Had there been, however, less positive division of castes in Egypt, the infants of the higher class would not have been as well treated. The lives of the military and priestly castes were almost sacred[146]; it was on them that the king relied for support, and the rest of the population, whether nominally free or slave, were foreordained to a life of incessant toil. Maspero quotes from the Sellier Papyrus, a satiric poem, which goes to show the conditions in the earliest time among these workmen whose lives of hardship were only varied by the irregular visits of the tax-gatherers. These visits, though dreaded, were never prepared for and were always the occasions of several days of protestations, threats, beating, cries of pain from the tax-payers, lamentations from the women and children, the gathering up of the tax, the departure of the tax-collectors and then the calm with the resumption of labour until the next visit of the collectors. “I have never seen a blacksmith on an embassy,” so runs the complaint of the proletariat 3000 years before Christ,—“nor a smelter sent on a mission—but what I have seen is the metal worker at his toil,—at the mouth of the furnace of his forge,—his fingers as rugged as the crocodile, and stinking more than fish-spawn. The artisan of any kind who handles the chisel, does not employ so much movement as he who handles the hoe; but for him his fields are the timber, his business is the metal, and at night when the other is free,—he, he works with his hands over and above what he has already done, for at night, he works at home by the lamp. The stone-cutter who seeks his living by working in all kinds of durable stone, when at last he has earned something, and his two arms are worn out, he stops; but if at sunrise he remain sitting, his legs are tied to his back. The barber who shaves until the evening, when he falls to and eats, it is without sitting down—while running from street to street to seek custom; if he is constant (at work) his two arms fill his belly, as the bee eats in proportion to its toil. Shall I tell thee of the mason—how he endures misery? Exposed to all the winds—while he builds without any garment but a belt—and while the bunch of lotus-flowers (which is fixed) on the (completed) houses—is still far out of his reach—his two arms are worn out with work; his provisions are placed higgledy piggledy amongst his refuse, he consumes himself, for he has no other bread than his fingers, and he becomes wearied all at once. He is much and dreadfully exhausted—for there is (always) a block (to be dragged) in this or that building, a block of ten cubits by six,—there is (always) a block (to be dragged) in this or that month (as far as the) scaffolding poles (to which is fixed) the bunch of lotus-flowers on the (completed) houses. When the work is quite finished, if he has bread, he returns home, and his children have been beaten unmercifully (during his absence). The