Each of the departments which helped to swell its contents, occupied within the palace enclosure a building, or group of buildings, which was called its “house,” or, as we should say, its storehouse.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a chromolithograph in Lepsius,
Denhm., ii. 96.
There was the “White Storehouse,” where the stuffs and jewels were kept, and at times the wine; the “Storehouse of the Oxen,” the “Gold Storehouse,” the “Storehouse for Preserved Fruits,” the “Storehouse for Grain,” the “Storehouse for Liquors,” and ten other storehouses of the application of which we are not always sure. In the “Storehouse of Weapons” (or Armoury) were ranged thousands of clubs, maces, pikes, daggers, bows, and bundles of arrows, which Pharaoh distributed to his recruits whenever a war forced him to call out his army, and which were again warehoused after the campaign. The “storehouses” were further subdivided into rooms or store-chambers,* each reserved for its own category of objects.
* Aît, Âî. Lefébure has collected a number of passages in
which these storehouses are mentioned, in his notes Sur
différents mots et noms Égyptiens. In many of the cases
which he quotes, and in which he recognizes an office of the
State, I believe reference to be made to a trade: many of
the ari âît-afû, “people of the store-chambers for meat,”
were probably butchers; many of the ari âît-hiqÎtû, “people
of the store-chamber for beer,” were probably keepers of
drink-shops, trading on their own account in the town of
Abydos, and not employés attached to the exchequer of
Pharaoh or of the ruler of Thinis.
It would be difficult to enumerate the number of store-chambers in the outbuildings of the “Storehouse of Provisions”—store-chambers for butcher’s meat, for fruits, for beer, bread, and wine, in which were deposited as much of each article of food as would be required by the court for some days, or at most for a few weeks. They were brought there from the larger storehouses, the wines from vaults, the oxen from their stalls, the corn from the granaries. The latter were vast brick-built receptacles, ten or more in a row, circular in shape and surmounted by cupolas, but having no communication with each other. They had only two openings, one at the top for pouring in the grain, another on the ground level for drawing it out; a notice posted up outside, often on the shutter which closed the chamber, indicated the character and quantity of the cereals within. For the security and management of these, there were employed troops of porters, store-keepers, accountants, “primates” who superintended the works, record-keepers, and directors. Great nobles coveted the administration of the “storehouses,” and even the sons of kings did not think it derogatory to their dignity to be entitled “Directors of the Granaries,” or “Directors of the Armoury.” There was no law against pluralists, and more than one of them boasts on his tomb of having held simultaneously five or six offices. These storehouses participated like all the other dependencies of the crown, in that duality which characterized the person of the Pharaoh. They would be called in common parlance, the Storehouse or the Double White Storehouse, the Storehouse or the Double Gold Storehouse, the Double Warehouse, the Double Granary.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a scene on the tomb of Amoni at
Beni-Hasan. On the right, near the door, is a heap of grain,
from which the measurer fills his measure in order to empty
it into the sack which one of the porters holds open. In the
centre is a train of slaves ascending the stairs which lead
to the loft above the granaries; one of them empties his
sack into a hole above the granary in the presence of the
overseer. The inscriptions in ink on the outer wall of the
receptacles, which have already been filled, indicate the
number of measures which each one of them contains.