Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé

by F. Barham Zincke

Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new?

It hath been already of old time which was before us.—Eccles.

Landlordism, or the territorial system, which gives, generally throughout a country, the ownership of the land to one class, and the cultivation of it to another, who pay rent for it, is often spoken of as something peculiarly English. We hear it said that this divorce of ownership from cultivation is unnatural. That it is bad economically, and worse politically. That attachment to the land, the great element of stability in political institutions, hardly exists under it. On the other side it is urged that it is a great advantage to a community to possess in its bosom a large class, far removed from the necessity of working for its support, which is, therefore, better able to set to other classes an example of refinement, and of honourable bearing; and of which many members will naturally desire to devote themselves to the service of the state, and of their respective neighbourhoods. We argue the point, as if the landlordism of England were almost something sui generis. This is a mistake. The same system was developed, only more designedly and methodically, throughout Egypt more than three thousand years ago. There the whole acreage of the country was divided into rectangular estates. One third of these was assigned to the king, and the remaining two thirds, in equal proportions, to the priestly, and to the military castes. These estates were generally cultivated by another order of men, who, for the use of the land, paid rent to the owners.

It is a curious fact, that the Egyptian farmer paid the same proportionate rent which is paid by the British farmer of the present day. Rent in Egypt three thousand years ago, was one fifth of the gross produce. The circumstances of Egypt, of course, almost exclude the idea of average land, for any one acre anywhere was likely to be as good as any other acre anywhere else, all being fluviatile alluvium similarly compounded. And all were subject to much the same atmospheric conditions. There could therefore be the same rent for the whole kingdom. But if the land did anywhere, from some exceptional cause, produce more or less, this was met by the system of paying a fifth. With respect to this country, however, we must talk of averages. The average gross produce of average farms is here, I suppose, estimated in money, about eight pounds an acre; and the average rent of such a farm is about thirty-two shillings an acre. Just one fifth. Exactly the proportion that was paid, as rent for the land they occupied, by the tenants of Potiphar, Captain of the Guard, and of Potipherah, Priest of On, Joseph’s father-in-law. The same rent was paid by the occupiers of the farms on the royal demesne to Pharaoh himself.

It may also be worth while noticing how similar circumstances produced in those remote times, and produce in our own, similar tastes and manners. Those old Egyptian landlords were not altogether unlike their English representatives. There are traces in them of a family likeness. They were much addicted to field-sports. You see this everywhere in the sculptures and paintings. You find there plenty of scenes of fowling, fishing, and hunting; of running down the gazelle, and spearing the hippopotamus; of coursing and netting hares; and of shooting wild cattle with arrows, and of catching them with the lasso. They had their fish-ponds as well as their game-preserves. They had, too, their game laws. They were fond of dogs and of horses. They kept very good tables. They gave morning and evening parties. They amused themselves with games of skill and chance. They thought a great deal of their ancestors, as well they might, for a thousand years went but for little in the date of the patents of their nobility. They built fine houses, and furnished them handsomely. They paid great attention to horticulture and arboriculture.

If the estates in Egypt were all of the same size as the military allotments mentioned by Herodotus, and the probability is that they were, they must have been about ten acres each. This may be reckoned as fully equal to thirty acres here; for in Egypt the land is all of the best description, and is manured every year by the inundation; and two crops at least can every year be secured from it, the cultivation being almost like that of a garden under irrigation. This would be ample for those who cultivated their land themselves. Those who let it for a fifth would of course get that proportion of every crop. The man therefore who had forty-two estates, as we find it recorded of an old Egyptian on his tomb, had a very considerable income. It would be interesting to know how he came to acquire so many estates; whether by inheritance, by purchase, or by favour of the Crown; whether there were any statutory limits to the acquisition of landed property; and whether provisions were made for dispersing a man’s accumulations at his death: for instance, supposing he had received several estates from the Crown, was he merely a life-tenant without power of absolute disposal, the estates reverting at his death to the Crown? What was the rule of distribution generally followed in their wills? How was the property of an Egyptian, who died intestate, disposed of?

CHAPTER XXXIII.
CASTE.

Ne sutor ultra crepidam.

In old Egypt, where we find the earliest development of Aryan civilization, every occupation was hereditary. In the United States, where we have its most recent development, no occupation is hereditary. In Egypt a man’s ancestors from everlasting had practised, and his descendants to everlasting would have to practise, the same business as himself. In the United States it is a common occurrence for the same man to have practised in succession several businesses.