[271] Diod. 1, 74, 92. [272] Lepsius, "Briefe." s. 309, 310; Brugsch, "Hist. d'Egypte," p. 259. [273] Herod. 2, 47; Aelian, "De Nat. An." 10, 16. As Herodotus tells us that the swineherds married in their own order only, it follows that the other orders married with each other. The attempt has often been made to explain the so-called divisions of the Egyptians into castes by the immigration of foreign tribes. This conception places in mechanical layers what is really an organic development. In India such an assumption has a certain historical foundation. There, there was a servile class (the Sudra) under three superior classes; the first was composed of the original inhabitants, the others of the Aryan immigrants. This kind of division is wholly wanting in Egypt, and not less so any historical or physiological foundation for the immigrations. Strabo knows three orders only in Egypt; the priests, the soldiers, and the population engaged in work or trades. Diodorus (1, 74) speaks of five orders; _i.e._ in addition to the first two, husbandmen, artizans, and shepherds. Plato ("Timæus," p. 21) mentions priests, soldiers, artizans, shepherds, and hunters; Herodotus mentions priests, warriors, cowherds, swineherds, merchants, interpreters, and mariners. In Plato and Diodorus we miss the merchants, who certainly were not wanting in Egypt, and in Herodotus the husbandmen and artizans. Nothing therefore remains but the natural assumption that the labouring masses were chiefly divided into shepherds, artizans, and husbandmen; and these were again broken into many divisions according to their different vocations, and each of our authorities has brought into prominence those distinctions which especially came under his notice. As Herodotus especially notices cowherds, we must suppose that those herdsmen are probably meant who derived a living from the buffalo herds, which they pastured in the swampy flats of the Delta, on the border of Egypt, and lived in huts of reeds.--Diod. 1, 43. [274] The number of provinces in Egypt under the old kingdom appears to have been twenty-seven, according to the myth of the hewing of the body of Osiris into twenty-seven pieces, and the distribution of them to all the priests of the land for burial, which Diodorus has preserved. From this may be derived the number of twenty-seven courts in the labyrinth given by Strabo, p. 811, and twenty-five in Pliny, pp. 113, 114; as a fact the building had only twelve courts. Yet Strabo mentions thirty-six provinces (p. 787). Later coins give forty-six provinces, and Ptolemy forty-seven. Forty-four nomes, twenty-two for Upper Egypt and as many for Lower Egypt, can be established, together with their names.--Brugsch, "Hist. d'Egypte," p. 9. [275] Diod. 1, 73, 75, 94; Herod. 2, 136; Plut. "De Isid." 10; Chabas, "Mél." 3, 10. [276] Diod. 1, 77 ff. [277] Herod. 2, 37, 38, 39, 65; Genesis xliii. 32. [278] Herod. 2, 77, 85; Diod. 1, 84, 91.