Seneb’s subordinates;[161] they receive headbands and necklaces, and this is significant, for these ornaments resemble in form the “gold” with which Pharaoh honoured officials of special merit. Let us assume that the jewellery with which the weavers were rewarded was less costly and consisted of bronze and fayence. It is nevertheless clear that the award was by no means a payment but a kind of gift which it was an honour to receive. Now it is noteworthy that the recipients depicted in Seneb’s tomb are not all overseers and foremen, but also men and women who are merely mentioned by name, without title, and who therefore must be assumed to be simple weavers.

Craftsmen also worked for officials and on the large estates which came into being towards the end of the Old Kingdom. Such estates, like the royal domains, and the temple estates of later times, were self-sufficient economic units. Each had its own wharves, for 112 instance,[162] where Nile boats were built and repaired. These served not only as ferries, but for every trip of any length which the owner had to undertake and for the shipment of grain, cattle, and other dues to the magazines of the Exchequer. They were used, furthermore, for shipments of supplies to the funerary establishments of past members of the family who might be buried near Memphis in a royal cemetery. When the weakening of the central power, to which we have referred, and the concurrent rise of a landed gentry, made it more and more customary for high officials to be buried in rock-cut tombs near their estates in the provinces, the equipment of these tombs was supplied by masons, cabinet-makers, jewellers, and so on, employed on the estate. There were, moreover, hunters, who not only killed game, but caught it to be fattened for the table; several kinds of antelopes, cranes, and even hyenas were treated in this way. Fishermen and fowlers were also employed, for wild geese and duck, fattened in the barnyard, were consumed in large numbers. Fish was dried and kept, but it was probably largely used as rations for labourers.

As regards the cultivators, whether they worked for a private estate, for a temple, or on a royal domain, they had to pay imposts of many kinds, and the hamlets and villages were collectively responsible in the person of their head man; this worthy had to produce the stipulated amounts on the day of reckoning or he risked a beating. The craftsmen, too, were organized in groups of five or ten men under a foreman who received their rations of food, clothing, and raw materials and was responsible for their work. Similar groups of men, working in shifts of one month, functioned as “hour priests” in the temples and funerary chapels. When they took over, their foremen received 113 the inventory and were responsible for its proper maintenance.

The material basis of the Egyptian commonwealth was agriculture, regulated by the unaltering rhythm of the inundation. The names of the three seasons (of four months each) which the Egyptians distinguished were “Inundation” (middle of July to middle November), “Coming Forth” (of the seeds, or possibly of the land from the inundation, from middle November to middle March), and “Drought.” The conditions prevailing in prehistoric times, described in the second chapter, were not materially altered during the Old Kingdom. Land had to be reclaimed from the marshes. We have seen that the first king, Menes, undertook such work on a considerable scale. But the more the valley was drained, the more the need arose to distribute the inundation water so that it reached all the fields. From the beginning of the First Dynasty annual records of the height of the Nile were kept; their purpose can only have been to provide a basis for an estimate of its extent and thereby of the probable yield of the harvest. The digging of canals and the building of dikes was normally done by the central government, but there are some indications that the king encouraged the nomarchs to reclaim land by granting them the new fields which they then were allowed to settle with people from their estates. In the First Intermediate period when each nomarch had to take care of his area as best he could, one of them records:

I stocked villages in this nome that were enfeebled with cattle and men of other nomes, and those who had been serfs elsewhere I made rank as notables.[163]

The annual inundation with its fertilizing deposit of silt made manuring and rotation of crops unnecessary. 114 The tax records distinguish between low land, which was regularly inundated, and high land, which came under water only when the flood was high. This land was used for grazing or truck gardening. The bulk of the arable land was left soft by the retreating inundation and could be worked with primitive wooden hoes and ploughs. Animals, mostly sheep, were used to tread in the seed, and this had to be done speedily after the land had emerged but before it became hard and dry. Six-rowed barley and emmer wheat were the main crops. Lettuce, onions, beans, and lentils were, in antiquity as now, important secondary products. Ricinus plants were grown for oil, and flax for linen.

When the grain had grown to a certain height, surveyors measured it to assess it for taxation on an estimated yield (Fig. 30). It was harvested with sickles, threshed on a circular threshing floor by asses (and later by cattle) who trod out the kernels. As a rule, women did the winnowing by throwing the grain up in a winnowing basket. After that it was stored in barns or in beehive-shaped silos, and the portion due to the king or to the estate-owner was handed over. Large estates, including the royal domains and the temples, had reserves to supplement bad harvests. Seed-corn was lent to the tenants, and teams of oxen and asses for ploughing or carrying were lent or let out, too. There are records of great landowners relieving tenants who could not meet their obligations in difficult years.

But not only the grain harvest was taxed. There was a tax on canals and ponds, on trees and wells. The produce of the home industries and of the spare-time occupations of the people were taxed: they had to turn over some of their textiles, leatherwork, honey, oil, wine, vegetables, some of the catch of the fowler and 115 fisherman, some of the increase of the shepherd’s flock. Genesis xlvii. 24 states that one-fifth of all produce was owed to the government; this may or may not be correct; it is not improbable. Certain people were liable to pay fixed quantities of produce, irrespective of yield.

Again, it is necessary to correct our first reaction to a description of these conditions. In Egypt personal enterprise was made subsidiary to the performance of public duties; and it would seem that under normal conditions sufficient scope for private initiative, in production and in barter, remained. The contents of graves which are best, perhaps, called lower middle class (since of the poorest people no trace survives) show as much. It is likewise revealing that during Egypt’s long history no attempts to overthrow the existing order were made. This shows that the Egyptian experiment of organizing a rural community was, on the whole, successful. The obligation to hand over part of every kind of produce may seem pettifogging to us. But money was unknown; the state could function only if it disposed of all kinds of articles to supply those who were in its service. If officials abused their power and oppressed the people, the peasants had an effective weapon at their disposal: they fled. This was a catastrophe for their owner since he remained liable for the normal dues on his land, which now lay deserted. The case is concisely put in a letter written by a steward to his master who was responsible for the management of a certain royal domain:

Another communication for my Lord’s good pleasure, to the effect that two of the field labourers of the mine land of Pharaoh which is under my Lord’s authority, have fled before the face of the stable-master Neferhotep, he having beaten them. And now, look, the fields of the mine land of Pharaoh which are under my Lord’s authority are 116 abandoned and there is no one to till them. This letter is for my Lord’s information.[164]

A somewhat patriarchal relationship between master and men persists in many rural districts of old countries even to-day. A certain amount of arbitrariness, even of despotism, is taken for granted in the great; it is their privilege, but only if it is counterbalanced by a sense of responsibility for the land and for those who till it.

We may, therefore, accept as inherently probable such statements as the following, made by an Upper Egyptian nomarch who had taken matters in his own hands in the First Intermediate period.

I was one who computed (carefully) the consumption of Lower Egyptian grain.... I made a canal for this town when Upper Egypt was in a bad way, and one did not see any water.... I made high fields into marsh, I made the Nile inundate wasteland.... Whoever needed water got Nile water as he desired.... I was great in Lower Egyptian grain (barley) when the country was in tribulation. I was the one who fed the town with measure and bushel. I made the small man and his wife carry away Lower Egyptian grain and (likewise) the widow and her son. I had all imposts reduced which I found registered (as arrears) from the time of my father.[165]

Another nomarch, at Crocodilopolis in Upper Egypt, south of Thebes, reports:

I fed the “island in the river” (Crocodilopolis) during years of drought when 400 men were (in penury) there. I did not take away a man’s daughter nor his field. I acquired ten flocks of goats with people to take care of them, two herds of cattle and one of asses. I bred small livestock. I obtained thirty boats of one kind and thirty of another 117 and brought Upper Egyptian grain to Hermonthis and Asphynis after Crocodilopolis was taken care of. The nome of Thebes came upstream (i.e. to obtain grain from me), but Crocodilopolis never sent downstream nor upstream (for grain) to another nome.[166]

The last inscription makes much of livestock, and stock-breeding was next in importance to agriculture. We have seen that a special official, “The Master of the King’s Largesse,” was in charge of its supervision. In antiquity, in contrast with now, plenty of marshland was available for grazing in the valley, and the large herds were also sent to the Delta in spring to graze. One official of the Sixth Dynasty lists 1000 head of cattle, 760 asses, 2200 goats, and nearly 1000 sheep as his own.

Trade played a subordinate part in the internal economy of the country. There was, naturally, a great deal of barter between individuals. There were markets where food, especially garden produce, or birds netted in the fields, or fish, were exchanged for tools or sandals or walking-sticks, necklaces, textiles or oils—luxuries or articles which, although issued by the estate office, might not, in quantity or quality, suit everyone. Barter in the market-place allowed a man to adjust his share in various goods to his own particular taste or to dispose of catches or produce obtained on the side. These markets are sometimes depicted in the tombs, and we know that already, in the Old Kingdom, pieces of metal served as standards of value. An important object was said to be worth so and so many rings. In the New Kingdom this system was simplified, and the value of an object was said to be so much weight (deben) of gold, silver, or copper. In the New Kingdom, too, the closer contact with Syria made more imported articles available for the market 118 trade. A tomb-painting shows a Phoenician ship just made fast at the quay of Thebes. Some of the crew have gone ashore and approach booths where sandals, linen, fruits, and vegetables can be exchanged for a jug of Syrian oil or wine. This type of trade remained, however, purely marginal to the economy of Egypt. Neither the home-grown staple products nor the main imports were distributed through the markets. We do not meet the word “merchant” until the second millennium B.C., when it designates the official of a temple privileged to trade abroad.

Raw materials which Egypt lacked were procured through royal expeditions, organized by the Exchequer (which included among its personnel interpreters to assist the commanders in various foreign countries).[167] These expeditions were of two types. In Nubia, the eastern and western desert, and in Sinai, the nomad tribes and poor peasants could not oppose the Egyptians in any way at all. The army came and took what it needed. On quarrying and mining expeditions the military component of the expedition was no more than an armed escort, while the bulk of the “army” (as it was called) consisted of navvies to assist a core of trained stone-cutters or miners.

Another type of expedition was required to obtain wood from the Lebanon and frankincense and myrrh from Punt, the Somali coast. These lands were outside the sphere of Egyptian military influence, and the native rulers could ask for a price. This was offered in the form of royal presents to favourite vassals, and their products were listed as tribute. In reality there was an exchange; some splendid and extremely costly Egyptian jewellery, inscribed with the names of Pharaohs of the Twelfth Dynasty, has been found in tombs 119 of the local princes of Byblos at the foot of the Lebanon. Coniferous roofing beams in the tombs of the First Egyptian Dynasty and a record of a sea expedition of Snefru of the Fourth Dynasty prove the great age of this lumber trade with the Levant. And from a late period we have the following list of objects which an Egyptian envoy—Wenamon—offered in exchange for wood from the Lebanon:

Five gold and five silver vessels; ten garments of royal linen; ten pieces of other linen; five hundred pieces of fine paper; five hundred cattle skins; five hundred ropes; twenty bags of lentils; thirty baskets of fish.

The Phoenician export included, besides wood, oil, wine, resin, and ivory.

It has been said that Pharaoh was the only wholesale merchant in Egypt and that foreign trade was a royal monopoly. But the implication of profit-making and exploitation is inappropriate. It was merely due to the complete consistency with which the Egyptians had organized their community as a centralized monarchy that they supplied themselves with the foreign materials of which they stood in need by means of royal expeditions. It is curious evidence of the practical effectiveness of Pharaonic rule that the absolute monarchy of Egypt did supply essential commodities, whether imported or produced at home, to the people as a whole in sufficient quantities; the distribution took place “from above,” the king making gifts and allotments to his officials who in turn rewarded their retainers and so down the social scale. And in the First Intermediate period, when royal power suffered an eclipse, the texts contain a complaint that there is no wood available for the making of coffins.

Whatever aspect of Egyptian society we have scrutinized, we have found Pharaoh at the centre. Yet 120 nothing would be more misleading than to picture the Egyptians in abject submission to their absolute ruler. Their state can be described as “a self-directed organism held together by a common regard for customary rights and obligations.”[168] Their polity was not imposed but evolved from immemorial predilections, and was adhered to, without protest, for almost three thousand years. Similar predilections have, in fact, maintained the institution of divine kingship among Africans related to the ancient Egyptians down to our own days. It was good, not evil; it gave a sense of security which the Asiatic contemporaries of the ancient Egyptians totally lacked. If a god had consented to guide the nation, society held a pledge that the unaccountable forces of nature would be well disposed and bring prosperity and peace. Nor does the Egyptian view lack ethical content. Truth, justice, were “that by which the gods live,” an essential element in the established order. Hence Pharaoh’s rule was not tyranny, nor his service slavery.

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