We must, perhaps, agree with Fr. Lenormant, in his conclusion that the only kind of national metal of exchange in use in Egypt was a copper wire or plate bent thus [—­]. this being the sign invariably used in the hieroglyphics in writing the word tabnu.

The present rural population of Egypt scarcely ever live in isolated and scattered farms; they are almost all concentrated in hamlets and villages of considerable extent, divided into quarters often at some distance from each other.  The same state of things existed in ancient times, and those who would realize what a village in the past was like, have only to visit any one of the modern market towns scattered at intervals along the valley of the Nile:—­half a dozen fairly built houses, inhabited by the principal people of the place; groups of brick or clay cottages thatched with durra stalks, so low that a man standing upright almost touches the roof with his head; courtyards filled with tall circular mud-built sheds, in which the corn and durra for the household is carefully stored, and wherever we turn, pigeons, ducks, geese, and animals all living higgledly-piggledly with the family.  The majority of the peasantry were of the lower class, but they were not everywhere subjected to the same degree of servitude.  The slaves, properly so called, came from other countries; they had been bought from foreign merchants, or they had been seized in a raid and had lost their liberty by the fortune of war.* Their master removed them from place to place, sold them, used them as he pleased, pursued them if they succeeded in escaping, and had the right of recapturing them as soon as he received information of their whereabouts.  They worked for him under his overseer’s orders, receiving no regular wages, and with no hope of recovering their liberty.**

* The first allusion to prisoners of war brought back to Egypt, is found in the biography of Uni.  The method in which they were distributed among the officers and soldiers is indicated in several inscriptions of the New Empire, in that of Ahmosis Pannekhabit, in that of Ahmosis si-Abina, where one of the inscriptions contains a list of slaves, some of whom are foreigners, in that of Amenemhabi.  We may form some idea of the number of slaves in Egypt from the fact that in thirty years Ramses III. presented 113,433 of them to the temples alone.  The “Directors of the Royal Slaves,” at all periods, occupied an important position at the court of the Pharaohs.

** A scene reproduced by Lepsius shows us, about the time of the VIth dynasty, the harvest gathered by the “royal slaves” in concert with the tenants of the dead man.  One of the petty princes defeated by the Ethiopian Pionkhi Miamun proclaims himself to be “one of the royal slaves who pay tribute in kind to the royal treasury.”  Amten repeatedly mentions slaves of this kind, “sutiu.”

Many chose concubines from their own class, or intermarried