The Egyptians, then, recognized this fundamental law--that man should live by the fruit of his labor, and we see with what rigor they enforced it.[25] In a well-regulated nation, where there is work for every one, no one, indeed, should be allowed to live at the expense of the community. The protection afforded human life in Egypt allows us to suppose that capital punishment was reserved for those who obstinately refused to gain their livelihood by labor or other honest means. We know from Herodotus that woman, as well as man, was subjected to the great law of labor. “The women go to market and traffic, the men remain at home and weave. Everywhere else the woof is brought up, the Egyptians carry it under. The men carry burdens on their heads, the women on their shoulders.”[26] The weaker sex was better protected from the violence of human passions than among other nations. “The laws concerning women were very severe. Those who violated a free woman were mutilated, for this crime was considered inclusive of three great evils, insult, corruption of morals, and confusion of children. For adultery without violence, the man was condemned to receive a thousand stripes, and the woman to have her nose cut off--the lawgiver wishing her to be deprived of the attractions she had availed herself of to allure.”[27] We see the powerful protection assured to the family by the Egyptian laws in making woman respected and obliging her to respect herself. Human life was equally protected. “He who saw on the way a man struggling with an assassin, or enduring violent treatment, and did not aid him when in his power, was condemned to death.” “He who had 74 wilfully murdered a free man or a slave was punished with death, for the laws wished to punish not according to the degree of rank, but the intention of the evil-doer. At the same time, their care in the management of the slaves kept them from ever offending a free man.[28]