[42] In all ages the rod has, in Egypt, played an important part in the collection of the taxes. In this connection M. Lieblein has quoted a passage from the well-known letter from the chief guardian of the archives of Ameneman to the scribe Pentaour, in which he says: "The scribe of the port arrives at the station; he collects the tax; there are agents with rattans, and negroes with branches of palm; they say 'Give us some corn!' and they are not to be repulsed. The peasant is bound and sent to the canal; he is driven on with violence, his wife is bound in his presence, his children are stripped; as for his neighbours, they are far off and are busy over their own harvest." (_Les Récits de Recolte dans l'ancienne Égypte, comme Éléments chronologique_, in _Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l'Archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes_, t. i. p. 149). [Illustration: FIG. 4.--Harvest scene; from a tomb at Gizeh. (Champollion, pl. 417.)] The first condition of civilization is a certain measure of security for life. Now, thanks to the beneficent action of the king of rivers, that condition was created sooner in Egypt than elsewhere. In the valley of the Nile man found himself able, for the first time, to calculate upon the forces of nature and to turn them to his certain profit. It is easy then to understand that Egypt saw the birth of the most ancient of those civilizations whose plastic arts we propose to study. [Illustration: FIG. 5.--The Bastinado; Beni-Hassan. (Champollion, pl. 390.)] Another favourable condition is to be found in the isolation of the country. The tribes who settled there in centuries so remote that they are beyond tradition and even calculation, could live in peace, hidden as it were in a narrow valley and protected on all sides, partly by deserts, partly by an impassable sea. It would perhaps be well to give some idea of the natural features of their country before commencing our study of their art. The terms, _Lower-_, _Middle-_, and _Upper-Egypt_, the _Delta_, and _Ethiopia_ will continually recur in these pages, as also will the names of Tanis and Sais, Memphis and Heliopolis, Abydos and Thebes, and of many other cities; it is important therefore that our readers should know exactly what is meant by each of these time-honoured designations; it is necessary that they should at least be able to find upon the map those cities which by their respective periods of supremacy represent the successive epochs of Egyptian history.