The civil government was administered by the three upper castes. The priests, distinguished by their superior knowledge, cleanliness, and godliness, had the ecclesi astical; the temples being administered by high priests and an inferior hierarchy, with overseers, and governors of revenues, domains, and donatives. Each temple, like a monastic institution, had its carefully subdivided organization, each denizen having a separate charge or jurisdiction. The political and civil government was :i.clministered by royal scribes, or secretaries of state, who attended to the revenue, justice, foreip affairs, and all the interests of the executive. Sacred scribes attended to the ecclesiastic interests, and inferior scribes to the local interests. The public works, the collectign of ang3Afilltejinea cluysiL'fic.cattle workinen wells, irriga tion, had each their separate superintendents and scribes. The military force of 410,000 men, at a later period, comprising all arms of the service, was ruled with severe discipline, and under the direction of nomarchs (ka), colonels (hrai), captains (mer), and lieutenants (atnu). The criminal and civil law was administered by judges .(sateen en.ash), who held traveling assizes, and to whose tribunals the necessary officers
were attached. The athlophoros or standard-bearer also transmitted the decrees of the royal chancery. The execution of deeds required so many witnesses that fraud evi dently often occurred. The superior position of women in the social scale, notwith standing the permission to marry within degrees of consanguinity usually forbidden, shows that the Egyptians reached a higher point of delicacy and refinement than either their western or eastern contemporaries. Colossal in its art, profound in its philosophy and religion, and in possession of the knowledge of the arts and sciences, E. exhibits the astonishing phenomenon of an unexpectedly high and ancient civilization. See Bunsen, (184547); Lepsius, Denkmdler (1849-74) and other works; Rosellini, Afonumenti dell' Egitto e della Nubia (1840); Sharpe, History of Egypt (1846); Brugsch, Histoire d'Egypte (1849; new ed. 1875); Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Egyptians (1847; new ed. by Birch, 1879); Lane, Modern Egyptians (1842); Chabas, Melanges Egyptologigues,(1862-70); M'Coan, E. as it is (1877); Jerrold, Egypt under Ismail Pasha (1879).