The constitution of the country, favored by the state of affairs, provided for this disorder. A new family was called to reign.”
Modern historians have represented the ancient monarchy of Egypt as subjected to the despotism of the sacerdotal caste. This assertion seems difficult to reconcile with the numerous inscriptions attesting that the principal functions of the priesthood were constantly assumed by the sons of the Pharaohs. An inscription in relief on the façade of the tomb of Koufou Schaf, whom M. Mariette believes to be the oldest son of Cheops, the builder of the great pyramid, depicts that prince wearing a panther’s skin—a distinctive sign of high sacerdotal functions—and among his titles is found that of priest of Apis. According to a papyrus published by Baron Denon, the sons of the two Pharaohs must have filled the office of the high-priest of Ammon.
It is true these last-named princes belonged to the twenty-second dynasty, and at that epoch they had not had time to forget the usurpation by the high-priests Pahôr-Amonsé and Pihmé. It is probable that the king in causing this high function to be assumed by his nearest relatives wished to take precautions against the reaction of the sacerdotal class, always so powerful. But the monuments almost always show the priesthood living in strict and intimate alliance with the royal authority. Thus, while the younger sons of the Pharaohs performed the priestly functions, the children of the high-priests attended the royal children, and were employed in the highest offices in the king’s palace. The office of high-priest of Ammon at Thebes, the sacerdotal city, was hereditary, as Herodotus attests in the following passage:
“As Hecatæus, the historian, gave his genealogy at Thebes, and made himself to be a descendant of a god, through sixteen generations, the priests of Jupiter (Ammon) treated him as they did me, except that I did not give my genealogy. After conducting me into a vast interior apartment, they counted, as they showed them to me, the large wooden statues of the high-priests, each of whom, while alive, placed his image there. Commencing with that of the last deceased and going back, the priests made me remark that each of the high-priests was the son of his predecessor.... Each one of these statues represented, they said, a piromis, the son of a piromis. They showed me three hundred and forty-five, and invariably a piromis was the son of a piromis.”
It is not necessary to remark to what degree the priests of Ammon took advantage of the credulity of Herodotus. Doubtless, the office of high-priest in Egypt was hereditary as well as the throne, but it was no less subject to the influence of dynastic revolutions. We have just seen, for example, the two sons of the king filling the office of the high-priest of Amon-Ra, king of the gods.
The sacerdotal class was truly the soul of the Egyptian nation. It so completely embodied the genius, character, and traditions of the people that they may be said to have lived by their priests. They formed the most powerful body of men that ever existed in the world before the Catholic clergy.
As we have seen in a preceding chapter, the independence of this corporation was ensured by a large territorial endowment. According to Diodorus, “the largest part of the land belonged to the college of priests.... They transmit their
profession to their descendants and are exempt from taxation.”[12]
“Thus secure in the possession of their lands,” says Champollion-Figeac, “the entire sacerdotal class was like a family with a vast heritage transmissible, according to known conditions, from generation to generation. It was this right of inheriting the lands that necessarily rendered their office hereditary, because the nature of their functions determined the part of the land inherited by each member of the family, and on this fundamental principle the whole constitution of the sacerdotal caste of Egypt depended.”
The hereditary transmission of each sacerdotal function, and the part of the landed property attached to this function, could only take effect in favor of one of the children, and probably the oldest, as in the royal family. The other children remained to be supported by the head of the family, or easily found a means of subsistence in the perquisites of the numerous sacred or civil employments. The number of the temples, their rich endowments and rents, spoken of in the Rosetta inscription, explains how so large a number of priests could live at their ease. To this income must be added the subsidies from the royal treasury, and the fees of the numerous salaried functions which embraced every part of the public administration, apart from the military sphere. But in Egypt, as elsewhere, families sometimes became extinct for want of