Each of the departments which helped to swell its contents, occupied within the palace enclosure a building, or group of buildings, which was called its “house,” or, as we should say, its storehouse.

[Illustration:  059.jpg THE PACKING OF THE LINEN AND ITS REMOVAL TO THE WHITE STOREHOUSE.]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a chromolithograph in Lepsius,
     Denhm., ii. 96.

There was the “White Storehouse,” where the stuffs and jewels were kept, and at times the wine; the “Storehouse of the Oxen,” the “Gold Storehouse,” the “Storehouse for Preserved Fruits,” the “Storehouse for Grain,” the “Storehouse for Liquors,” and ten other storehouses of the application of which we are not always sure.  In the “Storehouse of Weapons” (or Armoury) were ranged thousands of clubs, maces, pikes, daggers, bows, and bundles of arrows, which Pharaoh distributed to his recruits whenever a war forced him to call out his army, and which were again warehoused after the campaign.  The “storehouses” were further subdivided into rooms or store-chambers,* each reserved for its own category of objects.

* Ait, Ai.  Lefebure has collected a number of passages in which these storehouses are mentioned, in his notes Sur differents mots et noms Egyptiens. In many of the cases which he quotes, and in which he recognizes an office of the State, I believe reference to be made to a trade:  many of the ari ait-afu, “people of the store-chambers for meat,” were probably butchers; many of the ari ait-hiqItu, “people of the store-chamber for beer,” were probably keepers of drink-shops, trading on their own account in the town of Abydos, and not employes attached to the exchequer of Pharaoh or of the ruler of Thinis.

It would be difficult to enumerate the number of store-chambers in the outbuildings of the “Storehouse of Provisions”—­store-chambers for butcher’s meat, for fruits, for beer, bread, and wine, in which were deposited as much of each article of food as would be required by the court for some days, or at most for a few weeks.  They were brought there from the larger storehouses, the wines from vaults, the oxen from their stalls, the corn from the granaries.  The latter were vast brick-built receptacles, ten or more in a row, circular in shape and surmounted by cupolas, but having no communication with each other.  They had only two openings, one at the top for pouring in the grain, another on the ground level for drawing it out; a notice posted up outside, often on the shutter which closed the chamber, indicated the character and quantity of the cereals within.  For the security and management of these, there were employed troops of porters, store-keepers, accountants, “primates” who superintended the works, record-keepers, and directors.  Great nobles coveted the administration of the “storehouses,” and even the sons of kings did not think it derogatory to their dignity to be entitled “Directors of