tion before the divine Rameses who is sitting between two gods.
The king as man adores himself as god. Being god, the Pharaoh has
absolute power over men; as master, he gives his orders to his great
nobles at court, to his warriors, to all his subjects. But the
priests, though adoring him, surround and watch him; their head, the
high priest of the god Ammon, at last becomes more powerful than the
king; he often governs under the name of the king and in his stead.

=The Subjects of Pharaoh.=--The king, the priests, the warriors, the
nobles, are proprietors of all Egypt; all the other people are simply
their peasants who cultivate the land for them. Scribes in the service
of the king watch them and collect the farm-dues, often with blows of
the staff. One of these functionaries writes as follows to a friend,
"Have you ever pictured to yourself the existence of the peasant who
tills the soil. The tax-collector is on the platform busily seizing
the tithe of the harvest. He has his men with him armed with staves,
his negroes provided with strips of palm. All cry, 'Come, give us
grain,' If the peasant hasn't it, they throw him full length on the
earth, bind him, draw him to the canal, and hurl him in head
foremost."

=Despotism.=--The Egyptian people has always been, and still is, gay,
careless, gentle, docile as an infant, always ready to submit to
tyranny. In this country the cudgel was the instrument of education
and of government. "The young man," said the scribes, "has a back to
be beaten; he hears when he is struck." "One day," says a French
traveller, "finding myself before the ruins of Thebes, I exclaimed,
'But how did they do all this?' My guide burst out laughing, touched
me on the arm and, showing me a palm, said to me, 'Here is what they
used to accomplish all this. You know, sir, with 100,000 branches of
palms split on the backs of those who always have their shoulders
bare, you can build many a palace and some temples to boot.'"

=Isolation of the Egyptians.=--The Egyptians moved but little beyond
their borders. As the sea inspired them with terror, they had no
commerce and did not trade with other peoples. They were not at all a
military nation. Their kings, it is true, often went on expeditions at
the head of mercenaries either against the negroes of Ethiopia or
against the tribes of Syria. They gained victories which they had
painted on the walls of their palaces, they brought back troops of
captives whom