es, as well as their intermarriages, and show us
that they belonged almost exclusively to two or three
important families who intermarried with one another or took
their wives from the families of the priests of Amon.

The sacrifices supplied them with daily meat and drink; the temple
buildings provided them with their lodging, and its revenues furnished
them with a salary proportionate to their position. They were exempted
from the ordinary taxes, from military service, and from forced labour;
it is not surprising, therefore, that those who were not actually
members of the priestly families strove to have at least a share in
their advantages. The servitors, the workmen and the _employes_ who
congregated about them and constituted the temple corporation, the
scribes attached to the administration of the domains, and to the
receipt of offerings, shared _de facto_ if not _de jure_ in the immunity
of the priesthood; as a body they formed a separate religious society,
side by side, but distinct from, the civil population, and freed from
most of the burdens which weighed so heavily on the latter.

The soldiers were far from possessing the wealth and influence of the
clergy. Military service in Egypt was not universally compulsory, but
rather the profession and privilege of a special class of whose
origin but little is known. Perhaps originally it comprised only the
descendants of the conquering race, but in historic times it was not
exclusively confined to the latter, and recruits were raised everywhere
among the fellahs,* the Bedouin of the neighbourhood, the negroes,**
the Nubians,*** and even from among the prisoners of war, or adventurers
from beyond the sea.****

* This is shown, _inter alia,_ by the real or supposititious
letters in which the master-scribe endeavours to deter his
pupil from adopting a military career, recommending that of
a scribe in preference.

** Uni, under Papi I., recruited his army from among the
inhabitants of the whole of Egypt, from Elephantine to
Letopolis at the mouth of the Delta, and as far as the
Mediterranean, from among the Bedouin of Libya and of the
Isthmus, and even from the six negro races of Nubia
_(Inscription d'Ouni, 11. 14-19)_.

*** The Nubian tribe of the Mazaiu, afterwards known as the
Libyan tribe of the Mashauasha, furnished troops to the
Egyptian kings and princes for centuries; indeed, t