No matter what the trade was, or how wonderful its results, it seemed to the smug scribe a contemptible thing in comparison with his own precious profession of letters. Here is his opinion of the craftsmen who created the miracles of metal- and wood-work of the Middle Kingdom: “I have never seen the smith as an ambassador, Or the goldsmith carry tidings; But I have seen the smith at his work At the mouth of his furnace, His fingers were like crocodile skin, He stank more than the roe of fish ... Each artist who works with the chisel Tires himself more than he who hoes a field. The wood is his field, of metal are his tools. In the night--is he free? He works more than his arms are able, In the night--he lights a light.” No doubt this seemed very fine and humorous to our scribe; but we who have the chance of comparing his literary achievement with the works of the craftsmen whom he satirised may be pardoned for preferring the diadems of Khnumit and Sat-Hathor, or the statues of Senusert and Amenemhat to all the paltry drivel he ever wrote. [Illustration: 29. XIXth DYNASTY RELIEF-WORK, TEMPLE OF SETY I, ABYDOS.] Nor was his opinion of the soldier’s calling any higher. Indeed the ancient Egyptian was no more of a warlike person than his successor the modern fellah, who makes a good enough soldier under British officers, but is about the most unmilitary person on earth when left to the freedom of his own will. There is no more curious inversion of fact than the common idea which pictures the Egyptian as one of the great warrior races of the world, and classes him along with that bloodthirsty tiger the Assyrian. Only at one period of his history did the Egyptian ever show the least sign of developing a craving for world-dominion and the warfare which goes along with it; and when the brief imperial fever of his early XVIIIth Dynasty had wrought itself out, he reverted for the rest of his history to his natural rôle of the finest craftsman on earth, only bestirring himself when there was need to defend his frontiers, a business which he did fairly, but only fairly, well. On the whole, he would have thoroughly agreed with Alan Breck Stewart that war “is generally rather a bauchle of a business.” But it was reserved for the smug and flabby scribe--you can see him still in the Louvre with his cunning eyes and his rolls of unhealthy flesh--to make a mock of the calling which won for Egypt all the empire she ever possessed, and which was that of her greatest Pharaohs. “Oh, what does it mean,” says this early pacifist, “Oh, what does it mean that thou sayest: ‘The officer has a better lot than the scribe’? Come, let me relate to thee the fate of the officer, so full of trouble.” Then he goes on to relate in a fashion which he no doubt thinks humorous, the life of an officer on active duty in Syria: