The upper classes had degenerated as much as the masses.  The feudal nobles who had expelled the Shepherds, and carried the frontiers of the empire to the banks of the Euphrates, seemed to have expended their energies in the effort, and to have almost ceased to exist.  As long as Egypt was restricted to the Nile valley, there was no such disproportion between the power of the Pharaoh and that of his feudatories as to prevent the latter from maintaining their privileges beside, and, when occasion arose, even against the monarch.  The conquest of Asia, while it compelled them either to take up arms themselves or to send their troops to a distance, accustomed them and their soldiers to a passive obedience.  The maintenance of a strict discipline in the army was the first condition of successful campaigning at great distances from the mother country and in the midst of hostile people, and the unquestioning respect which they had to pay to the orders of their general prepared them for abject submission to the will of their sovereign.  To their bravery, moveover, they owed not only money and slaves, but also necklaces and bracelets of honour, and distinctions and offices in the Pharaonic administration.  The king, in addition, neglected no opportunity for securing their devotion to himself.  He gave to them in marriage his sisters, his daughters, his cousins, and any of the princesses whom he was not compelled by law to make his own wives.  He selected from their harems nursing-mothers for his own sons, and this choice established between him and them a foster relationship, which was as binding among the Egyptians and other Oriental peoples as one of blood.  It was not even necessary for the establishment of this relation that the foster-mother’s connexion with the Pharaoh’s son should be durable or even effective:  the woman had only to offer her breast to the child for a moment, and this symbol was quite enough to make her his nurse—­his true monait.  This fictitious fosterage was carried so far, that it was even made use of in the case of youths and persons of mature age.  When an Egyptian woman wished to adopt an adult, the law prescribed that she should offer him the breast, and from that moment he became her son.  A similar ceremony was prescribed in the case of men who wished to assume the quality of male nurse—­monai—­or even, indeed, of female nurse—­monait—­like that of their wives; according to which they were to place, it would seem, the end of one of their fingers in the mouth of the child.* Once this affinity was established, the fidelity of these feudal lords was established beyond question; and their official duties to the sovereign were not considered as accomplished when they had fulfilled their military obligations, for they continued to serve him in the palace as they had served him on the field.  Wherever the necessities of the government called them—­at Memphis, at Ramses, or elsewhere—­they assembled around the Pharaoh; like him they had their palaces at Thebes, and when they died they were anxious to be buried there beside him.**