The feasts were of two kinds,--one in the palace, at which the aristocracy were present; the other in the outer court, where whole oxen were roasted, loaves of bread were eaten by the hundred, and hundreds of pitchers of beer drunk. At these appeared servants of the prince and the lower officials of the province. Rameses admired the munificence of the nomarch, and the affection of the great lords around him, alert to every beck of his and ready to carry out his orders. Wearied at last by amusements, Rameses declared to the worthy Otoes that he wished to become more nearly acquainted with the management of the province, for he had received a command from his holiness the pharaoh to study it. His desire was satisfied. The nomarch requested the prince to sit in a litter borne by only two men, and with a great retinue escorted him to the temple of Hator. There the retinue remained in the antechamber, but the nomarch commanded the bearers to carry the prince to the summit of a pylon, which he himself ascended. From the summit of a tower, ninety feet high, whence priests observed the sky and communicated through colored flags with the neighboring temples in Memphis, Atribis, and Anu, the eye surveyed in the radius of some miles almost a whole province. From that place, too, the worthy Otoes showed Rameses the fields and vineyards of the pharaoh; he showed what canal they were clearing, what sluice they were repairing; he showed furnaces for smelting copper; he showed where the royal granaries stood, where the lotus and papyrus swamps were, what fields were covered with sand, and so on till he had finished. Rameses was charmed with the beautiful view, and thanked Otoes warmly for the pleasure which he experienced. But when he returned to the palace, and, according to the advice of the pharaoh, noted impressions, he convinced himself that his knowledge of the economic conditions of Aa had not widened. After some days he asked explanations again of Otoes touching the administration of the province. The worthy lord commanded all the officials to assemble and pass before the prince, who sat in the main court on an elevation. Before the viceroy moved great and petty treasurers; scribes of grain, wine, cattle, woollen stuffs; chief masons, ditch diggers, naval and land engineers, healers of various diseases, officers over regiments of laborers, police scribes, judges, inspectors of prisons, even executioners and dissectors. After them the worthy nomarch presented the prince's own officials in that province to him. Rameses learned therefore, with no small astonishment, that in Aa and in the city of Sochem he had his own personal charioteer, torch-bearer, shield-bearer, dart-bearer, mace-bearer, some tens of litter-bearers, a number of cooks, cup-bearers, barbers, and many other servitors distinguished for attachment and faithfulness, though he had not even heard their names and did not know them.