the weavers were rewarded was less costly and consisted of bronze and fayence. It is nevertheless clear that the award was by no means a payment but a kind of gift which it was an honour to receive. Now it is noteworthy that the recipients depicted in Seneb’s tomb are not all overseers and foremen, but also men and women who are merely mentioned by name, without title, and who therefore must be assumed to be simple weavers. Craftsmen also worked for officials and on the large estates which came into being towards the end of the Old Kingdom. Such estates, like the royal domains, and the temple estates of later times, were self-sufficient economic units. Each had its own wharves, for instance,[162] where Nile boats were built and repaired. These served not only as ferries, but for every trip of any length which the owner had to undertake and for the shipment of grain, cattle, and other dues to the magazines of the Exchequer. They were used, furthermore, for shipments of supplies to the funerary establishments of past members of the family who might be buried near Memphis in a royal cemetery. When the weakening of the central power, to which we have referred, and the concurrent rise of a landed gentry, made it more and more customary for high officials to be buried in rock-cut tombs near their estates in the provinces, the equipment of these tombs was supplied by masons, cabinet-makers, jewellers, and so on, employed on the estate. There were, moreover, hunters, who not only killed game, but caught it to be fattened for the table; several kinds of antelopes, cranes, and even hyenas were treated in this way. Fishermen and fowlers were also employed, for wild geese and duck, fattened in the barnyard, were consumed in large numbers. Fish was dried and kept, but it was probably largely used as rations for labourers. As regards the cultivators, whether they worked for a private estate, for a temple, or on a royal domain, they had to pay imposts of many kinds, and the hamlets and villages were collectively responsible in the person of their head man; this worthy had to produce the stipulated amounts on the day of reckoning or he risked a beating. The craftsmen, too, were organized in groups of five or ten men under a foreman who received their rations of food, clothing, and raw materials and was responsible for their work. Similar groups of men, working in shifts of one month, functioned as “hour priests” in the temples and funerary chapels. When they took over, their foremen received the inventory and were responsible for its proper maintenance.