From the construction of the pyramids of Cheops and Chephren, and the cutting of a new canal between the two seas under Nekau, to the Mahmoudieh canal of Mehemet-Ali and that abortive enterprise, the barrage of the Nile, the only method thought of for obtaining the necessary labour was compulsion.[60] An order is received by the governor, who has it proclaimed from one village to another throughout his province; next day the whole male population is driven, like a troop of sheep, to the workshops. Each man carries a bag or basket which holds his provisions for a fortnight or a month, as the case may be; a few dry cakes, onions, garlic, and _Egyptian beans_, as the Greeks called the species of almond which is contained in the fruit of the lotus. Old men and children, all had to obey the summons. The more vigorous and skilful among them dressed and put in place the blocks of granite or limestone; the weakest were useful for the transport of the rubbish to a distance, for carrying clay and water from the Nile to the brickmakers, for arranging the bricks in the sun so that they might be dried and hardened. [60] The beaters for the great hunts which took place in the Delta and the Fayoum were procured in the same fashion. These hunts were among the favourite pleasures of the kings and the great lords. See MASPERO, _Le Papyrus Mallet_, p. 58 (in _Recueil de Travaux_, etc. t. 1). [Illustration: FIG. 15.--Homage to Amenophis III. (From Prisse.[61])] [61] The work to which we here refer is the _Histoire de l'Art Égyptien d'après les Monuments_, 2 vols. folio. Arthus Bertrand, 1878. As the plates are not numbered, we can only refer to them generally. Under the stimulus of the rod, this multitude worked well and obediently under the directions of the architect's foreman and of skilled artisans who were permanently employed upon the work; they did all that could be done by men without special education. At the end of a certain period they were relieved by fresh levies from another province, and all who had not succumbed to the hard and continuous work, returned to their own places. Those who died were buried in hasty graves dug in the sands of the desert by the natives of their own village.