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Ancient Egyptian Society

The people were divided into various classes, or, as they have Orders of sometimes been termed, castes. Perhaps this name is inapplicable to the various orders of Egyptian society, for those classes were not irrevocably separated by a hereditary and perpetual wall of partition. The different ranks might inter-marry. The children of the soldiers might enter the priesthood, and sons of the same family might either be initiated into a civil or military occupation. But caste, in the Indian sense and application of the term, was not found in Pharaonic Egypt.

The first and highest order was the priesthood, which possessed Priesthood. a mighty and ramified organization. The key of authority was with them. They were the bards who, from trained and retentive memory, recited ancient lore4—the historians who composed the annals of the" kingdom—the oracles of law, and at the same time the repository of medical and philosophical science. Their power was unbounded, and their possessions were immense. They claimed and occupied the largest portion of the country, and they paid no taxes. Every temple had its numerous sacerdotal bands, who presided over its ritual, and dispensed medicine, equity, and knowledge. No class in the state could cope with them, and they often held royalty itself in pupillage. Their own ceremonial was simple—frequent ablution, careful shaving, and the use of flax and papyrus for garments. The chief pontificate seems to have been hereditary, for the priests affirmed to Herodotus that they had a list of their sacred chiefs— son succeeding father—for 340 generations.

The military order ranked next in importance. It was divided into two grand classes, the Calasirians and the Hermotybians; the former perhaps the youth disciplined to active service, and the latter the veterans, to whom the garrisons of the country were intrusted. Their principal location was in Lower Egypt, the part of the country most open to invasion. Each soldier possessed six acres, exempted from taxation. The army was prohibited from following any trade, but allowed of course to cultivate their lands. While some brigades were in garrison, others formed the royal life-guards, and wore for the time richer dress and accoutrements. The king was often chosen from the army. Troops of men so segregated from the rest of society, and enjoying peculiar immunities, must have formed a powerful phalanx, bound together by peculiar habits and associations.

The Old Kingdom nobles were by no means in that stage of idleness which has so often proved the ruin of a leisured and privileged class. On the contrary, they appear to have been active and energetic, taking a prominent part in the government of their respective districts, holding themselves responsible for the welfare of the people under them, and exerting themselves in very praiseworthy fashion to secure it. They exercised a constant personal supervision over their own estates, and in addition were liable, as we have seen, to be dispatched on long and arduous expeditions in the service of their sovereign.

The rest of the population was unenfranchised, and constituted the general industrial class. The occupations of the people were manifold both in town and country. The prime business of the rustic population was agriculture. The soil was rich, the work was light, and the harvest exuberant. The implements of husbandry were few—the hoe and the oxdrawn plough were of the simplest construction. The sower followed the plough, and the hoofs of cattle did the work of the modern harrow. As the operation of thrashing by means of oxen was going on, the peasant relieved his labours and cheered on the animals with a species of song.

The forced labor which must have been entailed by the vast constructions, especially of the Fourth Dynasty, must have been burdensome; but it is questionable, as Petrie has shown, if even the erection of the Great Pyramid, accepting the figures of Herodotus as to the number of men employed, was so great a tax upon the community as might be supposed. Apart from such exceptional structures, there must always have been a demand for labor on the public works, the canals and embankments necessary for utilizing the waters of the inundation being themselves sufficient to require a large and constantly employed staff, while the quarry records show that public building practically never ceased.

The main work of the populace was, however, agricultural. The soil was possessed by the king, the priesthood, and the soldiery. The husbandmen who cultivated the farms paid a portion of the produce as rent. There does not seem to have been any class of yeomen, or petty proprietors; the condition of the fellah was more or less that of a serf, cultivating the fields for his master, and repaid by his subsistence, or by a small percentage of the annual yield. Life under these conditions must have been somewhat monotonous; but the sarcastic pictures of the life of the working classes drawn by the scribes of later date may to some extent be discounted by the fact that they are the product of petty officialdom.

A numerous peasantry tilled and reaped and hills as herdsmen. The swine herds were a race of outcasts, universally despised, denied admission into the temples, and only allowed to marry among themselves. The pilots and boatmen of the Nile were leagued together by similarity of habits and occupation. Finally, after the ascendancy of the Greeks, there sprang up a class of interpreters, a species of bilinguists, in whose families, as a natural consequence, the gift of tongues would descend.

But besides these classes, there must have been a large town population in Egypt, composed of artisans and tradesmen, such as architects, masons, weavers, painters, sculptors, embalmers, with workers in metal, leather, and wood. Such occupations are often depicted on the monuments. The Egyptians seem to have had a slavish reverence for antiquity and established order—every day and every craft had its wonted routine—submission to the higher powers, at least in early times, was a pervading and unreasoning instinct— and life was a species of mechanism whose acts and enjoyments revolved with as punctual and periodical exactness as did the inundations of the Nile.

The houses of the people were usually built of crude bricks, a furniture. species of material suited to the soil and climate. Brick making was consequently an employment for thousands, and the manufacture seems at length to have become a royal monopoly, for the royal signature is usually found upon the cubes. The houses in towns seldom exceeded two stories, and were often in oriental style surrounded by an area or court. The ground floor was the scene of all culinary preparations; the work of the butcher, baker, and miller was done in it. Female slaves were usually employed in the drudgery of these apartments, and she of the lowest occupation is referred to in Scripture as the "maid servant that is behind the mill." The roof of the house was flat, and formed an agreeable pro- menade in the dusk. The owner's name, often accompanied with some brief and propitious motto, was inscribed on the door, which was either of a single piece, or had two halves secured by a bar. The doors were often painted in imitation of the colour of the finer woods, and over them was the decoration of a cornice. The floors were formed of stone, or a composition of earth and lime, and the ceiling and walls were covered with stucco, often elaborately painted.

The position of women all through the historic period was much higher in the land of the Nile than in any other Eastern country. The most direct line of inheritance was on the female side; and judging from the few specimens of literature which have survived from these ancient days, the wife and the mother were looked upon with considerable respect, and occupied a position of much influence in the household. Monogamy was the rule, and the women of the community appear to have been well treated, and to have had a much greater amount of freedom than is common among Eastern peoples.