The upper register shows the deceased in his function as “Scribe of the fields of the Lord of the Two Lands.” On the left are shown a group of his officials, dressed in white, pencase in hand, busy measuring the grain on the stalk; their attendants (with bare bodies) hold the measuring cord. A peasant (followed by his wife who carries a basket on her head with further gifts) offers something to the tax officials, to propitiate them. But on the right, before the kiosk of the tomb owner and near the mooring-place of the boat which brought his subordinates to the scene, a peasant, who apparently defaulted, is beaten, while another kneels and prays for grace.
[155]“The Eloquent Peasant” is a tale of such an appeal. See Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, IX (1923), 7 ff., and a short discussion in my Ancient Egyptian Religion, 46, 146-50. For the conception of maat, ibid., 49-58.
[156]For a detailed discussion of the building of the pyramids, see I. E. S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt, Pelican Books, chapter vii.
[157]T. Eric Peet and C. Leonard Woolley, The City of Akhenaten, Part I (38th Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Society), London, 1923.
[158]Gardiner in Zeitschrift für Aegyptische Sprache, XLIII (1906), 43.
[159]Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Tübingen, 1924), 24.
[160]Junker, Giza, V (Wien, 1941).
[161]Op. cit., 52 ff.
[162]Junker, Giza, IV (Wien, 1940).
[163]After Griffith, Deir el Gebrawi, II, 30.