3,433 of them
to the temples alone. The "Directors of the Royal Slaves,"
at all periods, occupied an important position at the court
of the Pharaohs.

** A scene reproduced by Lepsius shows us, about the time of
the VIth dynasty, the harvest gathered by the "royal slaves"
in concert with the tenants of the dead man. One of the
petty princes defeated by the Ethiopian Pionkhi Miamun
proclaims himself to be "one of the royal slaves who pay
tribute in kind to the royal treasury." Amten repeatedly
mentions slaves of this kind, "sutiu."

Many chose concubines from their own class, or intermarried with the
natives and had families: at the end of two or three generations their
descendants became assimilated with the indigenous race, and were
neither more nor less than actual serfs attached to the soil, who were
made over or exchanged with it.* The landed proprietors, lords, kings,
or gods, accommodated this population either in the outbuildings
belonging to their residences, or in villages built for the purpose,
where everything belonged to them, both houses and people.

* This is the status of serfs, or _miritiu,_ as shown in the
texts of every period. They are mentioned along with the
fields or cattle attached to a temple or belonging to a
noble. Ramses II. granted to the temple of Abydos "an
appanage in cultivated lands, in serfs (_miritiu_), in
cattle." The scribe Anna sees in his tomb "stalls of bulls,
of oxen, of calves, of milch cows, as well as serfs, in the
mortmain of Amon." Ptolemy I. returned to the temple at Buto
"the domains, the boroughs, the serfs, the tillage, the
water supply, the cattle, the geese, the flocks, all the
things" which Xerxes had taken away from Kabbisha. The
expression passed into the language, as a word used to
express the condition of a subject race: "I cause," said
Thutmosis III., "Egypt to be a sovereign (_hirit_) to whom
all the earth is a slave" (_miritu_).

[Illustration: 123.jpg PART OF THE MODERN VILLAGE OF KARNAK, TO THE WEST
OF THE TEMPLE OF APIT]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Beato, taken in 1886.

The condition of the free agricultural labourer was in many respects
analogous to that of the modern fellah. Some of them possessed no other
property than a mud cabin, just large enough for a man and his wife,
and hired themselves out by the d