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.**
* This is a fair inference from the indirect testimony of
the Letters: the writer, in enumerating the liabilities of
the various professions, implies by contrast that the scribe
(i.e. the employé in general) is not subject to them, or
is subject to a less onerous share of them than others. The
beginning and end of the instructions of Khîti would in
themselves be sufficient to show us the advantages which the
middle classes under the XIIth dynasty believed they could
derive from adopting the profession of scribe.
** The stelæ of Abydos are very useful to those who desire
to study the populations of a small town. They give us the
names of the head-men of trades of all kinds; the head-mason
Didiû, the master-mason Aa, the master-shoemaker Kahikhonti,
the head-smiths Ûsirtasen-Ûati, Hotpû, Hot-pûrekhsû.
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.*
* The registers (for the most part unpublished), which are
contained in European museums show us that fishermen paid in
fish, gardeners in flowers and vegetables, etc., the taxes
or tribute which they owed to their lords. In the great
inscription of Abydos the weavers attached to the temple of
Seti I. are stated to have paid their tribute in stuffs.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Rosellini, Monumenti Civili,
pl. 2 a.
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;*
* The literal translation would be, “The artisan of all
kinds who handles the chisel is more motionless than he who
handles the hoe.” Both here, and in several other passages
of this little satiric poem, I have been obliged to
paraphrase the text in order to render it intelligible to
the modern reader.