In spite of taxes, requisitions, and forced labour, the fellahin came off fairly well, when the chief to whom they belonged proved a kind master, and did not add the exactions of his own personal caprice to those of the State.  The inscriptions which princes caused to be devoted to their own glorification, are so many enthusiastic panegyrics dealing only with their uprightness and kindness towards the poor and lowly.  Every one of them represents himself as faultless:  “the staff of support to the aged, the foster father of the children, the counsellor of the unfortunate, the refuge in which those who suffer from the cold in Thebes may warm themselves, the bread of the afflicted which never failed in the city of the South.”  Their solicitude embraced everybody and everything:  “I have caused no child of tender age to mourn; I have despoiled no widow; I have driven away no tiller of the soil; I have taken no workmen away from their foreman for the public works; none have been unfortunate about me, nor starving in my time.  When years of scarcity arose, as I had cultivated all the lands of the nome of the Gazelle to its northern and southern boundaries, causing its inhabitants to live, and creating provisions, none who were hungry were found there, for I gave to the widow as well as to the woman who had a husband, and I made no distinction between high and low in all that I gave.  If, on the contrary, there were high Niles, the possessors of lands became rich in all things, for I did not raise the rate of the tax upon the fields.”  The canals engrossed all the prince’s attention; he cleaned them out, enlarged them, and dug fresh ones, which were the means of bringing fertility and plenty into the most remote corners of his property.  His serfs had a constant supply of clean water at their door, and were no longer content with such food as durra; they ate wheaten bread daily.  His vigilance and severity were such that the brigands dared no longer appear within reach of his arm, and his soldiers kept strict discipline:  “When night fell, whoever slept by the roadside blessed me, and was [in safety] as a man in his own house; the fear of my police protected him, the cattle remained in the fields as in the stable; the thief was as the abomination of the god, and he no more fell upon the vassal, so that the latter no more complained, but paid exactly the dues of his domain, for love” of the master who had procured for him this freedom from care.  This theme might be pursued at length, for the composers of epitaphs varied it with remarkable cleverness and versatility of imagination.  The very zeal which they display in describing the lord’s virtues betrays how precarious was the condition of his subjects.  There was nothing to hinder the unjust prince or the prevaricating officer from ruining and ill-treating as he chose the people who were under his authority.  He had only to give an order, and the corvee fell upon the proprietors of a village, carried off their slaves and obliged them to leave