Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/123

 that their kings and princes of the blood, their feudal lords and functionaries of every grade, made it a point of honour to observe this rule. They were not content with strict justice, they practised a bountiful charity which reminds us of that which is the chief beauty of the Christian's morality. The "Book of the Dead"—that passport for Egyptians into the other world which is found upon every mummy—gives us the most simple, and at the same time the most complete description of this virtue. "I have given bread to the hungry, I have given water to the thirsty, I have clothed the naked... I have not calumniated the slave in the ears of his master." The lengthy panegyrics of which some epitaphs consist, are, in reality no more than amplifications of this

—From the tomb of Menofre, at Sakkarah. (Champollion, pl. 408.)

theme. "As for me, I have been the staff of the old man, the nurse of the infant, the help of the distressed, a warm shelter for all who were cold in the Thebaïd, the bread and sustenance of the down-trodden, of whom there is no lack in Middle Egypt, and their protector against the barbarians." The prince Entef relates that he has "arrested the arm of the violent, used brute force to those who used brute force, showed hauteur to the haughty, and lowered the shoulders of those who raised them up," that he himself on the other hand, "was a man in a thousand, wise, learned, and of a sound and truthful judgment, knowing the fool from the wise man, paying