Side by side with the reception halls was the harem, where the legitimate wife, often a princess of solar rank, played the role of queen, surrounded by concubines, dancers, and slaves.  The offices of the various departments were crowded into the enclosure, with their directors, governors, scribes of all ranks, custodians, and workmen, who bore the same titles as the corresponding employes in the departments of the State:  their White Storehouse, their Gold Storehouse, their Granary, were at times called the Double White Storehouse, the Double Gold Storehouse, the Double Granary, as were those of the Pharaoh.  Amusements at the court of the vassal did not differ from those at that of the sovereign:  hunting in the desert and the marshes, fishing, inspection of agricultural works, military exercises, games, songs, dancing, doubtless the recital of long stories, and exhibitions of magic, even down to the contortions of the court buffoon and the grimaces of the dwarfs.

[Illustration:  080.jpg IN A NILE BOAT]

It amused the prince to see one of these wretched favourites leading to him by the paw a cynocephalus larger than himself, while a mischievous monkey slyly pulled a tame and stately ibis by the tail.  From time to time the great lord proceeded to inspect his domain:  on these occasions he travelled in a kind of sedan chair, supported by two mules yoked together; or he was borne in a palanquin by some thirty men, while fanned by large flabella; or possibly he went up the Nile and the canals in his beautiful painted barge.  The life of the Egyptian lords may be aptly described as in every respect an exact reproduction of the life of the Pharaoh on a smaller scale.

Inheritance in a direct or indirect line was the rule, but in every case of transmission the new lord had to receive the investiture of the sovereign either by letter or in person.  The duties enforced by the feudal state do not appear to have been onerous.  In the first place, there was the regular payment of a tribute, proportionate to the extent and resources of the fief.  In the next place, there was military service:  the vassal agreed to supply, when called upon, a fixed number of armed men, whom he himself commanded, unless he could offer a reasonable excuse such as illness or senile incapacity.*

* Prince Amoni, of the Gazelle nome, led a body of four hundred men and another body of six hundred, levied in his principality, into Ethiopia under these conditions; the first that he served in the royal army, was as a substitute for his father, who had grown too old.  Similarly, under the XVIIIth dynasty, Ahmosis of El-Kab commanded the war-ship, the Calf, in place of his father.  The Uni inscription furnishes us with an instance of a general levy of the feudal contingents in the time of the VIth dynasty (1. 14, et seq.).

Attendance at court was not obligatory:  we notice, however, many nobles about the person of Pharaoh,