The administration which functioned under the vizier was divided into several departments. First among these was the Exchequer, headed by the “Treasurer of the god (i.e. king).” This was the central depot for all imposts and duties owed to the state. In view of the ideal form of the Dual Monarchy it was called “The Two White Houses,” but in practice there was no division. It had branches with storehouses throughout the country where the dues were collected and from where the central treasury was supplied. The administration was highly centralized; and the Treasurer was responsible, not only for the collection and disposal of the native produce paid in as taxes, but also for the royal expeditions which, as we shall see, brought new materials such as copper, malachite, wood, or gold, from abroad. Therefore he sometimes bore the title “general” or “admiral” and had troops and ships at his disposal.
The second important government department was the Ministry of Agriculture, in which a “Chief of the Fields” dealt with purely agricultural matters, while a “Master of (the King’s) Largesse” was concerned with everything pertaining to livestock.
These government departments were not rigidly separated, and an administrative career was likely to take a man through all of them, as well as through the local administration. Promising young men, or sons of those whom the king trusted or favoured, were educated at court, and then acquired administrative experience by passing through a succession of posts which they filled with the assistance of knowledgeable scribes of the relevant departments. Methen (Fourth Dynasty) was a Royal Kinsman who acted successively as Scribe of the Exchequer, apparently also as Physician, then as District Chief, Judge, Supervisor of all the flax of the king, to end as nomarch or ruler of a province. In this last function he administered three provinces in succession—which proves that the administration was independent of local worthies. At the end of the Old Kingdom the nomarchs had achieved some sort of permanence by regularly obtaining their offices for their sons as their successors, and so they developed into a landed gentry. At first, however, they were royal officials who were moved from one post to another, who had no pretence to independence and no local ties. Their affinities and interests—as those of all officials—were with the court; and Methen remained until the end “Master of the King’s Hunt,” a purely courtly function.
Neither the several departments of the government nor the central and local administrations were clearly delimited, and their province remained ill-defined until the end. It has been pointed out, for instance,[146] that, under the New Kingdom, tribute from abroad could be received upon arrival in Egypt by the “Treasurer of the god” as head of the Exchequer, by the “Supervisor of the Treasury,” his subordinate, by lower officials of the Exchequer, by the vizier, by high military commanders, or by the chief priest of Amon. This fluidity of competence is simply due to the fact that all authority was delegated royal power and hence comprehensive in its very nature. There was similarly a vagueness of demarcation between the central and the local authorities; and when Seti I (Nineteenth Dynasty) issued a decree commanding that the temple of Abydos should receive its shipments of gold from Nubia without being subject to tolls and other dues normally levied from ships in transit, he had to address his decree to twelve different classes of officials, starting with the vizier and so down to “the mayors and the controllers of camps in Upper and Lower Egypt ... every inspector belonging to the king’s estate and every person sent on a mission to Nubia.”[147] For local officers, no less than those of the central government, represented Pharaoh. A nomarch of the Fifth Dynasty, Nesutnefer,[148] is marked by his titles as “Leader of the Land (i.e. province),” which probably meant that he was the head of the provincial administration in all its branches. He was “Chief of Fortifications,” which meant that he was head of the police as well as responsible for the guarding of the frontiers of his province against desert tribes. He was “Ruler of the King’s People,” namely, of the serfs and tenants, bailiffs and stewards, craftsmen, scribes, fishermen, and so on, who were employed on the royal domains within his province, whether they were free or bond. Finally, he was called “Chief of Commands,” which meant that orders from the king or the vizier went to him and that he was responsible for their being carried out in his province.
In the nomarchs we find an element most dangerous to the unity of the state. Under the Old Kingdom there was, at first, no question of any power opposing the king. Nesutnefer, whose office we have just described, was twice transferred to another province. But the kings rewarded their faithful servants with gifts of land; and, at the same time, officials pressed for hereditary appointments. Officially this claim was never admitted, but in practice there was an advantage in letting a son succeed his father, since the loyalty of the incumbent of an office was then ensured and his successor was certain to receive most careful professional training. However, the two tendencies together changed the relation between the great officials and the king in the course of time. Hereditary offices and property turned the officials into landed proprietors who were no longer entirely dependent upon their function at court,[149] although, as long as the central power remained strong, Pharaoh could cancel all rights to land or to office at any time. Nevertheless, when the central administration collapsed completely at the end of the Sixth Dynasty, the hereditary landowners were in a position to assume responsibility for the maintenance of rule and order in their districts. The manors of their estates were turned into miniature courts. This situation flouted every native theory and practice of government, and it did not outlast the period of confusion. The kings of the Twelfth Dynasty restored centralized government.
It is possible to gain a clear idea of the mentality of the Egyptian official, since many texts define the norms of his behaviour. The ideal official was “the silent man,” who is respectful of established authority and just, since maat (which means truth, justice, rightness) is part of that world order of which his royal master is the champion. The “silent man”[150] is, therefore, not the meek sufferer, but the wise, self-possessed, well-adapted man, modest and self-effacing up to a point, but deliberate and firm in the awareness that he is thoroughly in harmony with the world in which he lives.
We cannot draw a corresponding picture of the common people of Egypt. Since they were illiterate, they are known to us only in descriptions of peasant life from the schools of scribes; and these are tendentious, singing the advantages of a “soft” job as an encouragement to the pupils involved in the arduous task of mastering the script. Notwithstanding the smug complacency of these texts and the evident satisfaction which the writers found in parodying every employment other than their own, the section dealing with the peasantry is worth quoting since it pictures well enough the farmer’s lot under inefficient or corrupt administrators:
Remember you not the condition of the cultivator faced with the registering of the harvest tax, when the snake has carried off half the corn and the hippopotamus has devoured the rest? The mice abound in the fields. The locusts descend. The cattle devour. The sparrows bring disaster upon the cultivator. The remainder that is on the threshing floor is at an end, it falls to the thieves. The value of the hired cattle (?) is lost. The yoke of oxen has died while threshing and ploughing.
And now the scribe lands on the river bank and is about to register the harvest tax. The janitors carry staves and the Nubians (policemen) rods of palm, and they say, “Hand over the corn,” though there is none. The cultivator is beaten all over, he is bound and thrown into the well, soused, and dipped head downwards. His wife has been bound in his presence, his children are in fetters. His neighbours abandon him and are fled.[151]
If such brutality had been the rule, it is clear that Egyptian society could not have survived. Agriculturalists are inevitably the prey of occasional calamities because they are dependent on weather and water. But if disasters follow one another frequently without relief, or if oppression by those in power exceeds a certain limit, there is no inducement for the peasant to continue his labours at all. He takes to flight or to revolt. We have seen why the texts used in the scribal schools emphasized the shadow-side of the peasant’s lot. Moreover, we should remember that the humdrum normal life of the rural population offered no interest to the literati. The elementary satisfactions of a life wedded to nature, its crafty game of hiding assets from the bureaucrats, its tough endurance of injustice, the latent power of its indispensability—all these did not supply the scribal schools with material for the florid compositions which were their pride.
It was otherwise with the sculptors and painters. These men, charged with depicting on the walls of the great tombs the various rural activities from which the sustenance of the owner, in the next world, as in this, derived,[152] rendered these with the liveliest interest. Their work (Figs. [29], [30]) presents to us a gay, light-hearted people, resembling in many respects the modern fellahin who similarly live on the verge of poverty under hardship and oppression. In the tombs we see fishermen and herdsmen at their tasks, joking with one another (the words are sometimes rendered over their images). Harvesters move in a row, rhythmically swinging their sickles to the tune of a song which is accompanied by a man with a long reed pipe ([Fig. 29]).[153] Women bring food to their menfolk; two little girls squabble, while a third draws a thorn from the foot of her friend; a shepherd dozes under a tree, his dog asleep beside him ([Fig. 30]);[154] another herdsman refreshes himself from a goatskin bottle.