Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-gq7q9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-18T20:16:19.171Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

CHAPTER V - THE MILITARY CLASS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2011

Get access

Summary

The advocates of the existence of Caste in Egypt are also predisposed to believe that the priestly and military castes, as such, were the chief or only landed proprietors, in addition to the king himself; and the accounts given by Herodotus and Diodorus of the military administration of “Sesostris” are received with less than the usual scepticism of modern critics, because they seem to harmonise with this view, which is really only suggested by them. There is, however, nothing in the monuments of the first twenty dynasties to suggest, and very little to confirm, such an opinion; and though it has the support of so eminent an authority as M. Revillout, it did not originate with him, nor indeed with any professed Egyptologist; and therefore the degree of credit which it has obtained among such scholars is less convincing than it would be, if the theory had been based on the monuments and confirmed by the Greeks. If the Greeks are really the chief authorities for the ownership of land by the castes, their evidence can only be conclusive for their own times, and even then it will require to be interpreted by the light of what we know about the spirit of Egyptian civilization and institutions; which M. Revillout himself has so well shown to possess a kind of liberal humanity equally remote from mediæval feudalism or Brahminic sacerdotalism.

Type
Chapter
Information
Primitive Civilizations
Or, Outlines of the History of Ownership in Archaic Communities
, pp. 129 - 143
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010
First published in: 1894

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×