Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/89

 and the chase are oppressed by care; there are some days when game is not to be found, and they die of hunger. Those who live a pastoral life are also exposed to cruel hardships from the destruction of their flocks and herds by those epidemics against which even modern science sometimes struggles in vain. As for agricultural populations, they are everywhere, except in Egypt, at the mercy of the weather; seasons which are either too dry or too wet may reduce them to famine, for in those distant times local famines were far more fatal than in these days, when facility of transport and elaborate commercial connections ensure that where the demand is, thither the supply will be taken. In Egypt the success of the crops varied with the height of the Nile, but they never failed altogether. In bad years the peasant

A history of art in ancient Egypt (1883) (14585834440).jpg .—Harvest scene; from a tomb at Gizeh. (Champollion, pl. 417.)

may have had the baton of the tax-collector to fear, but he always had a few onions or a few ears of maize to preserve him from starvation.