ghly made pots and pans of clay or
bronze.

[Illustration: 111.jpg WOMAN GRINDING GRAIN]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Bechard (cf.
Mariette, _Alburn photographique du Musee de Boulaq_, pl.
20; Maspero, _Guide du Visiteur_, P- 220, Nos. 1012, 1013).

Men rarely entered their houses except to eat and sleep; their
employments or handicrafts were such as to require them for the most
part to work out-of-doors. The middle-class families owned, almost
always, one or two slaves--either purchased or born in the house--who
did all the hard work: they looked after the cattle, watched over the
children, acted as cooks, and fetched water from the nearest pool or
well. Among the poor the drudgery of the household fell entirely upon
the woman. She spun, wove, cut out and mended garments, fetched fresh
water and provisions, cooked the dinner, and made the daily bread. She
spread some handfuls of grain upon an oblong slab of stone, slightly
hollowed on its upper surface, and proceeded to crush them with a
smaller stone like a painter's muller, which she moistened from time to
time. For an hour and more she laboured with her arms, shoulders, loins,
in fact, all her body; but an indifferent result followed from the great
exertion. The flour, made to undergo several grindings in this rustic
mortar, was coarse, uneven, mixed with bran, or whole grains, which had
escaped the pestle, and contaminated with dust and abraded particles
of the stone. She kneaded it with a little water, blended with it, as a
sort of yeast, a piece of stale dough of the day before, and made from
the mass round cakes, about half an inch thick and some four inches in
diameter, which she placed upon a flat flint, covering them with hot
ashes. The bread, imperfectly raised, often badly cooked, borrowed, from
the organic fuel under which it was buried, a special odour, and a taste
to which strangers did not readily accustom themselves. The impurities
which it contained were sufficient in the long run to ruin the strongest
teeth; eating it was an action of grinding rather than chewing, and old
men were not unfrequently met with whose teeth had been gradually worn
away to the level of the gums, like those of an aged ass or ox.*

* The description of the woman grinding grain and kneading
dough is founded on statues in the Gizeh Museum. All the
European museums possess numerous specimens of the bread in
question, and the effe