her on pl. xx. of the same work.

[Illustration: 118b.jpg SCENES IN A BAZAAR]

We must, perhaps, agree with Fr. Lenormant, in his conclusion that the
only kind of national metal of exchange in use in Egypt was a copper
wire or plate bent thus [--]. this being the sign invariably used in the
hieroglyphics in writing the word _tabnu_.

The present rural population of Egypt scarcely ever live in isolated
and scattered farms; they are almost all concentrated in hamlets and
villages of considerable extent, divided into quarters often at some
distance from each other. The same state of things existed in ancient
times, and those who would realize what a village in the past was
like, have only to visit any one of the modern market towns scattered
at intervals along the valley of the Nile:--half a dozen fairly built
houses, inhabited by the principal people of the place; groups of brick
or clay cottages thatched with durra stalks, so low that a man standing
upright almost touches the roof with his head; courtyards filled with
tall circular mud-built sheds, in which the corn and durra for the
household is carefully stored, and wherever we turn, pigeons, ducks,
geese, and animals all living higgledly-piggledly with the family. The
majority of the peasantry were of the lower class, but they were not
everywhere subjected to the same degree of servitude. The slaves,
properly so called, came from other countries; they had been bought from
foreign merchants, or they had been seized in a raid and had lost their
liberty by the fortune of war.* Their master removed them from place
to place, sold them, used them as he pleased, pursued them if they
succeeded in escaping, and had the right of recapturing them as soon as
he received information of their whereabouts. They worked for him under
his overseer's orders, receiving no regular wages, and with no hope of
recovering their liberty.**

* The first allusion to prisoners of war brought back to
Egypt, is found in the biography of Uni. The method in which
they were distributed among the officers and soldiers is
indicated in several inscriptions of the New Empire, in that
of Ahmosis Pannekhabit, in that of Ahmosis si-Abina, where
one of the inscriptions contains a list of slaves, some of
whom are foreigners, in that of Amenemhabi. We may form
some idea of the number of slaves in Egypt from the fact
that in thirty years Ramses III. presented 11