Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/331

 CASTES IN EGYPT. 313 erful, and most venerated, distributed all over the country, and possessing exclusively the means of reading and writing,* besides a vast amount of narrative matter treasured up in the memory, the whole stock of medical and physical knowledge then attaina- ble, and those rudiments of geometry, or rather land-measuring, which were so often called into use in a country annually inun- dated. To each god, and to each temple, throughout Egypt, lands and other properties belonged, whereby the numerous band of priests attached to him were maintained : it seems, too, that a farther portion of the lands of the kingdom was set apart for them in individual property, though on this point no certainty is attain- able. Their ascendency, both direct and indirect, over the minds of the people, was immense ; they prescribed that minute ritual under which the life of every Egyptian, not excepting the king himself, 2 was passed, and which was for themselves more full of harassing particularities than for any one else. 3 Every day in the year belonged to some particular god, and the priests alone knew to which. There were different gods in every nome, though Isis and Osiris were common to all, and the priests of each god constituted a society apart, more or less important, ac- cording to the comparative celebrity of the temple : the high 1 Hcrodot. ii, 37. 9eo<7t'/3Ee Jt irepiaaiJf kovreg iid/uard TTUVTUV uvdpiJTruv, etc. He is astonished at the retentivencss of their memory ; some of them had more stories to tell than any one whom he had ever seen (ii, 77-109; Diodor. i, 73). The word priest conveys to a modern reader an idea very different from that of the Egyptian iepelf, who were not a profession, but an order com- prising many occupations and professions, Josephus the Jew was in like manner an iepevf Kara yevog (cont. Apion. c. 3). 2 Diodorus (i, 70-73) gives an elaborate description of the monastic strict- ness with which the daily duties of the Egyptian king were measured out by the priests : compare Plutarch, De Isid. et Osirid. p. 353, who refers to Ilckattcus (probably Ilekatseus of Abdera) and Eudoxus. The priests represented that Psammetiehus was the first Egyptian king who broke through the priestly canon limiting the royal allowance of wine : compare Strabo, xvii, p, 790. The Ethiopian kings at Meroe are said to have been kept in the like pupil- lage by the priestly order, until a king named Ergamenes, during the reign of Ptolemy Philudelphus in Egypt, emancipated himself and put the chief priests to death (Diodor. iii, 6). 3 Hcrodot. ii, 82-83.