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"It was in this way," said Pentuer, "during the nineteenth dynasty. Look at the earth-tillers. At their ploughs ye see sometimes oxen, sometimes asses; their picks, spades, and shovels are bronze, and hence are lasting. See what stalwart men they are! Today one could find such only in the guard of his holiness. Their hands and feet are strong, their breasts full, their faces smiling.
In front went naked earth-tillers wearing white caps and girdles; each held in his hand a piece of coarse cloth to cover his back in presence of the pharaoh. Next advanced artisans dressed like the earth-tillers, from whom they differed in wearing finer cloth and narrow aprons covered with parti- colored embroidery. Third came merchants, some in wigs, all in long tunics and pelerines.
"With permission, worthiness, I noticed that Thou couldst lead a regiment in spite of thy young face. But I enter the service of no man. I am a free fisherman; my grandfather was, with permission, a shepherd in Lower Egypt, our family comes of the Hyksos people. It is true that dull Egyptian earth-tillers revile us, but I laugh at them.
Taking things as they were, the new ruler had interfered with no one thus far, hence the cause of grief for dignitaries lay in those same reports which delighted common people. The nomarchs and the nobility grieved at the thought that their earth-tillers might be idle fifty days in a year, and, what was worse, possess land, though even of an extent on which a tomb might be erected.
He wants me to give earth-tillers food, land, and ever-recurring holidays. All this would decrease my income, which even now is insufficient. But if I say to him: help me to take the pharaoh's treasures from the priesthood, he calls that godlessness and the quenching of light in Egypt.
For when the barge of the youthful sovereign sailed out on the Nile there came to meet him such a mass of boats, great and small, rich and poor, that they almost hid the water. Sitting in those barges were naked families of earth-tillers and artisans, well-dressed merchants, Phoenicians in bright garments, adroit Greek sailors, and even Assyrians and Hittites.
These people were all adventurers or their descendants, Europeans, Libyans, Ethiopians. To the desert fled people who had nothing to lose, convicts from the quarries, criminals pursued by police, earth-tillers escaping from tribute, or laborers who left hard work for danger. The greater part of these fugitives died on the sand ocean.
But Ramses, feigning not to see him, turned to one of the overseers, "Are ye earth-tillers from Sochem?" inquired he. The overseer fell at full length with his face to the earth. The prince shrugged his shoulders, and called out to the laborers, "Are ye from Sochem?" "We are earth workers from Sochem," answered they, in chorus. "Have ye received pay?"
After them advanced nomarchs in robes bordered with a purple stripe, and on their heads were coronets. The procession was closed by priests with shaven heads, and wearing panther skins over their shoulders. The delegates entered the great hall of the pharaoh's palace where there were seven benches, one behind another, the highest for priests, the lowest for earth-tillers.
The people were alarmed, all the more since in Upper Egypt, according to signals, the overflow proceeded with regular increase and even promised to be perfect. "What detains it at Memphis then?" asked the anxious earth-tillers waiting for the signal in disquiet.
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