of anatomy. No picture represents a surgical operation more difficult than that of setting a broken bone.

Their musical instruments included the harp with three, five, seven, eleven, or even as many as twenty-two strings, the guitar, the lyre, the tambourine, drum, sistrum, castanets, flute, pipe, and trumpet. One of the pipes was made to contain a straw, which emitted sounds like those of the bagpipe. In many of the monuments three musicians are represented playing together, as two with harps of different sizes and one with a flute; or a harp, guitar, and double pipe; or three pipes of different lengths, indicating that they must have played treble, tenor, and bass.

SEC. 227. Political Condition.-About the political condition of the country, our information is not complete. According to Herodotus, Diodorus, Strabo, and Plato, the Egyptians were divided into hereditary classes or castes, but these authors do not agree with one another, or with the monuments. The four agree in making a caste of priests, and another of soldiers; but from better authority we know that "the three great classes of society, priests, scribes, and warriors, were by no means castes in the sense of hereditary succession. priest of a god was often a military or naval commander, exercised the office of scribe, and invested with the supervision of local works or local government. Public employments were monopolized by a few great families, considered by some to be an advantageous arrangement of civil government; but the key-stone of caste, the limitation of marriage to women of the same order, is unknown to monumental Egypt.'

The

Though the Greek authors mentioned in the preceding paragraph do not speak of serfs or slaves, it is probable

that the common soldiers belonged to the former class, and many of the laborers to the latter. Diodorus tells us that the land was divided into three parts, one belonging to the king, another to the priests, and the third to the army. In the absence of explanation we may assume that the share of the army was held by the high military officers, each of whom was required to maintain a certain number of serf soldiers in active service. There was also a class of free peasants. The abject submission of the many to the few is implied by the magnitude of the public monuments, the insignificance of the dwellings of the multitude, and the frequency with which the laborers were beaten by the overseers. A large part of the time of the people, not required in the production of the simplest necessaries of life, was spent in building temples and tombs for the wealthy; and work of this kind must have been done under compulsion. We look in vain through the monuments and books of ancient Egypt for the mention of institutions and movements that have elsewhere been associated with popular freedom.

In the king were centralized all the powers of the government. He was the head of the army and of the church; he controlled all the political and judicial officers. But custom and religion imposed restrictions on him; before his installation, he took an oath of office in which he made certain promises, one of which was that he would not change the official year which regulated the dates of the ecclesiastical festivals. He was regarded as divine. One of his titles was Son of the Sun." painting and sculpture he was frequently represented with the attributes of divinity.

In

Private individuals were not permitted, in any case, to use violence in obtaining redress for injustice. Retalia

were common.

tion was strictly prohibited. While the master was permitted to beat his slave, he was not allowed to inflict any serious injury. Judicial proceedings were conducted according to well-established rules and ancient customs. In important cases, the complaint, the answer, and the judgment were in writing; and written reports of cases There were appellate tribunals, with fixed jurisdiction. After 812 B. C., no suit for debt could be maintained unless the obligation had been incurred in writing. The most remarkable security, and one that was regarded as certain of redemption if a debtor had the means, was the mummy of his father. The interest on a loan was not allowed to exceed double the amount of the principal. For police purposes, every person was required to report his name, abode, and occupation to the magistrate of his district.

It was the opinion of Diodorus that "this unparalleled country could never have continued throughout ages in such a flourishing condition if it had not enjoyed the best of laws and customs;" and Wilkinson' agrees with him. The evidences which the latter cites are that the people were extremely submissive to their government; that they hated and resisted alien domination; that the principles of morality were impressed upon every class with all the power of a mighty priesthood; that no merit was attached to noble birth before the gods; and that even the monarchs were subject to strict rules. The submission of the multitude was caused by their superstition and their ignorance of the use of arms That the laws were well devised to keep many in subjection, is proved by the result; but that they were framed for the purpose of securing the happiness of the people, does not appear.

Although, in the long course of their national existence, the Egyptians sent many military expeditions to Syria and Mesopotamia, their general policy was peaceful. Their isolation made it as difficult for them to conquer as to be conquered. They always maintained, however, an army of about 400,000 men, many of whom in time of peace served as local police. The soldiers were divided into battalions, each of which had its standard of a sacred animal, which was perhaps that of a provincial god. Cities were inclosed with ditches, draw-bridges, and walls, which last had projecting angles, from which assaulting enemies could be bothered by a flanking fire.

Their military system is not mentioned with high commendation by any ancient author. They had no organization that competes in military history with the Spartan regiment, the Macedonian phalanx, or the Roman legion. Not one of their victories or generals has a great fame. They never gained a great victory or suffered a glorious defeat. The Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans conquered them without much difficulty; and in the later centuries their best troops were foreign hirelings. They never were a martial nation.

SEC. 228. Egyptian Gods.-The Egyptian religion was polytheistic and was distinguished from other religions of its class by the preservation of the mummy, by the teaching of formulas to be recited in the next world as aids to salvation, and by the great prominence given to the worship of living animals as representatives of the divinities. It had a worship of ancestors, an immortality at least for the good, future rewards and punishments, a comprehensive and precise moral code, and a popular devotion that was unsurpassed in the appearance and perhaps also in the sincerity of its zeal. The divinities

were innumerable, including great gods similar in general character to those of Greece, as personifications of the powers and phenomena of nature, but they were not conceived so distinctly, nor were their attributes the same in all the provinces. There is much more confusion of names and jurisdictions in the Egyptian than in the Greek pantheon. Most of the greater gods of the Nile Valley seem to have been at one time provincial divinities. The worship of the sun was very prominent; Ra, Amon-Ra, Ptah, Tum and Mentu, and even Osiris, were represented and worshiped in certain districts as the sun.

The gods were conceived as similar to men in mind and body, and were represented in sculpture and painting in the forms of men or beasts, or in figures with the head of the symbolic beast on a human body. Thus the statue of Osiris might have the shape of a man or a bull, or the body of a man with a bull's head. The entire beast is seldom used to represent a divinity; its head on a human body conveyed the idea with equal distinctness and greater dignity. In the pictures of the final judgment of the soul in the world of spirits, Horus has the head of a hawk, Anubis that of a jackal, and Thoth that of an ibis.

A prominent feature of the ecclesiastical system was the custom of worshiping three gods in conjunction, and in many cases the first was the father, the second the mother, and the third their son or daughter. Each province had its own triad, which at Phile consisted of Osiris, Isis, and their son Horus; at Mermonthis of Mentu, Rata, and their son Harpara; at Esneh of Kneph, Neith, and Hakt; at Thebes of Amon-Ra, Mut, and Khonsu; at Syene of Kneph, Satis, or Juno, and Anoukis or Vesta; and at Silsiles of Ra, Ptah, and Nilus.

All classes of the people, nobles, commoners, serfs, and