* We find, at different periods, persons who call themselves masters of new domains or strongholds—­Pahurnofir, under the IIIrd dynasty; several princes of Hermopolis, under the VIth and VIIth; Khnumhotpu at the begining of the XIIth.  In connection with the last named, we shall have occasion, later on, to show in what manner and with what rapidity one of these great new fiefs was formed.

In order to understand the manner in which the government of Egypt was conducted, we should never forget that the world was still ignorant of the use of money, and that gold, silver, and copper, however abundant we may suppose them to have been, were mere articles of exchange, like the most common products of Egyptian soil.  Pharaoh was not then, as the State is with us, a treasurer who calculates the total of his receipts and expenses in ready money, banks his revenue in specie occupying but little space, and settles his accounts from the same source.  His fiscal receipts were in kind, and it was in kind that he remunerated his servants for their labour:  cattle, cereals, fermented drinks, oils, stuffs, common or precious metals,—­“all that the heavens give, all that the earth produces, all that the Nile brings from its mysterious sources,"* —­constituted the coinage in which his subjects paid him their contributions, and which he passed on to his vassals by way of salary.

* This was the most usual formula for the offering on the funerary stelo, and sums up more completely than any other the nature of the tax paid to the gods by the living, and consequently the nature of that paid to the king; here, as elsewhere, the domain of the gods is modelled on that of the Pharaohs.

One room, a few feet square, and, if need be, one safe, would easily contain the entire revenue of one of our modern empires:  the largest of our emporiums would not always have sufficed to hold the mass of incongruous objects which represented the returns of a single Egyptian province.  As the products in which the tax was paid took various forms, it was necessary to have an infinite variety of special agents and suitable places to receive it; herdsmen and sheds for the oxen, measurers and granaries for the grain, butlers and cellarers for the wine, beer, and oils.  The product of the tax, while awaiting redistribution, could only be kept from deteriorating in value by incessant labour, in which a score of different classes of clerks and workmen in the service of the treasury all took part, according to their trades.  If the tax were received in oxen, it was led to pasturage, or at times, when a murrain threatened to destroy it, to the slaughter-house and the currier; if it were in corn, it was bolted, ground to flour, and made into bread and pastry; if it were in stuffs, it was washed, ironed, and folded, to be retailed as garments or in the piece.  The royal treasury partook of the character of the farm, the warehouse, and the manufactory.