ay or the year as farm servants. Others
were emboldened to lease land from the lord or from a soldier in the
neighbourhood. The most fortunate acquired some domain of which they
were supposed to receive only the product, the freehold of the property
remaining primarily in the hands of the Pharaoh, and secondarily in
that of lay or religious feudatories who held it of the sovereign: they
could, moreover, bequeath, give, or sell these lands and buy fresh ones
without any opposition. They paid, besides the capitation tax, a ground
rent proportionate to the extent of their property, and to the kind of
land of which it consisted.*

* The capitation tax, the ground rent, and the house duty of
the time of the Ptolemies, already existed under the rule of
the native Pharaohs. Brugsch has shown that these taxes are
mentioned in an inscription of the time of Ameuothes III.

It was not without reason that all the ancients attributed the invention
of geometry to the Egyptians. The perpetual encroachments of the Nile
and the displacements it occasioned, the facility with which it effaced
the boundaries of the fields, and in one summer modified the whole face
of a nome, had forced them from early times to measure with the greatest
exactitude the ground to which they owed their sustenance. The territory
belonging to each town and nome was subjected to repeated surveys made
and co-ordinated by the Royal Administration, thus enabling Pharaoh
to know the exact area of his estates. The unit of measurement was the
arura; that is to say, a square of a hundred cubits, comprising in
round numbers twenty-eight ares.* A considerable staff of scribes and
surveyors was continually occupied in verifying the old measurements
or in making fresh ones, and in recording in the State registers any
changes which might have taken place.** Each estate had its boundaries
marked out by a line of stelas which frequently bore the name of the
tenant at the time, and the date when the landmarks were last fixed.***

* [One "are" equals 100 square metres.--Tr.]

** We learn from the expressions employed in the great
inscription of Beni-Hasan (11. 13--58, 131-148) that the
cadastral survey had existed from the very earliest times;
there are references in it to previous surveys. We find a
surveying scene on the tomb of Zosirkerisonbu at Thebes,
under the XVIIIth dynasty. Two persons are measuring a field