History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 2 — 11 - Vol. 02, Ch. 01: The Political Constitution of Egypt, pt. 11

* The capitation tax, the ground rent, and the house duty of the time of the Ptolemies, already existed under the rule of the native Pharaohs.

Brugsch has shown that these taxes are mentioned in an inscription of the time of Ameuôthes III.

It was not without reason that all the ancients attributed the invention of geometry to the Egyptians.

The perpetual encroachments of the Nile and the displacements it occasioned, the facility with which it effaced the boundaries of the fields, and in one summer modified the whole face of a nome, had forced them from early times to measure with the greatest exactitude the ground to which they owed their sustenance.

The territory belonging to each town and nome was subjected to repeated surveys made and co-ordinated by the Royal Administration, thus enabling Pharaoh to know the exact area of his estates.

The unit of measurement was the arura; that is to say, a square of a hundred cubits, comprising in round numbers twenty-eight ares.

* A considerable staff of scribes and surveyors was continually occupied in verifying the old measurements or in making fresh ones, and in recording in the State registers any changes which might have taken place.

** Each estate had its boundaries marked out by a line of stelas which frequently bore the name of the tenant at the time, and the date when the landmarks were last fixed.

*** * [One “are” equals 100 square metres.

--Tr.

] ** We learn from the expressions employed in the great inscription of Beni-Hasan (11. 13--58, 131-148) that the cadastral survey had existed from the very earliest times;

there are references in it to previous surveys.

We find a surveying scene on the tomb of Zosirkerîsonbû at Thebes, under the XVIIIth dynasty.

Two persons are measuring a field of wheat by means of a cord; a third notes down the result of their work.

*** The great inscription of Beni-Hasan tells us of the stelæ which bounded the principality of the Gazelle on the North and South, and of those in the plain which marked the northern boundary of the nome of the Jackal; we also possess three other stelo which were used by Amenôthes IV.

to indicate the extreme limits of his new city of Khûtniaton.

In addition to the above stele, we also know of two others belonging to the XIIth dynasty which marked the boundaries of a private estate, and which are reproduced, one on plate 106, the other in the text of _Monuments divers_, p. 30;

also the stele of Bûhani under Thûtmosis IV.

[Illustration: 125. jpg a boundary stele] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph given by Mariette, Monuments divers, pl.

47 a. The stele marked the boundary of the estate given to a priest of the Theban Amon by Pharaoh Thûtmosis IV.

of the XVIIIth dynasty.

The original is now in the Museum at Gizeh.

Once set up, the stele received a name which gave it, as it were, a living and independent personality.

It sometimes recorded the nature of the soil, its situation, or some characteristic which made it remarkable--the “Lake of the South,” the “Eastern Meadow,” the “Green Island,” the “Fisher’s Pool,” the “Willow Plot,” the “Vineyard,” the “Vine Arbour,” the “Sycamore;” sometimes also it bore the name of the first master or the Pharaoh under whom it had been erected--the “Nurse-Phtahhotpû,” the “Verdure-Kheops,” the “Meadow-Didifrî,” the “Abundance-Sahûri,” “Khafri-Great-among-the Doubles.

” Once given, the name clung to it for centuries, and neither sales, nor redistributions, nor revolutions, nor changes of dynasty, could cause it to be forgotten.

The officers of the survey inscribed it in their books, together with the name of the proprietor, those of the owners of adjoining lands, and the area and nature of the ground.

They noted down, to within a few cubits, the extent of the sand, marshland, pools, canals, groups of palms, gardens or orchards, vineyards and cornfields,* which it contained.

* See in the great inscription of Beni-Hasan the passage in which are enumerated at full length, in a legal document, the constituent parts of the principality of the Gazelle, “its watercourses, its fields, its trees, its sands, from the river to the mountain of the West” (11. 46-53).

The cornland in its turn was divided into several classes, according to whether it was regularly inundated, or situated above the highest rise of the water, and consequently dependent on a more or less costly system of artificial irrigation.

All this was so much information of which the scribes took advantage in regulating the assessment of the land-tax.

Everything tends to make us believe that this tax represented one-tenth of the gross produce, but the amount of the latter varied.

It depended on the annual rise of the Nile, and it followed the course of it with almost mathematical exactitude: if there were too much or too little water, it was immediately lessened, and might even be reduced to nothing in extreme cases.

The king in his capital and the great lords in their fiefs had set up nilo-meters, by means of which, in the critical weeks, the height of the rising or subsiding flood was taken daily.

Messengers carried the news of it over the country: the people, kept regularly informed of what was happening, soon knew what kind of season to expect, and they could calculate to within very little what they would have to pay.

In theory, the collecting of the tax was based on the actual amount of land covered by the water, and the produce of it was constantly varying.

In practice it was regulated by taking the average of preceding years, and deducting from that a fixed sum, which was never departed from except in extraordinary circumstances.

* * We know that this was so, in so far as the Roman period is concerned, from a passage in the edict of Tiberius Alexander.

The practice was such a natural one, that I have no hesitation in tracing it back to the time of the Ancient Empire; repeatedly condemned as a piece of bad administration, it reappeared continually.

At Beni-Hasan, the nomarch Amoni boasts that, “when there had been abundant Niles, and the owners of wheat and barley crops had thriven, he had not increased the rate of the land-tax,” which seems to indicate that, so far as he was concerned, he had fixed the tax to pay his dues without difficulty.

[Illustration: 128. jpg THE LEVYING OF THE TAX: THE TAXPAYER IN THE SCRIBE’S OFFICE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a picture at Beni-Hasan.

This picture and those which follow it represent a census in the principality of the Gazelle under the XIIth dynasty as well as the collection of a tax.

The year would have to be a very bad one before the authorities would lower the ordinary rate: the State in ancient times was not more willing to deduct anything from its revenue than the modern State would be.

* * The two decrees of Rosetta and of Canopus, however, mention reductions granted by the Ptolemies after an insufficient rise of the Nile.

The payment of taxes was exacted in wheat, durra, beans, and field produce, which were stored in the granaries of the nome.

It would seem that the previous deduction of one-tenth of the gross amount of the harvest could not be a heavy burden, and that the wretched fellah ought to have been in a position on land at a permanent figure, based on the average of good and bad harvests.

It was not so, however, and the same writers who have given us such a lamentable picture of the condition of the workmen in the towns, have painted for us in even darker colours the miseries which overwhelmed the country people.

“Dost thou not recall the picture of the farmer, when the tenth of his grain is levied?

Worms have destroyed half of the wheat, and the hippopotami have eaten the rest; there are swarms of rats in the fields, the grasshoppers alight there, the cattle devour, the little birds pilfer, and if the farmer lose sight for an instant of what remains upon the ground, it is carried off by robbers;* the thongs, moreover, which bind the iron and the hoe are worn out, and the team has died at the plough.

It is then that the scribe steps out of the boat at the landing-place to levy the tithe, and there come the keepers of the doors of the granary with cudgels and the negroes with ribs of palm-leaves, who come crying: ‘Come now, corn!

’ There is none, and they throw the cultivator full length upon the ground; bound, dragged to the canal, they fling him in head first;** his wife is bound with him, his children are put into chains; the neighbours, in the mean time, leave him and fly to save their grain.

” * This last danger survives even to the present day.

During part of the year the fellahîn spend the night in their fields; if they did not see to it, their neighbours would not hesitate to come and cut their wheat before the harvest, or root up their vegetables while still immature.

** The same kind of torture is mentioned in the decree of Harmhabi, in which the lawless soldiery are represented as “running from house to house, dealing blows right and left with their sticks, ducking the fellahîn head downwards in the water, and not leaving one of them with a whole skin.

” This treatment was still resorted to in Egypt not long ago, in order to extract money from those taxpayers whom beatings had failed to bring to reason.

One might be tempted to declare that the picture is too dark a one to be true, did one not know from other sources of the brutal ways of filling the treasury which Egypt has retained even to the present day.

In the same way as in the town, the stick facilitated the operations of the tax-collector in the country: it quickly opened the granaries of the rich, it revealed resources to the poor of which he had been ignorant, and it only failed in the case of those who had really nothing to give.

Those who were insolvent were not let off even when they had been more than half killed: they and their families were sent to prison, and they had to work out in forced labour the amount which they had failed to pay in current merchandise.

* * This is evident from a passage in the _Sallier Papyrus n° I_, quoted above, in which we see the taxpayer in fetters, dragged out to clean the canals, his whole family, wife and children, accompanying him in bonds.

[Illustration: 130. jpg LEVYING THE TAX: THE TAXPAYER IN THE HANDS OF THE EXACTORS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a picture on the tomb of Khîti at Beni-Hasan (cf.

Champollion, _Monuments de l’Egypte_, pl.

cccxc.

4; Rosellini, _Monumenti civili_, pl.

cxxiv.

b).

The collection of the taxes was usually terminated by a rapid revision of the survey.

The scribe once more recorded the dimensions and character of the domain lands in order to determine afresh the amount of the tax which should be imposed upon them.

It often happened, indeed, that, owing to some freak of the Nile, a tract of ground which had been fertile enough the preceding year would be buried under a gravel bed, or transformed into a marsh.

The owners who thus suffered were allowed an equivalent deduction; as for the farmers, no deductions of the burden were permitted in their case, but a tract equalling in value that of the part they had lost was granted to them out of the royal or seignorial domain, and their property was thus made up to its original worth.

[Illustration: 131. jpg LEVYING THE TAX: THE BASTINADO] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a picture on the tomb of Khîti at Beni-Hasan.

What the collection of the taxes had begun was almost always brought to a climax by the _corvées_.

However numerous the royal and seignorial slaves might have been, they were insufficient for the cultivation of all the lands of the domains, and a part of Egypt must always have lain fallow, had not the number of workers been augmented by the addition of those who were in the position of freemen.

This excess of cultivable land was subdivided into portions of equal dimensions, which were distributed among the inhabitants of neighbouring villages by the officers of a “regent” nominated for that purpose.

Those dispensed from agricultural service were--the destitute, soldiers on service and their families, certain _employés_ of the public works, and servitors of the temple;* all other country-folk without exception had to submit to it, and one or more portions were allotted to each, according to his capabilities.

** Orders issued at fixed periods called them together, themselves, their servants and their beasts of burden, to dig, sow, keep watch in the fields while the harvest was proceeding, to cut and carry the crops, the whole work being done at their own expense and to the detriment of their own interests.

*** * That the scribes, i. e. the employés of the royal or princely government, were exempt from enforced labour, is manifest from the contrast drawn by the letter-writers of the Sallier and Anastasi Papyri between themselves and the peasants, or persons belonging to other professions who were liable to it.

The circular of Dorion defines the classes of soldiers who were either temporarily or permanently exempt under the Greek kings.

** Several fragments of the Turin papyri contain memoranda of enforced labour performed on behalf of the temples, and of lists of persons liable to be called on for such labour.

*** All these details are set forth in the Ptolemaic period, in the letter to Dorion which refers to a royal edict.

As Signor Lumbroso has well remarked, the Ptolemies merely copied exactly the misdeeds of the old native governments.

Indeed, we come across frequent allusions to the enforced labour of men and beasts in inscriptions of the Middle Empire at Beni-Hasan or at Siût; many of the pictures on the Memphite tombs show bands of such labourers at work in the fields of the great landowners or of the king.

[Illustration: 132. jpg COLLOSAL STATUE OF A KING] As a sort of indemnity, a few allotments were left uncultivated for their benefit; to these they sent their flocks after the subsidence of the inundation, for the pasturage on them was so rich that the sheep were doubly productive in wool and offspring.

This was a mere apology for a wage: the forced labour for the irrigation brought them no compensation.

The dykes which separate the basins, and the network of canals for distributing the water and irrigating the land, demand continual attention: every year some need strengthening, others re-excavating or cleaning out.

The men employed in this work pass whole days standing in the water, scraping up the mud with both hands in order to fill the baskets of platted leaves, which boys and girls lift on to their heads and carry to the top of the bank: the semi-liquid contents ooze through the basket, trickle over their faces and soon coat their bodies with a black shining mess, disgusting even to look at.

Sheikhs preside over the work, and urge it on with abuse and blows.

When the gangs of workmen had toiled all day, with only an interval of two hours about noon for a siesta and a meagre pittance of food, the poor wretches slept on the spot, in the open air, huddled one against another and but ill protected by their rags from the chilly nights.

The task was so hard a one, that malefactors, bankrupts, and prisoners of war were condemned to it; it wore out so many hands that the free peasantry were scarcely ever exempt.

Having returned to their homes, they were not called until the next year to any established or periodic _corvée_, but many an irregular one came and surprised them in the midst of their work, and forced them to abandon all else to attend to the affairs of king or lord.

Was a new chamber to be added to some neighbouring temple, were materials wanted to strengthen or rebuild some piece of wall which had been undermined by the inundation, orders were issued to the engineers to go and fetch a stated quantity of limestone or sandstone, and the peasants were commanded to assemble at the nearest quarry to cut the blocks from it, and if needful to ship and convey them to their destination.

Or perhaps the sovereign had caused a gigantic statue of himself to be carved, and a few hundred men were requisitioned to haul it to the place where he wished it to be set up.

The undertaking ended in a gala, and doubtless in a distribution of food and drink: the unfortunate creatures who had been got together to execute the work could not always have felt fitly compensated for the precious time they had lost, by one day of drunkenness and rejoicing.

[Illustration: 136. jpg COLORED SCULPTURES IN THE PALACE] We may ask if all these corvées were equally legal?

Even if some of them were illegal, the peasant on whom they fell could not have found the means to escape from them, nor could he have demanded legal reparation for the injury which they caused him.

Justice, in Egypt and in the whole Oriental world, necessarily emanates from political authority, and is only one branch of the administration amongst others, in the hands of the lord and his representatives.

Professional magistrates were unknown--men brought up to the study of law, whose duty it was to ensure the observance of it, apart from any other calling--but the same men who commanded armies, offered sacrifices, and assessed or received taxes, investigated the disputes of ordinary citizens, or settled the differences which arose between them and the representatives of the lords or of the Pharaoh.

In every town and village, those who held by birth or favour the position of governor were ex-officio invested with the right of administering justice.

For a certain number of days in the month, they sat at the gate of the town or of the building which served as their residence, and all those in the town or neighbourhood possessed of any title, position, or property, the superior priesthood of the temples, scribes who had advanced or grown old in office, those in command of the militia or the police, the heads of divisions or corporations, the “qonbîtiû,” the “people of the angle,” might if they thought fit take their place beside them, and help them to decide ordinary lawsuits.

The police were mostly recruited from foreigners and negroes, or Bedouin belonging to the Nubian tribe of the Mâzaiû.

The litigants appeared at the tribunal, and waited under the superintendence of the police until their turn came to speak: the majority of the questions were decided in a few minutes by a judgment by which there was no appeal; only the more serious cases necessitated a cross-examination and prolonged discussion.

All else was carried on before this patriarchal jury as in our own courts of justice, except that the inevitable stick too often elucidated the truth and cut short discussions: the depositions of the witnesses, the speeches on both sides, the examination of the documents, could not proceed without the frequent taking of oaths “by the life of the king” or “by the favour of the gods,” in which the truth often suffered severely.

Penalties were varied somewhat--the bastinado, imprisonment, additional days of work for the corvée, and, for grave offences, forced labour in the Ethiopian mines, the loss of nose and ears, and finally, death by strangulation, by beheading,* by empalement, and at the stake.

* The only known instance of an execution by hanging is that of Pharaoh’s chief baker, in Gen. xl.

19, 22, xli.

13; but in a tomb at Thebes we see two human victims executed by strangulation.

The Egyptian hell contains men who have been decapitated, and the block on which the damned were beheaded is frequently mentioned in the texts.