nection with him as a body, or through their associations amongst the priests as individuals, to nearly the same elevation. Yet the dignity of the priesthood was scarcely the less imposing because their robes were drawn aside before one class at least, by whom their faces and their forms might be seen for what they really were. Liberty, in India monopolized by the priests, was thus, through the activity and the changes of Egypt, extended to the warriors. Yet the other Egyptian castes were so completely subordinate, that it is difficult to procure any clear account of them; but there are details in every history into which the Christian need not desire to penetrate, if they be obscure. Diodorus speaks of three classes, inferior to the priests and the warriors, which he styles shepherds, husbandmen, and artisans; 32 but Herodotus enumerates five, of cowherds, swineherds, traders, interpreters, and boatmen.33 It is probable that the latter division was a modification of the former, 32 I. 74. 33 II. 164. 34 The whole subject, however, is involved in difficulties. "The first caste was the sacerdotal order; the second, the soldiers and peasants, or agricultural class; the third was that of the townsmen; and the fourth, the plebs or common people." Such is the account of Sir G. Wilkinson (Anc. Egypt., Vol. I. pp. 237 et seq.), who thus attempts to harmonize the various descriptions of the Egyptian castes which must have been by uniting the warriors and the husbandmen into one; for which there is some authority in Diod. Sic., I. 28. Herodotus's division may need a word or two of commentary. The cowherds and swineherds were distinct, because swine were inferior animals. The name for the traders in Greek is káñŋλot, which answers to our " peddlers," and was perhaps purposely used to show the small estimation in which their caste was held. The interpreters were introduced under Psammetichus (see p. 35 the earlier one; for there was no need of interpreters until foreigners began to serve the later kings as mercenaries. The other names explain themselves. But in either list there is an omission of slaves as a distinct class; not, certainly, because there were none in Egypt, but perhaps because they were counted with the herdsmen, unless, as is more probable, they were rather left out of the castes altogether, as strangers. The existence of the inferior castes is undoubtedly to be explained by the early conquests 36 of which they were especially the victims; while their varieties arose very naturally from the differences of race and soil and occupation amongst the Egyptians who belonged to them. The exuberant valley of the Nile. would never be inhabited by the same sort of people who wandered over the neighbouring deserts; while on the mountains of the east there would be found other tribes than those which dwelt upon the plains along the Mediterranean. It is of much greater importance to estimate the distance between the higher and lower classes, and to recount the toils to which the mass of the people were compelled. The great public works, the rivers, the cities, and the hills of stone, required immense numbers of laborers, who would be supplied from herdsmen, or husbandmen, or traders, as they could 59) about A. C. 650. Lastly, the boatmen were for the Nile, and for the inundated country when the Nile overflowed. 36 Die Ägyptische Kasteneintheilung ist sehr alt; sie beweist sicher eine fremde Eroberung." Niebuhr, Vort. Alt. Geschichte, Vol. I. 35 As Pastoret maintains, Hist. de p. 66. la Lég., I. 220. 38 be found. The same "taskmasters," of whose burdens the Hebrews complained 37 after the death of their countryman and protector, Joseph, were undoubtedly familiar to the Egyptians. It is related, that the common people were so indignant at the hardships they encountered in building the pyramids, as to threaten to exhume the bodies of their kings, for whom these mountain-mausoleums were prepared; and the kings were thought to show some fear that the threat would be executed, by ordering their secret burial in the dark and inaccessible chambers, which have hardly yet been explored. This is a single illustration, but it describes the manner in which the Egyptians were ruled. The condition of the lower classes was both politically and socially degraded, from the beginning to the end of their history as a separate nation. An artisan could not be a magistrate; and a swineherd was not permitted to enter a temple,10 as if he were too degraded even to pray. But there are other signs of humanity which no one would wish to overlook. When the Hebrews in Egypt were most abused, the Pharaoh bade his people to "deal wisely with them ";" and the necessity for such treatment of a race of slaves implies some consideration towards the lower castes of the 37 See the first chapter of Exodus. 40 His class was represented in the Egyptian paintings as "lame or deformed, dirty or unshaven, etc., VOL. I. as if to show the contempt in which those people were held." Wilkinson's Egyptians, Second Series, Vol. I. p. 126. 41 Exodus, I. 10. Egyptians, who would be much superior to the strangers. The subsistence of the poor was provided for by law; the debtor was bound by his property, and not, as in India and in Rome, by his person; 42 while the crimes against the lowest were in some cases as severely punished as those against the highest classes.43 All these are landmarks of expanding civilization. The reader is now in possession of the material circumstances by which the liberty of Egypt is to be judged. Formal laws to protect the person or to secure the rights of any man were very few; nor were most of the usages, virtually the same as laws, intended to apply to the individual so much as to the class of which he was a member. But it seems correct to conclude, from the comparative equality existing between the two higher castes,44 that considerable freedom prevailed amongst them, though it would be vain to argue that it was at all admirable either in itself or in its results. The lower classes, 42 Because, says Diodorus (1. 79), the person was accounted to be the property of the state. 43 The murderer of a slave, for instance, was subject to the same penalties as the murderer of a free man. Diod. Sic., I. 77. 44 M. Ampère, at the Séance Annuelle de l'Académie des Inscriptions, has lately undertaken to demonstrate " que cette idée qu'on se fait depuis si long-temps de l'ancienne société Égyptienne, comme divisée en castes dont chacune était vouée à des occupations spéciales, exclusives et héréditaires, n'est point exacte," etc. In doing this, he relies upon the "témoignage des monumens"; but as far as I understand his demonstration from the Compte Rendu in the Journal des Débats, 3d Sept., 1848, it merely establishes the affiliation of the military and the sacerdotal castes, which I have already ventured to indicate as existing through the rise of royalty. whose labors might, under other circumstances, have been rewarded by liberty and prosperity, were only sorrowful. As the field was brought into cultivation by being overflowed, so the toil of the herdsman and the slave was multiplied by being exacted by the warrior or the priest above them; yet over the field and the flood, over the bondman and the ruler, were the sleepless skies. The Egyptian were in no wise so different from other institutions as to outlast the principles of progress within them. Peculiar and national as they had been, they were the sooner overthrown. One king after another reigned and died; but none attained to equal glory with Sesostris, with whom the season of abundance seemed to have both bloomed and faded. The power of the monarch individually did not decrease so much as that of the monarchy collectively; though it is true that the later kings appear to have been mostly created to rule a declining empire and assist its fall. One, named Psammetichus, introduced Ionian and Carian mercenaries, and was then abandoned, on account of his partiality to the strangers, by two hundred thousand of the Egyptian warriors, who withdrew in a body beyond the limits of their country.15 Another, Neco, the son of Psammetichus, attempted, with his mercenaries, to play the conquerer, and was defeated near the Euphrates, -so far had he marched to ruin.46 45 About A. C. 650. Herod., II. 152 et seq. Diod. Sic., I. 67. 46 About A. C. 600. Joseph., Antiq., X. 6. 1. |