Such were the king’s household, the people about his person, and those attached to the service of his family.  His capital sheltered a still greater number of officials and functionaries who were charged with the administration of his fortune—­that is to say, what he possessed in Egypt.** In theory it was always supposed that the whole of the soil belonged to him, but that he and his predecessors had diverted and parcelled off such an amount of it for the benefit of their favourites, or for the hereditary lords, that only half of the actual territory remained under his immediate control.  He governed most of the nomes of the Delta in person:*** beyond the Fayum, he merely retained isolated lands, enclosed in the middle of feudal principalities and often at considerable distance from each other.

* We know the reputation, extending even to the classical writers of antiquity, of the Pharaohs Nechepso and Nectanebo for their skill in magic.  Arab writers have, moreover, collected a number of traditions concerning the marvels which the sorcerers of Egypt were in the habit of performing; as an instance, I may quote the description given by Makrizi of one of their meetings, which is probably taken from some earlier writer.

** They were frequently distinguished from their provincial or manorial colleagues by the addition of the word khonu to their titles, a term which indicates, in a general manner, the royal residence.  They formed what we should nowadays call the departmental staff of the public officers, and might be deputed to act, at least temporarily, in the provinces, or in the service of one of the feudal princes, without thereby losing their status as functionaries of the khonu or central administration.

*** This seems, at any rate, an obvious inference from the almost total absence of feudal titles on the most ancient monuments of the Delta.  Erman, who was struck by this fact, attributed it to a different degree of civilization in the two halves of Egypt; I attribute it to a difference in government.  Feudal titles naturally predominate in the South, royal administrative titles in the North.

The extent of the royal domain varied with different dynasties, and even from reign to reign:  if it sometimes decreased, owing to too frequently repeated concessions,* its losses were generally amply compensated by the confiscation of certain fiefs, or by their lapsing to the crown.  The domain was always of sufficient extent to oblige the Pharaoh to confide the larger portion of it to officials of various kinds, and to farm merely a small remainder of the “royal slaves:”  in the latter case, he reserved for himself all the profits, but at the expense of all the annoyance and all the outlay; in the former case, he obtained without any risk the annual dues, the amount of which was fixed on the spot, according to the resources of the nome.