ere protected, but having reached this
position their hearts, failed them, and they contented themselves with
sending to the chief custodian an eloquent pleader, to lay before him
their very humble request: "We are come, urged by famine, urged by
thirst, having no more linen, no more oil, no more fish, no more
vegetables. Send to Pharaoh, our master, send to the king, our lord,
that he may provide us with the necessaries of life." If one of them,
with less self-restraint, was so carried away as to let drop an oath,
which was a capital offence, saying, "By Amon! by the sovereign, whose
anger is death!" if he asked to be taken before a magistrate in order
that he might reiterate there his complaint, the others interceded for
him, and begged that he might escape the punishment fixed by the law
for blasphemy; the scribe, good fellow as he was, closed his ears to the
oath, and, if it were in his power, made a beginning of satisfying their
demands by drawing upon the excess of past months to such an extent as
would pacify them for some days, and by paying them a supplemental wage
in the name of the Pharaoh. They cried out loudly: "Shall there not be
served out to us corn in excess of that which has been distributed to
us; if not we will not stir from this spot?"

At length the end of the month arrived, and they all appeared together
before the magistrates, when they said: "Let the scribe, Khamoisit,
who is accountable, be sent for!" He was thereupon brought before the
notables of the town, and they said to him: "See to the corn which thou
hast received, and give some of it to the people of the necropolis."
Pmontuniboisit was then sent for, and "rations of wheat were given to
us daily." Famine was not caused only by the thriftlessness of the
multitude: administrators of all ranks did not hesitate to appropriate,
each one according to his position, a portion of the means entrusted
to them for the maintenance of their subordinates, and the latter often
received only instalments of what was due to them. The culprits often
escaped from their difficulties by either laying hold of half a dozen
of their brawling victims, or by yielding to them a proportion of
their ill-gotten gains, before a rumour of the outbreak could reach
head-quarters. It happened from time to time, however, when the
complaints against them were either too serious or too frequent, that
they were deprived of their functions, cited before the tribunals, and
condem