If one had held a post in the royal household, however low the occupation, it was something to be proud of all one’s life, and after death to boast of in one’s epitaph. The chiefs to whom this army of servants rendered obedience at times rose from the ranks; on some occasion their master had noticed them in the crowd, and had transferred them, some by a single promotion, others by slow degrees, to the highest offices of the state. Many among them, however, belonged to old families, and held positions in the palace which their fathers and grandfathers had occupied before them, some were members of the provincial nobility, distant descendants of former royal princes and princesses, more or less nearly related to the reigning sovereign.*
* It was the former who, I believe, formed the class of
rokhu sûton so often mentioned on the monuments. This
title is generally supposed to have been a mark of
relationship with the royal family. M. de Rougé proved long
ago that this was not so, and that functionaries might bear
this title even though they were not blood relations of the
Pharaohs. It seems to me to have been used to indicate a
class of courtiers whom the king condescended to “know”
(rokhu) directly, without the intermediary of a
chamberlain, the “persons known by the king;” the others
were only his “friends” (samirû).
They had been sought out to be the companions of his education and of his pastimes, while he was still living an obscure life in the “House of the Children;” he had grown up with them and had kept them about his person as his “sole friends” and counsellors. He lavished titles and offices upon them by the dozen, according to the confidence he felt in their capacity or to the amount of faithfulness with which he credited them. A few of the most favoured were called “Masters of the Secret of the Royal House;” they knew all the innermost recesses of the palace, all the passwords needed in going from one part of it to another, the place where the royal treasures were kept, and the modes of access to it. Several of them were “Masters of the Secret of all the Royal Words,” and had authority over the high courtiers of the palace, which gave them the power of banishing whom they pleased from the person of the sovereign. Upon others devolved the task of arranging his amusements; they rejoiced the heart of his Majesty by pleasant songs, while the chiefs of the sailors and soldiers kept watch over his safety. To these active services were attached honorary privileges which were highly esteemed, such as the right to retain their sandals in the palace, while the general crowd of courtiers could only enter unshod; that of kissing the knees and not the feet of the “good god,” and that of wearing the panther’s skin. Among those who enjoyed these distinctions were the physicians of the king, chaplains, and men of the roll—“khri-habi.” The latter did not confine themselves to the task of guiding Pharaoh through the intricacies of ritual, nor to that of prompting him with the necessary formulas needed to make the sacrifice efficacious; they were styled “Masters of the Secrets of Heaven,” those who see what is in the firmament, on the earth and in Hades, those who know all the charms of the soothsayers, prophets, or magicians. The laws relating to the government of the seasons and the stars presented no mysteries to them, neither were they ignorant of the months, days, or hours propitious to the undertakings of everyday life or the starting out on an expedition, nor of those times during which any action was dangerous. They drew their inspirations from the books of magic written by Thot, which taught them the art of interpreting dreams or of curing the sick, or of invoking and obliging the gods to assist them, and of arresting or hastening the progress of the sun on the celestial ocean. Some are mentioned as being able to divide the waters at their will, and to cause them to return to their natural place, merely by means of a short formula. An image of a man or animal made by them out of enchanted wax, was imbued with life at their command, and became an irresistible instrument of their wrath. Popular stories reveal them to us at work. “Is it true,” said Kheops to one of them, “that thou canst replace a head which has been cut off?” On his admitting that he could do so, Pharaoh immediately desired to test his power. “Bring me a prisoner from prison and let him be slain.” The magician, at this proposal, exclaimed: “Nay, nay, not a man, sire my master; do not command that this sin should be committed; a fine animal will suffice!” A goose was brought, “its head was cut off and the body was placed on the right side, and the head of the goose on the left side of the hall: he recited what he recited from his book of magic, the goose began to hop forward, the head moved on to it, and, when both were united, the goose began to cackle. A pelican was produced, and underwent the same process. His Majesty then caused a bull to be brought forward, and its head was smitten to the ground: the magician recited what he recited from his book of magic, the bull at once arose, and he replaced on it what had fallen to the earth.” The great lords themselves deigned to become initiated into the occult sciences, and were invested with these formidable powers. A prince who practised magic would enjoy amongst us nowadays but small esteem: in Egypt sorcery was not considered incompatible with royalty, and the magicians of Pharaoh often took Pharaoh himself as their pupil.*
Such were the king’s household, the people about his person, and those attached to the service of his family. His capital sheltered a still greater number of officials and functionaries who were charged with the administration of his fortune—that is to say, what he possessed in Egypt.** In theory it was always supposed that the whole of the soil belonged to him, but that he and his predecessors had diverted and parcelled off such an amount of it for the benefit of their favourites, or for the hereditary lords, that only half of the actual territory remained under his immediate control. He governed most of the nomes of the Delta in person:*** beyond the Fayum, he merely retained isolated lands, enclosed in the middle of feudal principalities and often at considerable distance from each other.
* We know the reputation, extending even to the classical
writers of antiquity, of the Pharaohs Nechepso and Nectanebo
for their skill in magic. Arab writers have, moreover,
collected a number of traditions concerning the marvels
which the sorcerers of Egypt were in the habit of
performing; as an instance, I may quote the description
given by Makrîzî of one of their meetings, which is probably
taken from some earlier writer.
** They were frequently distinguished from their provincial
or manorial colleagues by the addition of the word khonû to their titles, a term which indicates, in a general
manner, the royal residence. They formed what we should
nowadays call the departmental staff of the public officers,
and might be deputed to act, at least temporarily, in the
provinces, or in the service of one of the feudal princes,
without thereby losing their status as functionaries of the
khonû or central administration.
*** This seems, at any rate, an obvious inference from the
almost total absence of feudal titles on the most ancient
monuments of the Delta. Erman, who was struck by this fact,
attributed it to a different degree of civilization in the
two halves of Egypt; I attribute it to a difference in
government. Feudal titles naturally predominate in the
South, royal administrative titles in the North.
The extent of the royal domain varied with different dynasties, and even from reign to reign: if it sometimes decreased, owing to too frequently repeated concessions,* its losses were generally amply compensated by the confiscation of certain fiefs, or by their lapsing to the crown. The domain was always of sufficient extent to oblige the Pharaoh to confide the larger portion of it to officials of various kinds, and to farm merely a small remainder of the “royal slaves:” in the latter case, he reserved for himself all the profits, but at the expense of all the annoyance and all the outlay; in the former case, he obtained without any risk the annual dues, the amount of which was fixed on the spot, according to the resources of the nome.
* We find, at different periods, persons who call themselves
masters of new domains or strongholds—Pahûrnofir, under the
IIIrd dynasty; several princes of Hermopolis, under the VIth
and VIIth; Khnûmhotpû at the begining of the XIIth. In
connection with the last named, we shall have occasion,
later on, to show in what manner and with what rapidity one
of these great new fiefs was formed.
In order to understand the manner in which the government of Egypt was conducted, we should never forget that the world was still ignorant of the use of money, and that gold, silver, and copper, however abundant we may suppose them to have been, were mere articles of exchange, like the most common products of Egyptian soil. Pharaoh was not then, as the State is with us, a treasurer who calculates the total of his receipts and expenses in ready money, banks his revenue in specie occupying but little space, and settles his accounts from the same source. His fiscal receipts were in kind, and it was in kind that he remunerated his servants for their labour: cattle, cereals, fermented drinks, oils, stuffs, common or precious metals,—“all that the heavens give, all that the earth produces, all that the Nile brings from its mysterious sources,” * —constituted the coinage in which his subjects paid him their contributions, and which he passed on to his vassals by way of salary.
* This was the most usual formula for the offering on the
funerary stelo, and sums up more completely than any other
the nature of the tax paid to the gods by the living, and
consequently the nature of that paid to the king; here, as
elsewhere, the domain of the gods is modelled on that of the
Pharaohs.
One room, a few feet square, and, if need be, one safe, would easily contain the entire revenue of one of our modern empires: the largest of our emporiums would not always have sufficed to hold the mass of incongruous objects which represented the returns of a single Egyptian province. As the products in which the tax was paid took various forms, it was necessary to have an infinite variety of special agents and suitable places to receive it; herdsmen and sheds for the oxen, measurers and granaries for the grain, butlers and cellarers for the wine, beer, and oils. The product of the tax, while awaiting redistribution, could only be kept from deteriorating in value by incessant labour, in which a score of different classes of clerks and workmen in the service of the treasury all took part, according to their trades. If the tax were received in oxen, it was led to pasturage, or at times, when a murrain threatened to destroy it, to the slaughter-house and the currier; if it were in corn, it was bolted, ground to flour, and made into bread and pastry; if it were in stuffs, it was washed, ironed, and folded, to be retailed as garments or in the piece. The royal treasury partook of the character of the farm, the warehouse, and the manufactory.