that
the inevitable stick too often elucidated the truth and cut short
discussions: the depositions of the witnesses, the speeches on both
sides, the examination of the documents, could not proceed without the
frequent taking of oaths "by the life of the king" or "by the favour of
the gods," in which the truth often suffered severely. Penalties were
varied somewhat--the bastinado, imprisonment, additional days of work
for the corvee, and, for grave offences, forced labour in the Ethiopian
mines, the loss of nose and ears, and finally, death by strangulation,
by beheading,* by empalement, and at the stake.

* The only known instance of an execution by hanging is that
of Pharaoh's chief baker, in Gen. xl. 19, 22, xli. 13; but
in a tomb at Thebes we see two human victims executed by
strangulation. The Egyptian hell contains men who have been
decapitated, and the block on which the damned were beheaded
is frequently mentioned in the texts.

Criminals of high rank obtained permission to carry out on themselves
the sentence passed upon them, and thus avoided by suicide the shame of
public execution. Before tribunals thus constituted, the fellah who came
to appeal against the exactions of which he was the victim had little
chance of obtaining a hearing: had not the scribe who had overtaxed him,
or who had imposed a fresh corvee upon him, the right to appear among
the Judges to whom he addressed himself? Nothing, indeed, prevented
him from appealing from the latter to his feudal lord, and from him to
Pharaoh, but such an appeal would be for him a mere delusion. When he
had left his village and presented his petition, he had many delays
to encounter before a solution could be arrived at; and if the adverse
party were at all in favour at court, or could command any influence,
the sovereign decision would confirm, even if it did not aggravate, the
sentence of the previous judges. In the mean while the peasants'
land remained uncultivated, his wife and children bewailed their
wretchedness, and the last resources of the family were consumed in
proceedings and delays: it would have been better for him at the outset
to have made up his mind to submit without resistance to a fate from
which he could not escape.

In spite of taxes, requisitions, and forced labour, the fellahin came
off fairly well, when the chief to whom they belonged proved a kind
master, and did not add the exactions of his own persona