Social life in ancient Egypt / by W.M. Flinders Petrie.

  • Flinders Petrie
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Social life in ancient Egypt / by W.M. Flinders Petrie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    once in a trade, it was impossible to move out of it, and the natural facility of a boy learning his father’s trade tended to fix each generation into the same line. Thus, the impression which the Greeks received when stepping into such a society was that its structure was a group of gene a or hereditary tribes. They specified the priests, soldiers, and husbandmen, as each owning equal shares of the land, and Strabo says that this was not only an equality over the country as a whole, but that each separate nome was thus equally divided. This division of each nome into three kinds of holdings suggests a comparison with the three divisions recorded of every nome ; these were (i) the canal or riverside fields ; (2) the general or middle land ; and (3) the land along the desert side, which lay lowest and had marshes or pools in it. When we enter on the details, we find that of these three divisions it is only the middle land which belongs to gods ; half the nomes in the Delta have the middle land belonging to gods, Ra, Horus (thrice), x4men, Hapi (twice), Sebek, Bennu, or “ the divine fields.” It seems clear that this is the priests’ land. There is no such reference to military or agricultural holding in the other two divisions. If we may guess, it seems more likely that the military would hold the desert edge to keep the Bedawy out, and for
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