“A great number of administrative reports and fragments of registers of the public accounts are found in the papyri still preserved.
“The services employing the greatest number, and the most able men, were those of the public works, the army, and the administration of the revenues of the kingdom. Coined money was unknown,[32] all the taxes were collected in kind. There were three divisions on the land according to the nature of the rents: the canal (maou) paid its tribute in fish, the arable land (ouou) in cereals, and the marshes (pehou) in heads of cattle. A register was carefully kept, with an account of the changes, a statement of all the kinds of land in each district, and the names of the owners.
“... Many contracts of
sales and rents of land and houses, drawn up on papyrus, have been found among the family papers of the dead. They show with what guarantees and careful formalities property was protected in ancient Egypt.”[33]
By this sketch, however incomplete, of the laws and institutions of ancient Egypt, we see they were, as Bossuet says,[34] “simple, full of justice, and of a kind to unite the nation. The best thing among all these excellent laws was—that every one was trained to observe them. A new custom was a wonder in Egypt. Everything was done in the same manner, and their exactness in little things made them exact in great ones. Therefore, there never was a people that preserved its laws and customs a longer time.”
V.
A SUMMARY OF PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION.
We shall now give a brief review of the social and political institutions of ancient Egypt.
The priesthood, the guardian of religion and the laws, and the promoter of morality, was rendered perpetual by hereditary transmission in the sacerdotal families.
The army, the guardian of civil and political life, and the maintainer of order, was rendered perpetual by hereditary transmission in the military families.