aucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Dumichen,
_Resultate_, vol. ii. pl. vit

The country was divided among communities, whose members were supposed
to be descended from the same seed (_pait_) and to belong to the
same family (_paitu_): the chiefs of them were called _ropaitu_, the
guardians, or pastors of the family, and in later times their name
became a title applicable to the nobility in general. Families combined
and formed groups of various importance under the authority of a head
chief--_ropaitu-ha_. They were, in fact, hereditary lords, dispensing
justice, levying taxes in kind on their subordinates, reserving to
themselves the redistribution of land, leading their men to, battle, and
sacrificing to the gods.[*] The territories over which they exercised
authority formed small states, whose boundaries even now, in some
places, can be pointed out with certainty. The principality of the
Terebinth[**] occupied the very heart of Egypt, where the valley is
widest, and the course of the Nile most advantageously disposed
by nature--a country well suited to be the cradle of an infant
civilization. Siaut (Siut), the capital, is built almost at the foot
of the Libyan range, on a strip of land barely a mile in width, which
separates the river from the hills. A canal surrounds it on three sides,
and makes, as it were, a natural ditch about its walls; during
the inundation it is connected with the mainland only by narrow
causeways--shaded with mimosas--and looking like a raft of verdure
aground in the current.[***]

* These prerogatives were still exercised by the princes of
the nomes under the Middle and New Empires; they only
enjoyed them then by the good will of the reigning
sovereign.

** The Egyptian word for the tree which gives its name to
this principality is _atf, iatf, iotf_: it is only by a
process of elimination that I have come to identify it with
the _Pistacia Terebinthus_, L., which furnished the
Egyptians with the scented resin _snutir_.

*** Boudier's drawing, reproduced on p. 31, and taken from
a photograph by Beato, gives most faithfully the aspect
presented by the plain and the modern town of Siout during
the inundation.

[Illustration: 094.jpg NOMES OF MIDDLE EGYPT]

The site is as happy as it is picturesque; not only does the town
command the two arms of the river, opening or closing the waterway at
will, but from time immemo