Each dynasty took for its capital the city from which it sprang. Thus the two first dynasties established the seat of government at Thinis and Memphis; the fifth at Elephantine; and the sixth at Memphis. Thebes only became the capital from the time of the eleventh dynasty.[24] Owing to this excellent custom, no city, under the ancient monarchy, could preserve its ascendency and attract all the sources of power in the country. Thinis, Memphis, Elephantine, Thebes, Tanis, Saïs, etc., were by turns the capitals of the kingdom, the centres of national activity, and the seats of sovereign power.
As to the financial laws, history has transmitted several the wisdom of which makes us regret the more those that have not come down to us. The object of the first was to proscribe idleness, which the Egyptians rightly regarded as a social evil. “Amasis,” says Herodotus, “is the author of the law which obliges every Egyptian to show annually to the governor of his nome (province) his means of subsistence, and they who did not obey, or did not appear to live on legitimate resources, were punished with death. Solon, the Athenian, having borrowed this law from the Egyptians, imposed it on his fellow-citizens, who still observe it and think it faultless.”
The Egyptians, then, recognized this fundamental law—that man
should live by the fruit of his labor, and we see with what rigor they enforced it.[25] In a well-regulated nation, where there is work for every one, no one, indeed, should be allowed to live at the expense of the community. The protection afforded human life in Egypt allows us to suppose that capital punishment was reserved for those who obstinately refused to gain their livelihood by labor or other honest means. We know from Herodotus that woman, as well as man, was subjected to the great law of labor. “The women go to market and traffic, the men remain at home and weave. Everywhere else the woof is brought up, the Egyptians carry it under. The men carry burdens on their heads, the women on their shoulders.”[26]
The weaker sex was better protected from the violence of human passions than among other nations. “The laws concerning women were very severe. Those who violated a free woman were mutilated, for this crime was considered inclusive of three great evils, insult, corruption of morals, and confusion of children. For adultery without violence, the man was condemned to receive a thousand stripes, and the woman to have her nose cut off—the lawgiver wishing her to be deprived of the attractions she had availed herself of to allure.”[27]
We see the powerful protection assured to the family by the Egyptian laws in making woman respected and obliging her to respect herself.
Human life was equally protected. “He who saw on the way a man struggling with an assassin, or enduring violent treatment, and did not aid him when in his power, was condemned
to death.” “He who had wilfully murdered a free man or a slave was punished with death, for the laws wished to punish not according to the degree of rank, but the intention of the evil-doer. At the same time, their care in the management of the slaves kept them from ever offending a free man.[28]
The law respecting loans was no less remarkable. It was forbidden those who lent by contract to allow the principal to more than double by the accumulation of the interest. Creditors who demanded pay could only seize the goods of the debtor. Bodily restraint was never allowed. For the legislator considered goods as belonging to those who acquired them by labor, by transmission, or by gift, but the individual belonged to the state, which, at any moment, might claim his services in war or in peace. It would, indeed, be absurd if a warrior, at the moment of battle, could be carried off by his creditor, and the safety of all endangered by the cupidity of one. It appears that Solon introduced this law at Athens, giving it the name of seisactheia,[29] and remitted all debts contracted under restraint. Most of the Greek legislators are blamed, and not without reason, for forbidding the seizure of arms, ploughs, and other necessary utensils, as pledges of debts, and for permitting, on the other hand, the privation of the liberty of those who made use of these instruments.
It is evident that civilized nations, from the earliest times, sought to oppose and repress the dangerous evil of usury, which inevitably leads to the oppression of the laborer and the degradation of labor. But the