of priestly families.  The tribute and spoil of Asia and Africa, when once it had reached Egypt, hardly ever left it:  they were distributed among the population in proportion to the position occupied by the recipients in the social scale.  The commanders of the troops, the attendants on the king, the administrators of the palace and temples, absorbed the greater part, but the distribution was carried down to the private soldier and his relations in town or country, who received some of the crumbs.  When we remember for a moment the four centuries and more during which Egypt had been reaping the fruits of her foreign conquest, we cannot think without amazement of the quantities of gold and other precious metals which must have been brought in divers forms into the valley of the Nile.* Every fresh expedition made additions to these riches, and one is at a loss to know whence in the intervals between two defeats the conquered could procure so much wealth, and why the sources were never exhausted nor became impoverished.  This flow of metals had an influence upon commercial transactions, for although trade was still mainly carried on by barter, the mode of operation was becoming changed appreciably.  In exchanging commodities, frequent use was now made of rings and ingots of a certain prescribed weight in tabonu; and it became more and more the custom to pay for goods by a certain number of tabonu of gold, silver, or copper, rather than by other commodities:  it was the practice even to note down in invoices or in the official receipts, alongside the products or manufactured articles with which payments were made, the value of the same in weighed metal.**

* The quantity of gold in ingots or rings, mentioned in the Annals of Tkutmosis III., represents altogether a weight of nearly a ton and a quarter, or in value some L140,000 of our money.  And this is far from being the whole of the metal obtained from the enemy, for a large portion of the inscription has disappeared, and the unrecorded amount might be taken, without much risk of error, at as much as that of which we have evidence—­say, some two and a half tons, which Thutmosis had received or brought back between the years XXIII. and XLII. of his reign—­an estimation rather under than over the reality.  These figures, moreover, take no account of the vessels and statues, or of the furniture and arms plated with gold.  Silver was not received in such large quantities, but it was of great value, and the like may be said of copper and lead.

* The facts justifying this position were observed and put together for the first time by Chabas:  a translation is given in his memoir of a register of the XXth or XXIst dynasty, which gives the price of butcher’s meat, both in gold and silver, at this date.  Fresh examples have been since collected by Spiegelberg, who has succeeded in drawing up a kind of tariff for the period between the XVIIIth and XXth dynasties.

This custom, although not yet widely extended, placed at the disposal of trade enormous masses of metal, which were preserved in the form of ingots or bricks, except the portion which went to the manufacture of rings, jewellery, or valuable vessels.*