Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé

by F. Barham Zincke

With respect to ourselves, it is a trite remark that in this country legislation is the only work that is designedly made hereditary. It is, however, obvious that this is an instance which is subject to considerable limitations, both as to its hereditary character, and as to its actual extent. For our legislator caste is always receiving into its ranks recruits from outside, and its legislative power is only a power that is exercised co-ordinately with that of an unhereditary chamber.

Circumstances, not positive institution, except indirectly, have hitherto made our agricultural labourers very much of a caste. Those who are engaged in this kind of work are generally descended from those who have for many generations been so employed. Multitudes of the class, however, escape from it; and every village school that is at work amongst us is supplying means of escape from it for many of those whose horizon it enlarges.

The clergy of the Established Church to a great extent form a caste, but without hereditary succession. This caste character of the clergy is a result of their segregation from secular employments, and of their corporate perpetuity.

Serfdom had, in mediæval Europe, a similar effect, which was, at the same period, felt at the other extremity also of society, through the institution of feudal nobility.

But the most widely-spread form of the institution was that which now appears to us the most hideous of all human institutions, that of slavery. Still we cannot pronounce it unnatural, for we find it, at certain stages of their development, among all races of men; and even constituting a regular part of the economy of certain insects. In Europe it is difficult to believe that some of the early advances of society could have been made without its aid. It belongs to that stage when wealth, which gives the leisure which makes any degree of intellectual culture possible, can only be secured by binding down the many to compulsory toil for the few, and giving to them all that the many can produce in excess of the absolute necessaries of existence. The Homeric chieftain was the product of this arrangement. So were the highly-cultured Greeks of the age of Pericles. It was the same with the governing class in the period of Roman greatness. It is, in one view, a very complete form of the institution, because it embraces every member of the community, from the top to the bottom. It divides society into two castes, assigning to one leisure, culture, the use of arms, government; to the other, denying them all participation in these advantages and employments, it assigns absolute subjection, labour, and bare subsistence. The history of this institution is very instructive. It shows how, in human affairs, circumstances rule and decide the question of expediency; and even that it is impossible to predicate of matters of this kind good or evil absolutely. Here, at all events, is something (it is, in fact, the very mould in which a community is cast,) which at one time builds up society, and at another overthrows it; which at one time is the cause and instrument of progress, and at other times retards, or reverses it; which, under some conditions, is not unfavourable to morality, and is under others immoral and demoralizing.

Of all these arrangements, then, we may suppose that they were, in their respective times, necessary and useful. They appear to belong to early and transitional stages of society, and not, if there be, or ever is to be, such a state, to its maturity. They mean either that every member of society is not yet fit to be trusted; or that society cannot yet afford to endow all its members with freedom and power, and that, under such circumstances, more or less rigid restriction is an indispensable condition of life and growth.

The abolition of slavery is the recognition, morally and logically—though, of course, not always practically and politically: it must, however, always work in this direction—of the axioms ‘that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; and that among these are life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.’

In India the word for caste signifies colour. The castes are the colours. This connects the institution with conquest. Probably in Egypt it had the same origin. We have seen that it might have had. But this could not have maintained it through thousands of years. Nothing could have given it such vitality but its utility. Benefit of clergy is evidence of there having been a period in the history of modern Europe when only a very limited class was educated, and so it became the sole depository of the knowledge of the times. As there was such a period in the history of those who had inherited the arts of Greece and Rome, and among them an easy style of writing, it could not have been otherwise in old Egypt. The difficulties of maintaining knowledge must at that time have been very great; and, as all knowledge was more or less connected with religion (religion, indeed, then meaning the organization of the knowledge of the community for the regulation of its life and action), it naturally fell into the keeping of the priests, who could see no advantage in communicating it to the profane vulgar. It was their patrimony, their inheritance. This at once preserved it, and constituted its guardians a caste. The existence of one such caste would make the general introduction of the system throughout the community natural and easy. It was obviously in such times the best way of maintaining the knowledge of every art, as well as of religion itself. It also endowed society with a fixity and order nothing else could impart to it. Every man in the community was born to a certain definite condition and occupation, of which nothing could divest him, and which he never could abandon. This utterly extinguished all motives for, and almost the very idea of, insurrections and revolutions.

Such a state of society had, of course, certain easily-seen disadvantages, but it also had certain very considerable advantages. The chief of these was that just adverted to, that society, having paid the penalty of the restrictions and losses the system imposed, advanced with internal peace and order. These, when the system had once been disturbed, could never again be attained till society had arrived at the opposite, that is the Chinese or American, extreme, in which there is abolished, as far as possible, every vestige of the old system, even what might be called the natural and uninstituted caste of the ignorant. Caste throughout from top to bottom, or caste nowhere, equally ensures domestic quiet. All between, every form of the partial application of the system, carries within itself the germs of social disquiet, dissatisfaction, and disorder. The history of all countries has been hitherto very much a history of caste. This is a point which has not been sufficiently kept in sight. The picture of social order maintained in ancient Egypt for several thousand years, as in India, astonishes us. Universal caste explain the phenomenon. There was nothing in the bosom of those great communities to suggest recourse to arms, except the occasional occurrence of religious innovations, or of dynastic rivalries.