ffices in the
Provincial Administration, and Amten must have congratulated himself on
his appointment.

From that moment his career became a great one, and he advanced quickly.
Up to that time he had been confined in offices; he now left them to
perform more active service. The Pharaohs, extremely jealous of their
own authority, usually avoided placing at the head of the nomes in their
domain, a single ruler, who would have appeared too much like a prince;
they preferred having in each centre of civil administration, governors
of the town or province, as well as military commanders who were jealous
of one another, supervised one another, counterbalanced one another, and
did not remain long enough in office to become dangerous. Amten held all
these posts successively in most of the nomes situated in the centre or
to the west of the Delta. His first appointment was to the government
of the village of Pidosu, an unimportant post in itself, but one which
entitled him to a staff of office, and in consequence procured for him
one of the greatest indulgences of vanity that an Egyptian could enjoy.
The staff was, in fact, a symbol of command which only the nobles,
and the officials associated with the nobility, could carry without
transgressing custom; the assumption of it, as that of the sword with
us, showed every one that the bearer was a member of a privileged class.

[Illustration: 072.jpg STATUE OF AMTEN, FOUND IN HIS TOMB]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Lepsius, Denkm., ii. 120 a;
the original is in the Berlin Museum.

Amten was no sooner ennobled, than his functions began to expand;
villages were rapidly added to villages, then towns to towns, including
such an important one as Buto, and finally the nomes of the Harpoon, of
the Bull, of the Silurus, the western half of the Saite nome, the nome
of the Haunch, and a part of the Fayum came within his jurisdiction. The
western half of the Saite nome, where he long resided, corresponded with
what was called later the Libyan nome. It reached nearly from the apex
of the Delta to the sea, and was bounded on one side by the Canopic
branch of the Nile, on the other by the Libyan range; a part of the
desert as well as the Oases fell under its rule. It included among
its population, as did many of the provinces of Upper Egypt, regiments
composed of nomad hunters, who were compelled to pay their tribute
in living or dead game. Amten was metamorphosed into Chief Huntsman,