pants--The royal household and
its officers: Pharaoh's jesters, dwarfs, and magicians--The royal domain
and the slaves, the treasury and the establishments which provided for
its service: the buildings and places for the receipt of taxes--The
scribe, his education, his chances of promotion: the career of Amten,
his successive offices, the value of his personal property at his
death._

_Egyptian feudalism: the status of the lords, their rights, their
amusements, their obligations to the sovereign--The influence of the
gods: gifts to the temples, and possessions in mortmain; the priesthood,
its hierarchy, and the method of recruiting its ranks--The military:
foreign mercenaries; native militia, their privileges, their training._

_The people of the towns--The slaves, men without a master--Workmen and
artisans; corporations: misery of handicraftsmen--Aspect of the towns:
houses, furniture, women in family life--Festivals; periodic markets,
bazaars: commerce by barter, the weighing of precious metals._

_The country people--The villages; serfs, free peasantry--Rural domains;
the survey, taxes; the bastinado, the corvee--Administration of justice,
the relations between peasants and their lords; misery of the peasantry;
their resignation and natural cheerfulness; their improvidence; their
indifference to political revolutions._

[Illustration: 003.jpg PAGE IMAGE]

CHAPTER I--THE POLITICAL CONSTITUTION OF EGYPT

_The king, the queen, and the royal princes--Administration under
the Pharaohs--Feudalism and the Egyptian priesthood, the military--The
citizens and country people._

Between the Fayum and the apex of the Delta, the Lybian range expands
and forms a vast and slightly undulating table-land, which runs parallel
to the Nile for nearly thirty leagues. The Great Sphinx Harmakhis has
mounted guard over its northern extremity ever since the time of the
Followers of Horus.

Illustration: Drawn by Boudier, from _La Description de
l'Egypte,_ A., vol. v. pl. 7. vignette, which is also by
Boudier, represents a man bewailing the dead, in the
attitude adopted at funerals by professional mourners of
both sexes; the right fist resting on the ground, while the
left hand scatters on the hair the dust which he has just
gathered up. The statue is in the Gizeh Museum.

Hewn out of the solid rock at the extreme margin of the
mountain-plateau, he seems to raise his head in order that he