alth.

According to Herodotus, the whole Egyptian community was divided into
seven tribes, one of which was the sacerdotal, another of the
soldiers, and the remaining five of the herdsmen, swineherds,
merchants, interpreters, and boatmen. Diodorus states that, like the
Athenians, they were distributed into three classes--the priests, the
peasants, or husbandmen, from whom the soldiers were levied, and the
artisans, who were employed in handicraft and other similar
occupations, and in common offices among the people--but in another
place he extends the number to five, and reckons the pastors,
husbandmen, and artificers independent of the soldiers and priests.
Strabo limits them to three, the military, husbandmen, and priests;
and Plato divides them into six bodies, the priests, artificers,
shepherds, huntsmen, husbandmen, and soldiers; each peculiar art or
occupation he observes being confined to a certain sub-division of the
caste, and every one being engaged in his own branch without
interfering with the occupation of another. Hence it appears that the
first class consisted of the priests, the second of the soldiers, the
third of the husbandmen, gardeners, huntsmen, boatmen of the Nile, and
others; the fourth of artificers, tradesmen and merchants, carpenters,
boat-builders, masons, and probably potters, public weighers, and
notaries; and in the fifth may be reckoned pastors, poulterers,
fowlers, fishermen, laborers, and, generally speaking, the common
people. Many of these were again sub-divided, as the artificers and
tradesmen, according to their peculiar trade or occupation; and as the
pastors, into oxherds, shepherds, goatherds, and swineherds, which
last were, according to Herodotus, the lowest grade, not only of the
class, but of the whole community, since no one would either marry
their daughters or establish any family connection with them. So
degrading was the occupation of tending swine, that they were looked
upon as impure, and were even forbidden to enter a temple without
previously undergoing a purification; and the prejudices of the
Indians against this class of persons almost justify our belief in the
statement of the historian.

Without stopping to inquire into the relative rank of the different
sub-divisions of the third class, the importance of agriculture in a
country like Egypt, where the richness and productiveness of the soil
have always been proverbial, suffices to claim the first place for the