History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 2 — 10 - Vol. 02, Ch. 01: The Political Constitution of Egypt, pt. 10

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a picture on the tomb of Khnûm- hotpû at Beni-Hasan.

This is the loom which was reconstructed in 1889 for the Paris Exhibition, and which is now to be seen in the galleries of the Trocadero.

For several days the people occupied mentioned by Herodotus, the religious ceremony was accompanied by a general illumination which lasted all the night; the object of this, probably, was to facilitate the visit which the souls of the dead were supposed to pay at this time to the family residence themselves solely in prayers, sacrifices, and processions, in which the faithful, clad in white, with palms in their hands, chanted hymns as they escorted the priests on their way.

“The gods of heaven exclaim ‘Ah!

ah!

‘in satisfaction, the inhabitants of the earth are full of gladness, the Hâthors beat their tabors, the great ladies wave their mystic whips, all those who are gathered together in the town are drunk with wine and crowned with flowers; the tradespeople of the place walk joyously about, their heads scented with perfumed oils, all the children rejoice in honour of the goddess, from the rising to the setting of the sun.

” * * The people of Dendera crudely enough called this the “Feast of Drunkenness.

” From what we know of the earlier epochs, we are justified in making this description a general one, and in applying it, as I have done here, to the festivals of other towns besides Dendera.

The nights were as noisy as the days: for a few hours, they made up energetically for long months of torpor and monotonous existence.

The god having re-entered the temple and the pilgrims taken their departure, the regular routine was resumed and dragged on its tedious course, interrupted only by the weekly market.

At an early hour on that day, the peasant folk came in from the surrounding country in an interminable stream, and installed themselves in some open space, reserved from time immemorial for their use.

The sheep, geese, goats, and large-horned cattle were grouped in the centre, awaiting purchasers.

Market-gardeners, fishermen, fowlers and gazelle-hunters, potters, and small tradesmen, squatted on the roadsides or against the houses, and offered their wares for the inspection of their customers, heaped up in reed baskets, or piled on low round tables: vegetables and fruits, loaves or cakes baked during the night, meat either raw or cooked in various ways, stuffs, perfumes, ornaments,--all the necessities and luxuries of daily life.

It was a good opportunity for the workpeople, as well as for the townsfolk, to lay in a store of provisions at a cheaper rate than from the ordinary shops; and they took advantage of it, each according to his means.

Business was mostly carried on by barter.

The purchasers brought with them some product of their toil--a new tool, a pair of shoes, a reed mat, pots of unguents or cordials; often, too, rows of cowries and a small box full of rings, each weighing a “tabnû,” made of copper, silver, or even gold, all destined to be bartered for such things as they needed.

When it came to be a question of some large animal or of objects of considerable value, the discussions which arose were keen and stormy: it was necessary to be agreed not only as to the amount, but as to the nature of the payment to be made, and to draw up a sort of invoice, or in fact an inventory, in which beds, sticks, honey, oil, pick-axes, and garments, all figure as equivalents for a bull or a she-ass.

Smaller retail bargains did not demand so many or such complicated calculations.

Two townsfolk stop for a moment in front of a fellah who offers onions and corn in a basket for sale.

The first appears to possess no other circulating medium than two necklaces made of glass beads or many-coloured enamelled terra-cotta; the other flourishes about a circular fan with a wooden handle, and one of those triangular contrivances used by cooks for blowing up the fire.

“Here is a fine necklace which will suit you,” cries the former, “it is just what you are wanting;” while the other breaks in with: “Here is a fan and a ventilator.

” The fellah, however, does not let himself be disconcerted by this double attack, and proceeding methodically, he takes one of the necklaces to examine it at his leisure: “Give it to me to look at, that I may fix the price.

” The one asks too much, the other offers too little; after many concessions, they at last come to an agreement, and settle on the number of onions or the quantity of grain which corresponds exactly with the value of the necklace or the fan.

A little further on, a customer wishes to get some perfumes in exchange for a pair of sandals, and conscientiously praises his wares: “Here,” says he, “is a strong pair of shoes.

” But the merchant has no wish to be shod just then, and demands a row of cowries for his little pots: “You have merely to take a few drops of this to see how delicious it is,” he urges in a persuasive tone.

A seated customer has two jars thrust under his nose by a woman--they probably contain some kind of unguent: “Here is something which smells good enough to tempt you.

” Behind this group two men are discussing the relative merits of a bracelet and a bundle of fish-hooks; a woman, with a small box in her hand, is having an argument with a merchant selling necklaces; another woman seeks to obtain a reduction in the price of a fish which is being scraped in front of her.

Exchanging commodities for metal necessitated two or three operations not required in ordinary barter.

The rings or thin bent strips of metal which formed the “tabnû” and its multiples,* did not always contain the regulation amount of gold or silver, and were often of light weight.

* The rings of gold in the Museum at Leyden, which were used as a basis of exchange, are made on the Chaldæo-Babylonian pattern, and belong to the Asiatic system.

[Illustration: 118. jpg one of the forms of egyptian scales] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after a sketch by Rosellini They had to be weighed at every fresh transaction in order to estimate their true value, and the interested parties never missed this excellent opportunity for a heated discussion: after having declared for a quarter of an hour that the scales were out of order, that the weighing had been carelessly performed, and that it should be done over again, they at last came to terms, exhausted with wrangling, and then went their way fairly satisfied with one another.

* It sometimes happened that a clever and unscrupulous dealer would alloy the rings, and mix with the precious metal as much of a baser sort as would be possible without danger of detection.

The honest merchant who thought he was receiving in payment for some article, say eight tabnû of fine gold, and who had handed to him eight tabnû of some alloy resembling gold, but containing one-third of silver, lost in a single transaction, without suspecting it, almost one-third of his goods.

The fear of such counterfeits was instrumental in restraining the use of tabnû for a long time among the people, and restricted the buying and selling in the markets to exchange in natural products or manufactured objects.

* The weighing of rings is often represented on the monuments from the XVIIIth dynasty onwards.

I am not acquainted with any instance of this on the bas-reliefs of the Ancient Empire.

The giving of false weight is alluded to in the paragraph in the “Negative Confession,” in which the dead man declares that he has not interfered with the beam of the scales (cf.

vol. i.

p. 271) _civili,_ pl.

lii.

1. As to the construction of the Egyptian scales, and the working of their various parts, see Flinders Petrie’s remarks in _A Season in Egypt_, P- 42, and the drawings which he has brought together on pl.

xx.

of the same work.

[Illustration: 118b.

jpg SCENES IN A BAZAAR] We must, perhaps, agree with Fr.

Lenormant, in his conclusion that the only kind of national metal of exchange in use in Egypt was a copper wire or plate bent thus [--].

this being the sign invariably used in the hieroglyphics in writing the word _tàbnû_.

The present rural population of Egypt scarcely ever live in isolated and scattered farms; they are almost all concentrated in hamlets and villages of considerable extent, divided into quarters often at some distance from each other.

The same state of things existed in ancient times, and those who would realize what a village in the past was like, have only to visit any one of the modern market towns scattered at intervals along the valley of the Nile:--half a dozen fairly built houses, inhabited by the principal people of the place; groups of brick or clay cottages thatched with durra stalks, so low that a man standing upright almost touches the roof with his head; courtyards filled with tall circular mud-built sheds, in which the corn and durra for the household is carefully stored, and wherever we turn, pigeons, ducks, geese, and animals all living higgledly-piggledly with the family.

The majority of the peasantry were of the lower class, but they were not everywhere subjected to the same degree of servitude.

The slaves, properly so called, came from other countries; they had been bought from foreign merchants, or they had been seized in a raid and had lost their liberty by the fortune of war.

* Their master removed them from place to place, sold them, used them as he pleased, pursued them if they succeeded in escaping, and had the right of recapturing them as soon as he received information of their whereabouts.

They worked for him under his overseer’s orders, receiving no regular wages, and with no hope of recovering their liberty.

** * The first allusion to prisoners of war brought back to Egypt, is found in the biography of Uni.

The method in which they were distributed among the officers and soldiers is indicated in several inscriptions of the New Empire, in that of Ahmosis Pannekhabît, in that of Ahmosis si-Abîna, where one of the inscriptions contains a list of slaves, some of whom are foreigners, in that of Amenemhabi.

We may form some idea of the number of slaves in Egypt from the fact that in thirty years Ramses III.

presented 113,433 of them to the temples alone.

The “Directors of the Royal Slaves,” at all periods, occupied an important position at the court of the Pharaohs.

** A scene reproduced by Lepsius shows us, about the time of the VIth dynasty, the harvest gathered by the “royal slaves” in concert with the tenants of the dead man.

One of the petty princes defeated by the Ethiopian Piônkhi Miamûn proclaims himself to be “one of the royal slaves who pay tribute in kind to the royal treasury.

” Amten repeatedly mentions slaves of this kind, “sûtiû.

” Many chose concubines from their own class, or intermarried with the natives and had families: at the end of two or three generations their descendants became assimilated with the indigenous race, and were neither more nor less than actual serfs attached to the soil, who were made over or exchanged with it.

* The landed proprietors, lords, kings, or gods, accommodated this population either in the outbuildings belonging to their residences, or in villages built for the purpose, where everything belonged to them, both houses and people.

* This is the status of serfs, or _mirîtiû,_ as shown in the texts of every period.

They are mentioned along with the fields or cattle attached to a temple or belonging to a noble.

Ramses II.

granted to the temple of Abydos “an appanage in cultivated lands, in serfs (_mirîtiû_), in cattle.

” The scribe Anna sees in his tomb “stalls of bulls, of oxen, of calves, of milch cows, as well as serfs, in the mortmain of Amon.

” Ptolemy I. returned to the temple at Bûto “the domains, the boroughs, the serfs, the tillage, the water supply, the cattle, the geese, the flocks, all the things” which Xerxes had taken away from Kabbisha.

The expression passed into the language, as a word used to express the condition of a subject race: “I cause,” said Thûtmosis III.

, “Egypt to be a sovereign (_hirît_) to whom all the earth is a slave” (_mirîtû_).

[Illustration: 123. jpg PART OF THE MODERN VILLAGE OF KARNAK, TO THE WEST OF THE TEMPLE OF APÎT]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Beato, taken in 1886. The condition of the free agricultural labourer was in many respects analogous to that of the modern fellah.

Some of them possessed no other property than a mud cabin, just large enough for a man and his wife, and hired themselves out by the day or the year as farm servants.

Others were emboldened to lease land from the lord or from a soldier in the neighbourhood.

The most fortunate acquired some domain of which they were supposed to receive only the product, the freehold of the property remaining primarily in the hands of the Pharaoh, and secondarily in that of lay or religious feudatories who held it of the sovereign: they could, moreover, bequeath, give, or sell these lands and buy fresh ones without any opposition.

They paid, besides the capitation tax, a ground rent proportionate to the extent of their property, and to the kind of land of which it consisted.

*