ded him his
food and drink. Eunuchs in Egypt were either unknown or but little
esteemed: they never seem to have been used, even in times when
relations with Asia were of daily occurrence, and when they might have
been supplied from the Babylonian slave-markets.

All these various officials closely attached to the person of the
sovereign--heads of the wardrobe, chamberlains, cupbearers, bearers of
the royal sword or of the flabella, commanders of the eunuchs or of
the guards--had, by the nature of their duties, daily opportunities of
gaining a direct influence over their master and his government,
and from among them he often chose the generals of his army or the
administrators of his domains. Here, again, as far as the few
monuments and the obscurity of the texts permit of our judging, we find
indications of a civil and military organization analogous to that
of Egypt: the divergencies which contemporaries may have been able to
detect in the two national systems are effaced by the distance of
time, and we are struck merely by the resemblances. As all business
transactions were carried on by barter or by the exchange of merchandise
for weighed quantities of the precious metals, the taxes were
consequently paid in kind: the principal media being corn and other
cereals, dates, fruits, stuffs, live animals and slaves, as well as
gold, silver, lead, and copper, either in its native state or melted
into bars fashioned into implements or ornamented vases. Hence we
continually come across fiscal storehouses, both in town and country,
which demanded the services of a whole troop of functionaries and
workmen: administrators of corn, cattle, precious metals, wine and oil;
in fine, as many administrators as there were cultures or industries in
the country presided over the gathering of the products into the
central depots and regulated their redistribution. A certain portion
was reserved for the salaries of the employes and the pay of the workmen
engaged in executing public works: the surplus accumulated in the
treasury and formed a reserve, which was not drawn upon except in cases
of extreme necessity. Every palace, in addition to its living-rooms,
contained within its walls large store-chambers filled with provisions
and weapons, which made it more or less a fortress, furnished with
indispensable requisites for sustaining a prolonged siege either against
an enemy's troops or the king's own subjects in revolt. The king always
ke