CHAPTER V COMMON MAN IN EARLY EGYPT Condition of the Masses, in Egypt; spread of fraternalism; outlines of Egyptian cul- When for example we dwell on the miseries of those vast hordes of slaves that comprised the bulk of the Egyptian population in the days of the Pharaohs, we must not look down in derision, nor yet assume an air of modern superiority, in contrast with the alleged degradation of our remote ancestors. Human slavery, as a social system was universal in the Ancient World. Chattel-slavery was held to be a direct and inviolable issue of war; Egyptian customary law permitted slaves to marry, and the slave could hold positions of trust, as agricultural or commercial agents (Herodotus, ii, 113). In the land of the Pharaohs we behold a race of grain-growers, vinepruners, and hewers of stone. Even at that time, 4,000 years ago, social extremes are everywhere visible. On one side, workers are living in mud huts, women carrying water, grinding meal between flat stones, baking the bread in hot ashes; while on the other side we observe the priest class feasting on the fat of the land, and exercising power of life and death over entire servile populations. The government was an hereditary monarchy, modified by the influence of the priestly class, the power behind the throne. Every man's place in life was fixed for him by the position of his father before him. The priestclass, the richest and most influential, included many professions and occupations. The priests were the only ones who knew how to read and write, and the medical and scientific men belonged to that rank. The priests fixed the religious ritual to which every man, including the king himself, was obliged to conform. The power of the priests was almost unlimited. When we tell you that Egypt was peopled by a race of slaves, we use the term in the light of historical evolution. The detested system of slavery was in itself a step in the path toward subsequent political freedom; even as harsh social conditions we complain about, today, will in the future be found to have been tendencies in the direction of progress. That a given social condition is recognized as vile causes men to think about that evil; the agitation sets up thought-current that in time changes the history of our race. Hence we say, simply, that these Egyptian slaves were beaten by masters; and that to whip or lash a slave or brand a slave (hot iron) with the name of the owner, was for thousands of years within the accepted religious, social and political conception of master and man. In ancient Egypt the common form of corrective punishment for a slave was the bastinado, a lath of bamboo, applied to the feet or back, but generally to the feet. The slave was tied down and the punishment was often protracted over hours. The blows were not severe, but light, very rapid and incessant. However the man might thus be literally tortured to death. The bastinado is still used in China, Turkey and Persia, but the bastinado is only one of the frightful forms of man's inhumanity to man, that we shall read about in this book. Also, death by torture is a very ancient type of punishment. As our narrative unfolds, yes, long after we leave the Ancient World, we shall see century after century men inflicting all manner of atrocities in the name of law and order, and we shall sum it up in more detail in those later parts that detail life in famous prisons. Incidentally, we shall show that the amelioration of penal punishments, based on a growth of a spirit of toleration, fills a large and meritorious place in the tragic story of evolution of Democracy. We constantly set before you, in varied form, the great central ideal of growth of fellowship, freedom and education for the masses; but for the present before us the master is lashing the Common Man in Ancient Egypt, also in Assyria, Babylonia, Phonecia, Greece, Rome, and later the thing goes on and the condition is continued in Gaul, Saxony, England-or where you please, up to yesterday. Yet should you for the moment start back; we urge you not to resume your self-possession. We must again say that black slavery in the United States persisted till 1863. We cannot write the history of the rise of the Common Man, or evolution of Democracy, without at the same time making an indictment of human selfishness. The god-man as ruler of Egypt; Pharaoh, "Pharaoh is then a visible god, a god in the flesh he is called the good god, the great god, the living god, and nobody approaches him without offering words and honors due a god. When he wakes in the morning, he is likened unto the rising sun, and the members of his royal household salute him as they would the sun-god Ra, in these words: 'Turn thy face to me, O rising sun, which lightens the world with thy beauty. . . . thou drivest away the darkness of Egypt; thou resemblest thy father when he rises in heaven and thy rays even as his rays, penetrate into all lands. when thou art resting in thy palace thou hearest all that is said in every country, for thou hast millions of ears. Thine eye . . . seest better than any sun. If one speak even though the mouth that speaketh be within the walls of a house, his words reach thine ear. If any hidden action be committed, thine eye perceiveth it, O king, gracious Lord, who giveth the breath of life!' These surprising words (Maspero) give us the clue. Egyptian kings even as those Babylonian and Assyrian war-lords were held to be visible gods, become flesh and blood. The particular Pharaoh we speak of, Rameses II., reigned in supreme glory 1400 B. C., sat on a throne of gold, and wore peacock's feathers in his hair; officially, he was the superman, the source of all power in the land of Egypt. From what the Egyptian scholar Maspero tells us (Life in Ancient Egypt and Assyria, p. 44), the great Pharaoh was worried at the moment because there was no direct road to the new gold mines; and Pharaoh was asking his ministers whether it would not be wise to sink wells along the trail in order to hasten matters and bring out the gold? The king did not care whether his slaves died of thirst in the desert, but he did care very much about the yellow metal. And the ministers began their audience with the extraordinary words, quoted by Maspero. The peculiar style of talking to Pharaoh was the customary method of saluting and honoring a king of that period. Today, we would call it dull, stupid and dishonest, would expect to hear it in a comic opera, applied to the king of the Isle of Sulu. Yet if we jumped to this conclusion you would make a blunder. Did Pharaoh's ministers wink the other eye in making the absurd remarks necessary in their daily intercourse with their ruler? It was not ceremony, altogether. It was the desire to share a few crumbs of the superman's power. When the ministers spoke to their ruler all-highest in the absurd language we have quoted, the counsellors were in their hearts guilty of atrocious lies; but before the barbarous monarch of that far-off time, the only chance for a high official to get his own way in a few petty affairs was by pretending to be stunned by the god-like wisdom of his master, the king of kings. However, in that respect, the problem of the worship of the Golden Calf has never been solved. Modern politicians in the Democracies, presumed to be most enlightened modern politicians, still seek their personal advantages, as in the days of the Pharaohs. In modern life, however, it is the "people" who are flattered by fawning politicians. That our forefathers of the ancient Egyptian working-class had craft-secrets and guild-unions, is well known; but owing to the indifference of history in not regarding the part played by the masses, records showing how laborers in Egypt rose out of their degradation are not easy to find. Breasted (Hist. Ancient Egyptians) tells that Imuthes, architect for the great king Zoser of the III Dynasty, (before 2750 B. C.), was deified; also that Amenholp, the wise scribe of the XVIII Dynasty, (before 1850 B. C.), was likewise deified for his work as craftsman; and a similar honor was bestowed on Hardadf, master builder of pyramids under Cheops, IVth Dynasty, (before 2750 B. C.). Here is what Maspero (Hist. Egypt, II, pp. 98-102) says of labor conditions in Egypt, with comments by Husslein from various trades and crafts: "We behold there the metal worker, his fingers rugged as a crocodile; the stonecutter who knows no rest till his arms drop from weariness, but who is cruelly bound in an unnatural cramped position should he chance to remain sitting at sunrise; the barber who runs from street to street seeking custom and when he falls to and eats, it is without sitting down; the artisan with his chisel, who labors at timber or metals all the day, at night works at home by the lamp; or the mason dragging huge blocks of stone ten cubits by six, who is much and dreadfully exhausted, and when the work is finished returns home if he has bread only to find that in his absence his children have been beaten mercilessly." Or as an ancient poet of Egypt tells it, in free verse (Husslein, Democratic Industry, pp. 4, 5) : "The weaver within doors is worse off than a woman; squatting, his knees against his chest, he does not breathe. "If, during the day, he slackens weaving, he is bound fast, as the lotuses of the lake; and it is by giving bread to the door-keeper, that the latter permits him to see the light. "The dyer, his fingers reeking—and their smell is that of fish-spawn-toils, his two eyes oppressed by fatigue, his hand does not stop, and as he speeds his time in cutting our cloth, he has a hatred of garments. "The shoemaker is very unfortunate; he moans ceaselessly, his health is the health of the spawning fish, and he gnaws the leather. "The baker makes dough, subjects the loaves to the fire. While his head is inside the oven, his son holds him by the legs; if he slips from the hands of his son, he falls there into the flames.'' |