From the top to the bottom of the social scale every free man acknowledged a master, who secured to him justice and protection in exchange for his obedience and fealty. The moment an Egyptian tried to withdraw himself from this subjection, the peace of his life was at an end; he became a man without a master, and therefore without a recognized protector.*

Any one might stop him on the way, steal his cattle, merchandise, or property on the most trivial pretext, and if he attempted to protest, might beat him with almost certain impunity.

The only resource of the victim was to sit at the gate of the palace, waiting to appeal for justice till the lord or the king should appear. If by chance, after many rebuffs, his humble petition were granted, it was only the beginning of fresh troubles. Even if the justice of the cause were indisputable, the fact that he was a man without home or master inspired his judges with an obstinate mistrust, and delayed the satisfaction of his claims. In vain he followed his judges with his complaints and flatteries, chanting their virtues in every key: “Thou art the father of the unfortunate, the husband of the widow, the brother of the orphan, the clothing of the motherless: enable me to proclaim thy name as a law throughout the land. Good lord, guide without caprice, great without littleness, thou who destroyest falsehood and causest truth to be, come at the words of my mouth; I speak, listen and do justice. O generous one, generous of the generous, destroy the cause of my trouble; here I am, uplift me; judge me, for behold me a suppliant before thee.” If he were an eloquent speaker and the judge were inclined to listen, he was willingly heard, but his cause made no progress, and delays, counted on by his adversary, effected his ruin. The religious law, no doubt, prescribed equitable treatment for all devotees of Osiris, and condemned the slightest departure from justice as one of the gravest sins, even in the case of a great noble, or in that of the king himself; but how could impartiality be shown when the one was the recognized protector, the “master” of the culprit, while the plaintiff was a vagabond, attached to no one, “a man without a master”!

The population of the towns included many privileged persons other than the soldiers, priests, or those engaged in the service of the temples. Those employed in royal or feudal administration, from the “superintendent of the storehouse” to the humblest scribe, though perhaps not entirely exempt from forced labour, had but a small part of it to bear.* These employés constituted a middle class of several grades, and enjoyed a fixed income and regular employment: they were fairly well educated, very self-satisfied, and always ready to declare loudly their superiority over any who were obliged to gain their living by manual labour. Each class of workmen recognized one or more chiefs,—the shoemakers, their master-shoemakers, the masons, their master-masons, the blacksmiths, their master-blacksmiths,—who looked after their interests and represented them before the local authorities.**

It was said among the Greeks, that even robbers were united in a corporation like the others, and maintained an accredited superior as their representative with the police, to discuss the somewhat delicate questions which the practice of their trade gave occasion to. When the members of the association had stolen any object of value, it was to this superior that the person robbed resorted, in order to regain possession of it: it was he who fixed the amount required for its redemption, and returned it without fail, upon the payment of this sum. Most of the workmen who formed a state corporation, lodged, or at least all of them had their stalls, in the same quarter or street, under the direction of their chief. Besides the poll and the house tax, they were subject to a special toll, a trade licence which they paid in products of their commerce or industry.*

Their lot was a hard one, if we are to believe the description which ancient writers have handed down to us: “I have never seen a blacksmith on an embassy—nor a smelter sent on a mission—but what I have seen is the metal worker at his toil,—at the mouth of the furnace of his forge,—his fingers as rugged as the crocodile,—and stinking more than fish-spawn.—The artisan of any kind who handles the chisel,—does not employ so much movement as he who handles the hoe;*

—but for him his fields are the timber, his business is the metal,—and at night when the other is free,—he, he works with his hands over and above what he has already done,—for at night, he works at home by the lamp.—The stone-cutter who seeks his living by working in all kinds of durable stone,—when at last he has earned something—and his two arms are worn out, he stops;—but if at sunrise he remain sitting,—his legs are tied to his back.* —The barber who shaves until the evening,—when he falls to and eats, it is without sitting down** —while running from street to street to seek custom;—if he is constant [at work] his two arms fill his belly—as the bee eats in proportion to its toil.—Shall I tell thee of the mason—how he endures misery?—Exposed to all the winds—while he builds without any garment but a belt—and while the bunch of lotus-flowers [which is fixed] on the [completed] houses—is still far out of his reach,***

—his two arms are worn out with work; his provisions are placed higgledy piggledy amongst his refuse,—he consumes himself, for he has no other bread than his fingers—and he becomes wearied all at once.—He is much and dreadfully exhausted—for there is [always] a block [to be dragged] in this or that building,—a block of ten cubits by six,—there is [always] a block [to be dragged] in this or that month [as far as the] scaffolding poles [to which is fixed] the bunch of lotus-flowers on the [completed] houses.—When the work is quite finished,—if he has bread, he returns home,—and his children have been beaten unmercifully [during his absence].—The weaver within doors is worse off there than a woman;—squatting, his knees against his chest,—he does not breathe.—If during the day he slackens weaving,—he is bound fast as the lotuses of the lake;—and it is by giving bread to the doorkeeper, that the latter permits him to see the light.

The dyer, his fingers reeking—and their smell is that of fish-spawn;—his two eyes are oppressed with fatigue,—his hand does not stop,—and, as he spends his time in cutting out rags—he has a hatred of garments.—The shoemaker is very unfortunate;—he moans ceaselessly,—his health is the health of the spawning fish,—and he gnaws the leather.—The baker makes dough,—subjects the loaves to the fire;—while his head is inside the oven,—his son holds him by the legs;—if he slips from the hands of his son,—he falls there into the flames.” These are the miseries inherent to the trades themselves: the levying of the tax added to the catalogue a long sequel of vexations and annoyances, which were renewed several times in the year at regular intervals.

Even at the present day, the fellah does not pay his contributions except under protest and by compulsion, but the determination not to meet obligations except beneath the stick, was proverbial from ancient times: whoever paid his dues before he had received a merciless beating would be overwhelmed with reproaches by his family, and jeered at without pity by his neighbours. The time when the tax fell due, came upon the nomes as a terrible crisis which affected the whole population. For several days there was nothing to be heard but protestations, threats, beating, cries of pain from the tax-payers, and piercing lamentations from women and children. The performance over, calm was re-established, and the good people, binding up their wounds, resumed their round of daily life until the next tax-gathering.

The towns of this period presented nearly the same confined and mysterious appearance as those of the present day.*

They were grouped around one or more temples, each of which was surrounded by its own brick enclosing wall, with its enormous gateways: the gods dwelt there in real castles, or, if this word appears too ambitious, redouts, in which the population could take refuge in cases of sudden attack, and where they could be in safety.

The towns, which had all been built at one period by some king or prince, were on a tolerably regular ground plan; the streets were paved and fairly wide; they crossed each other at right angles, and were bordered with buildings on the same line of frontage. The cities of ancient origin, which had increased with the chance growth of centuries, presented a totally different aspect.

A network of lanes and blind alleys, narrow, dark, damp, and badly built, spread itself out between the houses, apparently at random: here and there was an arm of a canal, all but dried up, or a muddy pool where the cattle came to drink, and from which the women fetched the water for their households; then followed an open space of irregular shape, shaded by acacias or sycamores, where the country-folk of the suburbs held their market on certain days, twice or thrice a month; then came waste ground covered with filth and refuse, over which the dogs of the neighbourhood fought with hawks and vultures. The residence of the prince or royal governor, and the houses of rich private persons, covered a considerable area, and generally presented to the street a long extent of bare walls, crenellated like those of a fortress: the only ornament admitted on them consisted of angular grooves, each surmounted by two open lotus flowers having their stems intertwined.

Within these walls domestic life was entirely secluded, and as it were confined to its own resources; the pleasure of watching passers-by was sacrificed to the advantage of not being seen from outside. The entrance alone denoted at times the importance of the great man who concealed himself within the enclosure. Two or three steps led up to the door, which sometimes had a columned portico, ornamented with statues, lending an air of importance to the building. The houses of the citizens were small, and built of brick; they contained, however, some half-dozen rooms, either vaulted, or having flat roofs, and communicating with each other usually by arched doorways.

A few houses boasted of two or three stories; all possessed a terrace, on which the Egyptians of old, like those of to-day, passed most of their time, attending to household cares or gossiping with their neighbours over the party wall or across the street. The hearth was hollowed out in the ground, usually against a wall, and the smoke escaped through a hole in the ceiling: they made their fires of sticks, wood charcoal, and the dung of oxen and asses. In the houses of the rich we meet with state apartments, lighted in the centre by a square opening, and supported by rows of wooden columns; the shafts, which were octagonal, measured ten inches in diameter, and were fixed into flat circular stone bases.

The family crowded themselves together into two or three rooms in winter, and slept on the roof in the open air in summer, in spite of risk from affections of the stomach and eyes; the remainder of the dwelling was used for stables or warehouses. The store-chambers were often built in pairs; they were of brick, carefully limewashed internally, and usually assumed the form of an elongated cone, in imitation of the Government storehouses. For the valuables which constituted the wealth of each household—wedges of gold or silver, precious stones, ornaments for men or women—there were places of concealment, in which the possessors attempted to hide them from robbers or from the tax-collectors. But the latter, accustomed to the craft of the citizens, evinced a peculiar aptitude for ferreting out the hoard: they tapped the walls, lifted and pierced the roofs, dug down into the soil below the foundations, and often brought to light, not only the treasure of the owner, but all the surroundings of the grave and human corruption. It was actually the custom, among the lower and middle classes, to bury in the middle of the house children who had died at the breast. The little body was placed in an old tool or linen box, without any attempt at embalming, and its favourite playthings and amulets were buried with it: two or three infants are often found occupying the same coffin. The playthings were of an artless but very varied character; dolls of limestone, enamelled pottery or wood, with movable arms and wigs of artificial hair; pigs, crocodiles, ducks, and pigeons on wheels, pottery boats, miniature sets of household furniture, skin balls filled with hay, marbles, and stone bowls. However, strange it may appear, we have to fancy the small boys of ancient Egypt as playing at bowls like ours, or impudently whipping their tops along the streets without respect for the legs of the passers-by.

Some care was employed upon the decoration of the chambers. The rough-casting of mud often preserves its original grey colour; sometimes, however, it was limewashed, and coloured red or yellow, or decorated with pictures of jars, provisions, and the interiors as well as the exteriors of houses.

The bed was not on legs, but consisted of a low framework, like the “angarebs” of the modern Nubians, or of mats which were folded up in the daytime, but upon which they lay in their clothes during the night, the head being supported by a head-rest of pottery, limestone, or wood: the remaining articles of furniture consisted of one or two roughly hewn seats of stone, a few lion-legged chairs or stools, boxes and trunks of varying sizes for linen and implements, kohl, or perfume, pots of ababaster or porcelain, and lastly, the fire-stick with the bow by which it was set in motion, and some roughly made pots and pans of clay or bronze.

Men rarely entered their houses except to eat and sleep; their employments or handicrafts were such as to require them for the most part to work out-of-doors. The middle-class families owned, almost always, one or two slaves—either purchased or born in the house—who did all the hard work: they looked after the cattle, watched over the children, acted as cooks, and fetched water from the nearest pool or well. Among the poor the drudgery of the household fell entirely upon the woman. She spun, wove, cut out and mended garments, fetched fresh water and provisions, cooked the dinner, and made the daily bread. She spread some handfuls of grain upon an oblong slab of stone, slightly hollowed on its upper surface, and proceeded to crush them with a smaller stone like a painter’s muller, which she moistened from time to time. For an hour and more she laboured with her arms, shoulders, loins, in fact, all her body; but an indifferent result followed from the great exertion. The flour, made to undergo several grindings in this rustic mortar, was coarse, uneven, mixed with bran, or whole grains, which had escaped the pestle, and contaminated with dust and abraded particles of the stone. She kneaded it with a little water, blended with it, as a sort of yeast, a piece of stale dough of the day before, and made from the mass round cakes, about half an inch thick and some four inches in diameter, which she placed upon a flat flint, covering them with hot ashes. The bread, imperfectly raised, often badly cooked, borrowed, from the organic fuel under which it was buried, a special odour, and a taste to which strangers did not readily accustom themselves. The impurities which it contained were sufficient in the long run to ruin the strongest teeth; eating it was an action of grinding rather than chewing, and old men were not unfrequently met with whose teeth had been gradually worn away to the level of the gums, like those of an aged ass or ox.*

Movement and animation were not lacking at certain hours of the day, particularly during the morning, in the markets and in the neighbourhood of the temples and government buildings: there was but little traffic anywhere else; the streets were silent, and the town dull and sleepy. It woke up completely only three or four times a year, at seasons of solemn assemblies “of heaven and earth:” the houses were then opened and their inhabitants streamed forth, the lively crowd thronging the squares and crossways. To begin with, there was New Year’s Day, quickly followed by the Festival of the Bead, the “Ûagaît.” On the night of the 17th of Thot, the priests kindled before the statues in the sanctuaries and sepulchral chapels, the fire for the use of the gods and doubles during the twelve ensuing months. Almost at the same moment the whole country was lit up from one end to the other: there was scarcely a family, however poor, who did not place in front of their door a new lamp in which burned an oil saturated with salt, and who did not spend the whole night in feasting and gossiping.*

The festivals of the living gods attracted considerable crowds, who came not only from the nearest nomes, but also from great distances in caravans and in boats laden with merchandise, for religious sentiment did not exclude commercial interests, and the pilgrimage ended in a fair.

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 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.

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.

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.**

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.

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.*