Besides the monarch and the royal family there was generally in Oriental countries an upper class of landowners. In Egypt the Pharaoh was regarded as sole owner of the land. Some of it he worked through his slaves, but the larger part he granted to his favorites, as hereditary estates. Such persons may be called the nobles. The different priesthoods also had much land, the revenues from which kept up the temples where they ministered. In Babylonia, likewise, we find a priesthood and nobility supported by the income from landed property. THE MIDDLE CLASS The middle class included professional men, shopkeepers independent farmers, and skilled craftsmen. Though regarded as inferiors, still they had a chance to rise in the world. If they became rich, they might hope to enter the upper class as priests or government officials. WORKMEN AND PEASANTS No such hopes encouraged the day laborer in the fields or shops. His lot was bitter poverty and a life of unending toil. If he was an unskilled workman, his wages were only enough to keep him and his family. He toiled under overseers who carried sticks and used them freely. "Man has a back," says an Egyptian proverb, "and only obeys when it is beaten." If the laborer was a peasant, he could be sure that the nobles from whom he rented the land and the tax collectors of the king would leave him scarcely more than a bare living. SLAVES At the very bottom of the social ladder were the slaves. Every ancient people possessed them. At first they were prisoners of war, who, instead of being slaughtered, were made to labor for their masters. At a later period people unable to pay their debts often became slaves. The treatment of slaves depended on the character of the master. A cruel and overbearing owner might make life a burden for his bondmen. Escape was rarely possible. Slaves were branded like cattle to prevent their running away. Hammurabi's code [2] imposed the death penalty on anybody who aided or concealed the fugitives. There was plenty of work for the slaves to perform--repairing dikes, digging irrigation canals, and erecting vast palaces and temples. The servile class in Egypt was not as numerous as in Babylonia, and slavery itself seems to have assumed there a somewhat milder form. [Illustration: TRANSPORT OF AN ASSYRIAN COLOSSUS A slab from a gallery of Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh. The immense block is being pulled forward by slaves, who work under the lash.] 14. ECONOMIC CONDITIONS FARMING