armed with a pike tipped with bronze ox-copper, an axe or sharp adze, a stone-headed mace, and a dagger; the light troops were provided only with the bow and sling.  As early as the third millennium b.c., the king went to battle in a chariot drawn by onagers, or perhaps horses; he had his own peculiar weapon, which was a curved baton probably terminating in a metal point, and resembling the sceptre of the Pharaohs.  Considerable quantities of all these arms were stored in the arsenals, which contained depots for bows, maces, and pikes, and even the stones needed for the slings had their special department for storage.  At the beginning of each campaign, a distribution of weapons to the newly levied troops took place; but as soon as the war was at an end, the men brought back their accoutrements, which were stored till they were again required.  The valour of the soldiers and their chiefs was then rewarded; the share of the spoil for some consisted of cattle, gold, corn, a female slave, and vessels of value; for others, lands or towns in the conquered country, regulated by the rank of the recipients or the extent of the services they had rendered.

[Illustration:  266.jpg A SOLDIER BRINGING PRISONERS AND SPOIL.]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the Chaldaean intaglio in the
     British.  Museum.

Property thus given was hereditary, and privileges were often added to it which raised the holder to the rank of a petty prince:  for instance, no royal official was permitted to impose a tax upon such lands, or take the cattle off them, or levy provisions upon them; no troop of soldiers might enter them, not even for the purpose of arresting a fugitive.  Most of the noble families possessed domains of this kind, and constituted in each kingdom a powerful and wealthy feudal aristocracy, whose relations to their sovereign were probably much the same as those which bound the nomarchs to the Pharaoh.  The position of these nobles was not more stable than that of the dynasties under which they lived:  while some among them gained power by marriages or by continued acquisitions of land, others fell into disgrace and were ruined.  As the soil belonged to the gods, it is possible that these nobles were supposed, in theory, ’to depend upon the gods; but as the kings were the vicegerents of the gods upon earth, it was to the king, as a matter of fact, that they owed their elevation.  Every state, therefore, comprised two parts, each subject to a distinct regime:  one being the personal domain of the suzerain, which he managed himself, and from which he drew the revenues; the other was composed of fiefs, whose lords paid tribute and owed certain obligations to the king, the nature of which we are as yet unable to define.