fugitive. Most
of the noble families possessed domains of this kind, and constituted in
each kingdom a powerful and wealthy feudal aristocracy, whose relations
to their sovereign were probably much the same as those which bound
the nomarchs to the Pharaoh. The position of these nobles was not more
stable than that of the dynasties under which they lived: while some
among them gained power by marriages or by continued acquisitions of
land, others fell into disgrace and were ruined. As the soil belonged to
the gods, it is possible that these nobles were supposed, in theory, 'to
depend upon the gods; but as the kings were the vicegerents of the gods
upon earth, it was to the king, as a matter of fact, that they owed
their elevation. Every state, therefore, comprised two parts, each
subject to a distinct regime: one being the personal domain of the
suzerain, which he managed himself, and from which he drew the revenues;
the other was composed of fiefs, whose lords paid tribute and owed
certain obligations to the king, the nature of which we are as yet
unable to define.

The Chaldaean, like the Egyptian scribe, was the pivot on which the
machinery of this double royal and seignorial administration turned.
He does not appear to have enjoyed as much consideration as his
fellow-official in the Nile Valley: the Chaldaean princes, nobles,
priests, soldiers, and temple or royal officials, did not covet the
title of scribe, or pride themselves upon holding that office side
by side with their other dignities, as we see was the case with their
Egyptian contemporaries. The position of a scribe, nevertheless, was an
important one. We continually meet with it in all grades of society--in
the palace, in the temples, in the storehouses, in private dwellings; in
fine, the scribe was ubiquitous, at court, in the town, in the country,
in the army, managing affairs both small and great, and seeing that they
were carried on regularly. His education differed but little from that
given to the Egyptian scribe; he learned the routine of administrative
or judicial affairs, the formularies for correspondence either with
nobles or with ordinary people, the art of writing, of calculating
quickly, and of making out bills correctly. We may well ask whether he
ever employed papyrus or prepared skins for these purposes. It would,
indeed, seem strange that, after centuries of intercourse, no caravan
should have brought into Chaldaean any of those material