ed upon, a fixed number
of armed men, whom he himself commanded, unless he could offer a
reasonable excuse such as illness or senile incapacity.*

* Prince Amoni, of the Gazelle nome, led a body of four
hundred men and another body of six hundred, levied in his
principality, into Ethiopia under these conditions; the
first that he served in the royal army, was as a substitute
for his father, who had grown too old. Similarly, under the
XVIIIth dynasty, Ahmosis of El-Kab commanded the war-ship,
the Calf, in place of his father. The Uni inscription
furnishes us with an instance of a general levy of the
feudal contingents in the time of the VIth dynasty (1. 14,
et seq.).

Attendance at court was not obligatory: we notice, however, many nobles
about the person of Pharaoh, and there are numerous examples of princes,
with whose lives we are familiar, filling offices which appear to have
demanded at least a temporary residence in the palace, as, for instance,
the charge of the royal wardrobe. When the king travelled, the great
vassals were compelled to entertain him and his suite, and to escort
him to the frontier of their domain. On the occasion of such visits, the
king would often take away with him one of their sons to be brought
up with his own children: an act which they on their part considered a
great honour, while the king on his had a guarantee of their fidelity in
the person of these hostages. Such of these young people as returned to
their fathers' roof when their education was finished, were usually most
loyal to the reigning dynasty. They often brought back with them
some maiden born in the purple, who consented to share their little
provincial sovereignty, while in exchange one or more of their sisters
entered the harem of the Pharaoh. Marriages made and marred in their
turn the fortunes of the great feudal houses. Whether she were
a princess or not, each woman received as her dowry a portion of
territory, and enlarged by that amount her husband's little state;
but the property she brought might, in a few years, be taken by her
daughters as portions and enrich other houses. The fief seldom could
bear up against such dismemberment; it fell away piecemeal, and by
the third or fourth generation had disappeared. Sometimes, however,
it gained more than it lost in this matrimonial game, and extended its
borders till they encroached on neighbouring nomes or else complete