History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 2 — 12 - Vol. 02, Ch. 01: The Political Constitution of Egypt, pt. 12

Criminals of high rank obtained permission to carry out on themselves the sentence passed upon them, and thus avoided by suicide the shame of public execution.

Before tribunals thus constituted, the fellah who came to appeal against the exactions of which he was the victim had little chance of obtaining a hearing: had not the scribe who had overtaxed him, or who had imposed a fresh corvée upon him, the right to appear among the Judges to whom he addressed himself?

Nothing, indeed, prevented him from appealing from the latter to his feudal lord, and from him to Pharaoh, but such an appeal would be for him a mere delusion.

When he had left his village and presented his petition, he had many delays to encounter before a solution could be arrived at; and if the adverse party were at all in favour at court, or could command any influence, the sovereign decision would confirm, even if it did not aggravate, the sentence of the previous judges.

In the mean while the peasants’ land remained uncultivated, his wife and children bewailed their wretchedness, and the last resources of the family were consumed in proceedings and delays: it would have been better for him at the outset to have made up his mind to submit without resistance to a fate from which he could not escape.

In spite of taxes, requisitions, and forced labour, the fellahîn came off fairly well, when the chief to whom they belonged proved a kind master, and did not add the exactions of his own personal caprice to those of the State.

The inscriptions which princes caused to be devoted to their own glorification, are so many enthusiastic panegyrics dealing only with their uprightness and kindness towards the poor and lowly.

Every one of them represents himself as faultless: “the staff of support to the aged, the foster father of the children, the counsellor of the unfortunate, the refuge in which those who suffer from the cold in Thebes may warm themselves, the bread of the afflicted which never failed in the city of the South.

” Their solicitude embraced everybody and everything: “I have caused no child of tender age to mourn; I have despoiled no widow; I have driven away no tiller of the soil; I have taken no workmen away from their foreman for the public works; none have been unfortunate about me, nor starving in my time.

When years of scarcity arose, as I had cultivated all the lands of the nome of the Gazelle to its northern and southern boundaries, causing its inhabitants to live, and creating provisions, none who were hungry were found there, for I gave to the widow as well as to the woman who had a husband, and I made no distinction between high and low in all that I gave.

If, on the contrary, there were high Niles, the possessors of lands became rich in all things, for I did not raise the rate of the tax upon the fields.

” The canals engrossed all the prince’s attention; he cleaned them out, enlarged them, and dug fresh ones, which were the means of bringing fertility and plenty into the most remote corners of his property.

His serfs had a constant supply of clean water at their door, and were no longer content with such food as durra; they ate wheaten bread daily.

His vigilance and severity were such that the brigands dared no longer appear within reach of his arm, and his soldiers kept strict discipline: “When night fell, whoever slept by the roadside blessed me, and was [in safety] as a man in his own house; the fear of my police protected him, the cattle remained in the fields as in the stable; the thief was as the abomination of the god, and he no more fell upon the vassal, so that the latter no more complained, but paid exactly the dues of his domain, for love” of the master who had procured for him this freedom from care.

This theme might be pursued at length, for the composers of epitaphs varied it with remarkable cleverness and versatility of imagination.

The very zeal which they display in describing the lord’s virtues betrays how precarious was the condition of his subjects.

There was nothing to hinder the unjust prince or the prevaricating officer from ruining and ill-treating as he chose the people who were under his authority.

He had only to give an order, and the corvée fell upon the proprietors of a village, carried off their slaves and obliged them to leave their lands uncultivated; should they declare that they were incapable of paying the contributions laid on them, the prison opened for them and their families.

If a dyke were cut, or the course of a channel altered, the nome was deprived of water: prompt and inevitable ruin came upon the unfortunate inhabitants, and their property, confiscated by the treasury in payment of the tax, passed for a small consideration into the hands of the scribe or of the dishonest administrator.

Two or three years of neglect were almost enough to destroy a system of irrigation: the canals became filled with mud, the banks crumbled, the inundation either failed to reach the ground, or spread over it too quickly and lay upon it too long.

Famine soon followed with its attendant sicknesses: men and animals died by the hundred, and it was the work of nearly a whole generation to restore prosperity to the district.

The lot of the fellah of old was, as we have seen, as hard as that of the fellah of to-day.

He himself felt the bitterness of it, and complained at times, or rather the scribes complained for him, when with selfish complacency they contrasted their calling with his.

He had to toil the whole year round,--digging, sowing, working the shadouf from morning to night for weeks, hastening at the first requisition to the corvée, paying a heavy and cruel tax,--all without even the certainty of enjoying what remained to him in peace, or of seeing his wife and children profit by it.

So great, however, was the elasticity of his temperament that his misery was not sufficient to depress him: those monuments upon which his life is portrayed in all its minutias, represent him as animated with inexhaustible cheerfulness.

The summer months ended, the ground again becomes visible, the river retires into its bed, the time of sowing is at hand: the peasant takes his team and his implements with him and goes off to the fields.

In many places, the soil, softened by the water, offers no resistance, and the hoe easily turns it up; elsewhere it is hard, and only yields to the plough.

While one of the farm-servants, almost bent double, leans his whole weight on the handles to force the ploughshare deep into the soil, his comrade drives the oxen and encourages them by his songs: these are only two or three short sentences, set to an unvarying chant, and with the time beaten on the back of the nearest animal.

Now and again he turns round towards his comrade and encourages him: “Lean hard!

”--“Hold fast!

” [Illustration: 142a.

jpg TWO FELLAHÎN WORK THE SHADOUF IN A GARDEN] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

The sower follows behind and throws handfuls of grain into the furrow: a flock of sheep or goats brings up the rear, and as they walk, they tread the seed into the ground.

The herdsmen crack their whips and sing some country song at the top of their voices,--based on the complaint of some fellah seized by the corvée to clean out a canal.

“The digger is in the water with the fish,--he talks to the silurus, and exchanges greetings with the oxyrrhynchus:--West!

your digger is a digger from the West!

”* * The silurus is the electrical fish of the Nile.

The text ironically hints that the digger, up to his waist in water, engaged in dredging the dykes or repairing a bank swept away by an inundation, is liable at any moment to salute, i. e. to meet with a silurus or an oxyrrhynchus ready to attack him;

he is doomed to death, and this fact the couplet expresses by the words, “West!

your digger is a digger from the West.

” The West was the region of the tombs; and the digger, owing to the dangers of his calling, was on his way thither.

[Illustration: 142b.

jpg CUTTING AND CARRYING THE HARVEST] All this takes place under the vigilant eye of the master: as soon as his attention is relaxed, the work slackens, quarrels arise, and the spirit of idleness and theft gains the ascendency.

Two men have unharnessed their team.

One of them quickly milks one of the cows, the other holds the animal and impatiently awaits his turn: “Be quick, while the farmer is not there.

” They run the risk of a beating for a potful of milk.

The weeks pass, the corn has ripened, the harvest begins.

The fellahîn, armed with a short sickle, cut or rather saw the stalks, a handful at a time.

As they advance in line, a flute-player plays them captivating tunes, a man joins in with his voice marking the rhythm by clapping his hands, the foreman throwing in now and then a few words of exhortation: “What lad among you, when the season is over, can say: ‘It is I who say it, to thee and to my comrades, you are all of you but idlers!

’--Who among you can say: ‘An active lad for the job am I!

’” A servant moves among the gang with a tall jar of beer, offering it to those who wish for it.

“Is it not good!

” says he; and the one who drinks answers politely: “‘Tis true, the master’s beer is better than a cake of durra!

” The sheaves once bound, are carried to the singing of fresh songs addressed to the donkeys who bear them: “Those who quit the ranks will be tied, those who roll on the ground will be beaten,--Geeho!

then.

” And thus threatened, the ass trots forward.

Even when a tragic element enters the scene, and the bastinado is represented, the sculptor, catching the bantering spirit of the people among whom he lives, manages to insinuate a vein of comedy.

A peasant, summarily condemned for some misdeed, lies flat upon the ground with bared back: two friends take hold of his arms, and two others his legs, to keep him in the proper position.

His wife or his son intercedes for him to the man with the stick: “For mercy’s sake strike on the ground!

” And as a fact, the bastinado was commonly rather a mere form of chastisement than an actual punishment: the blows, dealt with apparent ferocity, missed their aim and fell upon the earth; the culprit howled loudly, but was let off with only a few bruises.

An Arab writer of the Middle Ages remarks, not without irony, that the Egyptians were perhaps the only people in the world who never kept any stores of provisions by them, but each one went daily to the market to buy the pittance for his family.

The improvidence which he laments over in his contemporaries had been handed down from their most remote ancestors.

Workmen, fellahîn, _employés_, small townsfolk, all lived from hand to mouth in the Egypt of the Pharaohs.

Pay-days were almost everywhere days of rejoicing and extra eating: no one spared either the grain, oil, or beer of the treasury, and copious feasting continued unsparingly, as long as anything was left of their wages.

As their resources were almost always exhausted before the day of distribution once more came round, beggary succeeded to fulness of living, and a part of the population was literally starving for several days.

This almost constant alternation of abundance and dearth had a reactionary influence on daily work: there were scarcely any seignorial workshops or undertakings which did not come to a standstill every month on account of the exhaustion of the workmen, and help had to be provided for the starving in order to avoid popular seditions.

Their improvidence, like their cheerfulness, was perhaps an innate trait in the national character: it was certainly fostered and developed by the system of government adopted by Egypt from the earliest times.

What incentive was there for a man of the people to calculate his resources and to lay up for the future, when he knew that his wife, his children, his cattle, his goods, all that belonged to him, and himself to boot, might be carried off at any moment, without his having the right or the power to resent it?

He was born, he lived, and he died in the possession of a master.

[Illustration: 147. jpg A FLOCK OF GOATS AND THE SONG OF A GOATHERD] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Émil Brugsch- Bey.

The picture is taken from the tomb of Ti.

The lands or houses which his father had left him, were his merely on sufferance, and he enjoyed them only by permission of his lord.

Those which he acquired by his own labour went to swell his master’s domain.

If he married and had sons, they were but servants for the master from the moment they were brought into the world.

Whatever he might enjoy to-day, would his master allow him possession of it to-morrow?

Even life in the world beyond did not offer him much more security or liberty: he only entered it in his master’s service and to do his bidding; he existed in it on tolerance, as he had lived upon this earth, and he found there no rest or freedom unless he provided himself abundantly with “respondents” and charmed statuettes.

He therefore concentrated his mind and energies on the present moment, to make the most of it as of almost the only thing which belonged to him: he left to his master the task of anticipating and providing for the future.

In truth, his masters were often changed; now the lord of one town, now that of another; now a Pharaoh of the Memphite or Theban dynasties, now a stranger installed by chance upon the throne of Horns.

The condition of the people never changed; the burden which crushed them was never lightened, and whatever hand happened to hold the stick, it never fell the less heavily upon their backs.

[Illustration: 148. jpg TAILPIECE] Volume II.

, Part B. _THE MEMPHITE EMPIRE_

_THE ROYAL PYRAMID BUILDERS: KHEOPS, KHEPHREN, MYKERINOS--MEMPHITE LITERATURE AND ART--EXTENSION OF EGYPT TOWARDS THE SOUTH, AND THE CONQUEST OP NUBIA BY THE PHARAOHS.

_ _Snofrûi--The desert which separates Africa from Asia: its physical configuration, its inhabitants, their incursions into Egypt, and their relations with the Egyptians--The peninsula of Sinai: the turquoise and copper mines, the mining works of the Pharaohs--The two tombs of Snofrûi: the pyramid and the mastabas of Mêdûm, the statues of Bahotpû and his wife Nofrît. _ _Kheops, Ehephren, and Myherinos--The Great Pyramid: its construction and internal arrangements--The pyramids of Khephren and Myherinos; the rifling of them--Legend about the royal pyramid builders: the impiety of Kheops and Khephren, the piety of Myherinos; the brick pyramid of Asychis--The materials employed in building, and the quarries of Turah;

the plans, the worship of the royal “double;” the Arab legends about the guardian genii of the pyramids.

_ _The kings of the fifth dynasty: Ùsirkaf, Sahûri, Kalciû, and the romance about their advent--The relations of the Delta to the peoples of the North: the shipping and maritime commerce of the Egyptians--Nubia and its tribes: the Ûaûaiû and the Mazaiû, Pûanît, the dwarfs and the Danga--Egyptian literature: the Proverbs of Phtahhotpû--The arts: architecture, statuary and its chief examples, bas-reliefs, painting, industrial art.

_ _The development of Egyptian feudalism, and the advent of the sixth dynasty: Ati, Imhotpâ, Teti--Papi I. and his minister Uni: the affair of Queen Amitsi; the wars against the Hirû-Shâîtû and the country of Tiba--Metesûphis I. and the second Papi: progress of the Egyptian power in Nubia--the lords of Elephantine; Hirkhûf, Papinakhîti: the way for conquest prepared by their explorations, the occupation of the Oases--The pyramids of Saqqâra: Metesûphis the Second--Nitokris and the legend concerning her--Preponderance of the feudal lords, and fall of the Memphite dynasty.

_ [Illustration: 151. jpg PAGE IMAGE] CHAPTER II--THE MEMPHITE EMPIRE