Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 5, 2025
"Of course." "Next command that field labor last only from sunrise till sunset. Then direct, as during the divine dynasties, that people rest every seventh day; not every tenth, but every seventh day. Then command that landowners shall not have the right to mortgage earth-tillers, or scribes the right to beat and torture them according to fancy.
"Look now at the food of the earth-tillers. At times barley and dried fish, lotus seed always, rarely a wheat cake, never flesh, beer, or wine. "Ask them where their utensils and furniture are. They have none, unless a pitcher for water; nothing could find room in the dens which they inhabit.
But only common people revolt," added the judge, hastily. "I am listening," said the pharaoh. "In Kosem a regiment of masons and stone-cutters revolted recently; for some time needful supplies had been refused them. In Sechem earth- tillers killed a scribe who was collecting taxes. In Melcatis and Pi- Hebit also earth-tillers wrecked the houses of Phoenician tenants.
Now earth-tillers began to come out to field labor, from huts concealed among trees; they were naked and bronze- hued; their whole dress was a short skirt and a cap. Some turned to canals to clear them of mud, or to draw water. Others dispersing among the trees gathered grapes and ripe figs.
"In the thirty-third year of the reign of his holiness Meramen-Ramses the Nile was late in its overflow. Earth-tillers, ascribing this misfortune to the black art of foreigners resident in the province of Hak, fell to wrecking the houses of Hittites, Jews, and Phoenicians, during which time a number of persons were slain by them.
The priests and magnates in the chamber were dumb when they heard this prescription. Then they whispered that the children of earth-tillers were best for the purpose, since the children of priests and great lords lost their innocence even in infancy. "It is all one to me whose children they are," said the cruel priest, "if only his holiness has fresh blood given him daily."
And earth-tillers, instead of devoting time free of labor to prayers and the memory of their ancestors, told one another how well it would be if each man had some bit of land as his own, and could rest one day in seven. Of the army, and especially foreign regiments, nothing was to be said.
It was whispered among people that when the pharaoh returned with victory from Nineveh, he would give slaves to the earth-tillers, and remit for a number of years all taxes. The aristocracy, on its part, judged that the new pharaoh would, first of all, take from priests and return to nobles all lands which had become temple property, and would pay also the debts of nobles.
"He is always expressing his thought!" said Herhor, in meditation. "Think thou, Pentuer, of earth-tillers and laborers; thou, Mefres, of the priests. I know not what ye will effect, but I swear that if my own son favored war I would bind and destroy him." "Act in this way," said Beroes, "let him carry on war who wishes, but not in those regions where he can meet Assyria."
The worm eats half his harvest, the rhinoceros the other half; in the fields, a legion of mice live; the locust devours, the cattle trample, the sparrows steal. What is left after these for the threshing floor the thief takes. Oh, wretched earth-tillers! Now comes the scribe to the boundary and mentions the harvest. His attendants have sticks, and black men carry palm rods. 'Give wheat! say they.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking