Abuses naturally existed. Royal decrees granting freedom from _corvée_, or levy, to the personnel of certain shrines explicitly protected these men against removal to other parts of the country, and show incidentally that common folk were exposed to this hazard. The small man was dependent on the protection of a man of influence whose client he might become if he was not already his serf. At this distance of time we cannot distinguish grades of servitude. It has been suggested that the best land of the large estates was worked with serfs while the less productive fields were let out to peasants who paid a fixed rent in produce; but the categories are not clearly distinguishable. Slaves, however, as distinct from serfs, did not play an important part in the economy of Egypt. It is doubtful whether they were kept in any numbers at all before the New Kingdom.[158] At that time the Syrian campaigns resulted in large numbers of captives who were used on royal and temple domains and in stone quarries. In earlier times captive Nubians may have been employed occasionally, but such isolated slaves served in families or at court as domestics, entertainers, dancers, or musicians and lived (one suspects) very much like the other servants. It has been pointed out[159] that the successful growing of grain requires a personal interest on the part of the cultivator, which slave labour lacks. The craftsmen, too, were usually serving some great lord. Large numbers were employed by the king. We know, in fact, that the country was drained of talent for the benefit of the royal residence. The graves at Qau el Kebir—a cemetery in Middle Egypt used throughout the third millennium—show the scantiest equipment, and that of the poorest quality of craftsmanship, during the flourishing period of the Old Kingdom when the pyramids were being built. When the central government had collapsed in the First Intermediate period, both the quality and the intrinsic value of the grave goods at Qau increased greatly. When craftsmen worked for the court, it is almost certain that they, too, were not free agents selling their wares or their services where they pleased. But we must, once more, guard against exaggerating their lot; they were not slaves. We happen, for instance, to know something of the extensive linen factories of Pharaoh. Under the Sixth Dynasty a royal weaving establishment in the north was under the management of one Seneb, a dwarf who, having worked himself up from the ranks, married a woman of the class of “Royal Kinsman” and could afford to build himself a fine tomb at Gizeh, from which we get our information.[160] One of the scenes in this tomb depicts the giving of rewards to Seneb’s subordinates;[161] they receive headbands and necklaces, and this is significant, for these ornaments resemble in form the “gold” with which Pharaoh honoured officials of special merit. Let us assume that the jewellery with which