CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS; CONTRACTS, DEEDS, ETC.

Truth or justice was thought to be the main cardinal virtue among the Egyptians, inasmuch as it relates more particularly to others; prudence, temperance, and fort.i.tude being relative qualities, and tending chiefly to the immediate benefit of the individual who possesses them. It was, therefore, with great earnestness that they inculcated the necessity of fully appreciating it; and falsehood was not only considered disgraceful, but when it entailed an injury on any other person was punishable by law.

A calumniator of the dead was condemned to a severe punishment; and a false accuser was doomed to the same sentence which would have been awarded to the accused, if the offense had been proved against him; but to maintain a falsehood by an oath was deemed the blackest crime, and one which, from its complicated nature, could be punished by nothing short of death. For they considered that it involved two distinct crimes--a contempt for the G.o.ds, and a violation of faith towards man; the former the direct promoter of every sin, the latter destructive of all those ties which are most essential for the welfare of society.

The willful murder of a freeman, or even of a _slave_, was punished with death, from the conviction that men ought to be restrained from the commission of sin, not on account of any distinction of station in life, but from the light in which they viewed the crime itself; while at the same time it had the effect of showing that if the murder of a slave was deemed an offense deserving of so severe a punishment, they ought still more to shrink from the murder of one who was a compatriot and a free-born citizen.

In this law we observe a scrupulous regard to justice and humanity, and have an unquestionable proof of the great advancement made by the Egyptians in the most essential points of civilization. Indeed, the Egyptians considered it so heinous a crime to deprive a man of life, that to be the accidental witness of an attempt to murder, without endeavoring to prevent it, was a capital offense, which could only be palliated by bringing proofs of inability to act.

With the same spirit they decided that to be present when any one inflicted a personal injury on another, without interfering, was tantamount to being a party, and was punishable according to the extent of the a.s.sault; and every one who witnessed a robbery was bound either to arrest, or, if that was out of his power, to lay an information, and to prosecute the offenders; and any neglect on this score being proved against him, the delinquent was condemned to receive a stated number of stripes, and to be kept without food for three whole days.

Although, in the case of murder, the Egyptian law was inexorable and severe, the royal prerogative might be exerted in favor of a culprit, and the punishment was sometimes commuted by a mandate from the king.

Sabaco, indeed, during the fifty years of his reign, "made it a rule not to punish his subjects with death," whether guilty of murder or any other capital offence, but, "according to the magnitude of their crimes, he condemned the culprits to raise the ground about the town to which they belonged. By these means the situation of the different cities became greatly elevated above the reach of the inundation, even more than in the time of Sesostris;" and either on account of a greater proportion of criminals, or from some other cause, the mounds of Bubastis were raised considerably higher than those of any other city.

The same laws that forbade a master to punish a slave with death took from a father every right over the life of his offspring; and the Egyptians deemed the murder of a child an odious crime, that called for the direct interposition of justice. They did not, however, punish it as a capital offence, since it appeared inconsistent to take away life from one who had given it to the child, but preferred inflicting such a punishment as would induce grief and repentance. With this view they ordained that the corpse of the deceased should be fastened to the neck of its parent, and that he should be obliged to pa.s.s three whole days and nights in its embrace, under the surveillance of a public guard.

But parricide was visited with the most cruel of chastis.e.m.e.nts; and conceiving, as they did, that the murder of a parent was the most unnatural of crimes, they endeavored to prevent its occurrence by the marked severity with which it was avenged. The criminal was, therefore, sentenced to be lacerated with sharpened reeds, and, after being thrown on thorns, he was burned to death.

When a woman was guilty of a capital offence, and judgment had been pa.s.sed upon her, they were particularly careful to ascertain if the condemned was in a state of pregnancy; in which case her punishment was deferred till after the birth of the child, in order that the innocent might not suffer with the guilty, and thus the father be deprived of that child to which he had at least an equal right.

But some of their laws regarding the female s.e.x were cruel and unjustifiable; and even if, which is highly improbable, they succeeded by their severity in enforcing chast.i.ty, and in putting an effectual stop to crime, yet the punishment rather reminds us of the laws of a barbarous people than of a wise and civilized state. A woman who had committed adultery was sentenced to lose her nose, upon the principle that, being the most conspicuous feature, and the chief, or, at least, an indispensable, ornament of the face, its loss would be most severely felt, and be the greatest detriment to her personal charms; and the man was condemned to receive a bastinado of one thousand blows. But if it was proved that force had been used against a free woman, he was doomed to a cruel mutilation.

The object of the Egyptian laws was to preserve life, and to reclaim an offender. Death took away every chance of repentance, it deprived the country of his services, and he was hurried out of the world when least prepared to meet the ordeal of a future state. They, therefore, preferred severe punishments, and, except in the case of murder, and some crimes which appeared highly injurious to the community, it was deemed unnecessary to sacrifice the life of an offender.

In military as well as civil cases, minor offences were generally punished with the stick; a mode of chastis.e.m.e.nt still greatly in vogue among the modern inhabitants of the valley of the Nile, and held in such esteem by them, that convinced of (or perhaps by) its efficacy, they relate "its descent from heaven as a blessing to mankind."

If an Egyptian of the present day has a government debt or tax to pay, he stoutly persists in his inability to obtain the money, till he has withstood a certain number of blows, and considers himself compelled to produce it; and the ancient inhabitants, if not under the rule of their native princes, at least in the time of the Roman emperors, gloried equally in the obstinacy they evinced, and the difficulty the governors of the country experienced in extorting from them what they were bound to pay; whence Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus tells us, "an Egyptian blushes if he can not show numerous marks on his body that evince his endeavors to evade the duties."

The bastinado was inflicted on both s.e.xes, as with the Jews. Men and boys were laid prostrate on the ground, and frequently held by the hands and feet while the chastis.e.m.e.nt was administered; but women, as they sat, received the stripes on their back, which was also inflicted by the hand of a man. Nor was it unusual for the superintendents to stimulate laborers to their work by the persuasive powers of the stick, whether engaged in the field or in handicraft employments; and boys were sometimes beaten without the ceremony of prostration, the hands being tied behind their back while the punishment was applied.

The character of some of the Egyptian laws was quite consonant with the notions of a primitive age. The punishment was directed more particularly against the offending member; and adulterators of money, falsifiers of weights and measures, forgers of seals or signatures, and scribes who altered any signed doc.u.ment by erasures or additions, without the authority of the parties, were condemned to lose both their hands.

But their laws do not seem to have sanctioned the gibbet, or the exposure of the body of an offender; for the conduct of Rhampsinitus, in the case of the robbery of his treasure, is mentioned by Herodotus as a singular mode of discovering an accomplice, and not as an ordinary punishment; if, indeed, the whole story be not the invention of a Greek _cicerone_.

Thefts, breach of trust, and petty frauds were punished with the bastinado; but robbery and house-breaking were sometimes considered capital crimes, and deserving of death; as is evident from the conduct of the thief when caught by the trap in the treasury of Rhampsinitus, and from what Diodorus states respecting Actisanes.

This monarch, instead of putting robbers to death, inst.i.tuted a novel mode of punishing them, by cutting off their noses and banishing them to the confines of the desert, where a town was built, called Rhinocolura, from the peculiar nature of their punishment; and thus, by removing the bad, and preventing their corrupting the good, he benefited society, without depriving the criminals of life; at the same time that he punished them severely for their crimes, by obliging them to live by their labors, and derive a precarious sustenance from quails, or whatever they could catch, in that barren region. Commutation of punishment was the foundation of this part of the convict system of Egypt, and Rhinocolura was their Norfolk Island, where a sea of sand separated the worst felons from those guilty of smaller crimes; who were transported to the mines in the desert, and condemned to work for various terms, according to their offence.

The Egyptians had a singular custom respecting theft and burglary.

Those who followed the _profession_ of thief gave in their names to the chief of the robbers; and agreed that he should be informed of every thing they might thenceforward steal, the moment it was in their possession. In consequence of this the owner of the lost goods always applied by letter to the chief for their recovery; and having stated their quality and quant.i.ty, the day and hour when they were stolen, and other requisite particulars, the goods were identified, and, on payment of one quarter of their value, they were restored to the applicant in the same state as when taken from his house.

For being fully persuaded of the impracticability of putting an entire check to robbery, either by the dread of punishment, or by any method that could be adopted by the most vigilant police, they considered it more for the advantage of the community that a certain sacrifice should be made in order to secure the rest.i.tution of the remainder, than that the law, by taking on itself to protect the citizen, and discover the offender, should be the indirect cause of greater loss.

And that the Egyptians, like the Indians, and we may say the modern inhabitants of the Nile, were very expert in the art of stealing, we have abundant testimony from ancient authors.

It may be asked, what redress could be obtained, if goods were stolen by thieves who failed to enter their names on the books of the chief; but it is evident that there could be few of those private speculators, since by their interfering with the interests of all the _profession_, the detection of such egotistical persons would have been certain; and thus all others were effectually prevented from robbing, save those of the privileged cla.s.s.

The salary of the chief was not merely derived from his own demands upon the goods stolen, or from any voluntary contribution of the robbers themselves, but was probably a fixed remuneration granted by the government, as one of the chiefs of the police; nor is it to be supposed that he was any other than a respectable citizen, and a man of integrity and honor. The same may be said of the modern "_shekh_ of the thieves," at Cairo, where this very ancient office is still retained.

The great confidence reposed in the public weighers rendered it necessary to enact suitable laws in order to bind them to their duty; and considering how much public property was at their mercy, and how easily bribes might be taken from a dishonest tradesman, the Egyptians inflicted a severe punishment as well on the weighers as on the shopkeepers, who were found to have false weights and measures, or to have defrauded the customer in any other way; and these, as well as the scribes who kept false accounts, were punished (as before stated) with the loss of both their hands; on the principle, says Diodorus, that the offending member should suffer; while the culprit was severely punished, that others might be deterred from the commission of a similar offence.

As in other countries, their laws respecting debt and usury underwent some changes, according as society advanced, and as pecuniary transactions became more complicated.

Bocchoris (who reigned in Egypt about the year 800 B.C., and who, from his learning, obtained the surname of Wise), finding that in cases of debt many causes of dispute had arisen, and instances of great oppression were of frequent occurrence, enacted, that no agreement should be binding unless it were acknowledged by a written contract; and if any one took oath that the money had not been lent him, that no debt should be recognized, and the claims of the suing party should immediately cease. This was done, that great regard might always be had for the name and nature of an oath, at the same time that, by subst.i.tuting the unquestionable proof of a written doc.u.ment, the necessity of having frequent recourse to an oath was avoided, and its sanct.i.ty was not diminished by constant repet.i.tion.

Usury was in all cases condemned by the Egyptian legislature; and when money was borrowed, even with a written agreement, it was forbidden to allow the interest to increase to more than double the original sum.

Nor could the creditors seize the debtor's person: their claims and right were confined to the goods in his possession, and such as were really his own; which were comprehended under the produce of his labor, or what he had received from another individual to whom they lawfully belonged. For the person of every citizen was looked upon as the property of the state, and might be required for some public service, connected either with war or peace; and, independent of the injustice of subjecting any one to the momentary caprice of his creditor, the safety of the country might be endangered through the avarice of a few interested individuals.

This law, which was borrowed by Solon from the Egyptian code, existed also at Athens; and was, as Diodorus observes, much more consistent with justice and common sense than that which allowed the creditor to seize the person, while it forbade him to take the plows and other implements of industry. For if, continues the historian, it is unjust thus to deprive men of the means of obtaining subsistence, and of providing for their families, how much more unreasonable must it be to imprison those by whom the implements were used!

To prevent the acc.u.mulation of debt, and to protect the interests of the creditor, another remarkable law was enacted by Asychis, which, while it shows how greatly they endeavored to check the increasing evil, proves the high respect paid by the Egyptians to the memory of their parents, and to the sanct.i.ty of their religious ceremonies. By this it was p.r.o.nounced illegal for any one to borrow money without giving in pledge the body of his father, or the tomb of his ancestors; and, if he failed to redeem so sacred a deposit, he was considered infamous; and, at his death, the celebration of the accustomed funeral obsequies was denied him, and he could not enjoy the right of burial either in that tomb or in any other place of sepulture; nor could he inter his children, or any of his family, as long as the debt was unpaid, the creditor being put in actual possession of the family tomb.

In the large cities of Egypt, a fondness for display, and the usual allurements of luxury, were rapidly introduced; and considerable sums were expended in furnishing houses, and in many artificial caprices.

Rich jewels and costly works of art were in great request, as well among the inhabitants of the provincial capitals, as at Thebes and Memphis; they delighted in splendid equipages, elegant and commodious boats, numerous attendants, horses, dogs, and other requisites for the chase; and, besides, their houses, their villas and their gardens, were laid out with no ordinary expense. But while the funds arising from extensive farms, and the abundant produce of a fertile soil, enabled the rich to indulge extravagant habits, many of the less wealthy envied the enjoyment of those luxuries which fortune had denied to them; and, prompted by vanity, and a silly desire of imitation, so common in civilized communities, they pursued a career which speedily led to the acc.u.mulation of debt, and demanded the interference of the legislature; and it is probable that a law, so severe as this must have appeared to the Egyptians, was only adopted as a measure of absolute necessity, in order to put a check to the increasing evil.

The necessary expenses of the Egyptians were remarkably small, less, indeed, than of any people; and the food of the poorer cla.s.ses was of the cheapest and most simple kind. Owing to the warmth of the climate, they required few clothes, and young children were in the habit of going without shoes, and with little or no covering to their bodies.

It was, therefore, luxury, and the increasing wants of an artificial kind, which corrupted the manners of the Egyptians, and rendered such a law necessary for their restraint; and we may conclude that it was mainly directed against those who contracted debts for the gratification of pleasure, or with the premeditated intent of defrauding an unsuspecting creditor.

In the mode of executing deeds, conveyances, and other civil contracts, the Egyptians were peculiarly circ.u.mstantial and minute; and the great number of witnesses is a singular feature in those doc.u.ments. In the time of the Ptolemies, sales of property commenced with a preamble, containing the date of the king in whose reign they were executed; the name of the president of the court, and of the clerk by whom they were written, being also specified. The body of the contract then followed.

It stated the name of the individual who sold the land, the description of his person, an account of his parentage, profession, and place of abode, the extent and nature of the land, its situation and boundaries, and concluded with the name of the purchaser, whose parentage and description were also added, and the sum for which it was bought. The seller then vouched for his undisturbed possession of it; and, becoming security against any attempt to dispute his t.i.tle, the name of the other party was inserted as having accepted it, and acknowledged the purchase. The names of witnesses were then affixed; and, the president of the court having added his signature, the deed was valid. Sometimes the seller formally recognized the sale in the following manner:

"All these things have I sold thee: they are thine, I have received their price from thee, and will make no demand upon thee for them from this day; and if any person disturb thee in the possession of them, I will withstand the attempt; and, if I do not otherwise repel it, I will use compulsory means, or, I will indemnify thee."

But, in order to give a more accurate notion of the form of these contracts, we shall introduce a copy of the whole of one of them, as given by Dr. Young, and refer the reader to others occurring in the same work. "Translation of the enchorial papyrus of Paris, containing the original deed relating to the mummies:--'This writing dated in the year 36, Athyr 20, in the reign of our sovereigns Ptolemy and Cleopatra his sister, the children of Ptolemy and Cleopatra the divine, the G.o.ds Ill.u.s.trious: and the priest of Alexander, and of the Saviour G.o.ds, of the Brother G.o.ds, of the Beneficent G.o.ds, of the Father-loving G.o.ds, of the Ill.u.s.trious G.o.ds, of the Paternal G.o.d, and of the Mother-loving G.o.ds, being (as by law appointed): and the prize-bearer of Berenice the Beneficent, and the basket-bearer of Arsinoe the Brother-loving, and the priestess of Arsinoe the Father-loving, being as appointed in the metropolis (of Alexandria); and in (Ptolemais) the royal city of the Thebaid? the guardian priest for the year? of Ptolemy Soter, and the priest of king Ptolemy the Father-loving, and the priest of Ptolemy the Brother-loving, and the priest of Ptolemy the Beneficent, and the priest of Ptolemy the Mother-loving; and the priestess of queen Cleopatra, and the priestess of the princess Cleopatra, and the priestess of Cleopatra, the (queen) mother, deceased, the Ill.u.s.trious; and the basket-bearer of Arsinoe the Brother-loving (being as appointed): declares: The Dresser? in the temple of the G.o.ddess Onnophris, the son of Horus, and of Senpoeris, daughter of Spotus? ("aged about forty, lively,") tall ("of a sallow complexion, hollow-eyed, and bald"); in the temple of the G.o.ddess to (Horus) his brother? the son of Horus and of Senpoeris, has sold, for a price in money, half of one-third of the collections for the dead "priests of Osiris?" lying in Thynabunum ... in the Libyan suburbs of Thebes, in the Memnonia ... likewise half of one-third of the liturgies: their names being, Muthes, the son of Spotus, with his children and his household; Chapocrates, the son of Nechthmonthes, with his children and his household; Arsiesis, the son of Nechthmonthes, with his children and his household; Petemestus, the son of Nechthmonthes; Arsiesis, the son of Zminis, with his children and his household; Osoroeris, the son of Horus, with his children and his household; Spotus, the son of Chapochonsis, surnamed? Zoglyphus (the sculptor), with his children and his household; while there belonged also to Asos, the son of Horus and of Senpoeris, daughter of Spotus? in the same manner one-half of a third of the collections for the dead, and of the fruits and so forth ... he sold it on the 20th of Athyr, in the reign of the King ever-living, to (complete) the third part: likewise the half of one-third of the collections relating to Peteutemis, with his household, and ... likewise the half of one-third? of the collections and fruits for Petechonsis, the bearer of milk, and of the ... place on the Asian side, called Phrecages, and ... the dead bodies in it: there having belonged to Asos, the son of Horus, one-half of the same: he has sold to him in the month of ...

the half of one-third of the collections for the priests of Osiris?

lying in Thynabunum, with their children and their households: likewise the half of one-third of the collections for Peteutemis, and also for Petechonsis, the bearer of milk, in the place Phrecages on the Asian side: I have received for them their price in silver ... and gold; and I make no further demand on thee for them from the present day ... before the authorities ... (and if any one shall disturb thee in the possession of them, I will resist him, and, if I do not succeed, I will indemnify thee?).... Executed and confirmed. Written by Horus, the son of Phabis, clerk to the chief priests of Amonrasonther, and of the contemplar? G.o.ds, of the Beneficent G.o.ds, of the Father-loving G.o.ds, of the Paternal G.o.d, and of the Mother-loving G.o.ds. Amen.

"'Names of the witnesses present: ERIEUS, the son of Phanres Erieus.

PETEARTRES, the son of Peteutemis.

PETEARPOCRATES, the son of Horus.

SNACHOMNEUS, the son of Peteuris.

SNACHOMES, the son of Psenchonsis.

TOTOES, the son of Phibis.

PORTIS, the son of Appollonius.

ZMINIS, the son of Petemestus.

PETEUTEMIS, the son of Arsiesis.

AMONORYTIUS, the son of Pacemis.

HORUS, the son of Chimnaraus.

ARMENIS (rather Arbais), the son of Zthenaetis.

MAESIS, the son of Mirsis.

ANTIMACHUS, the son of Antigenes.

PETOPHOIS, the son of Phibis.

PANAS, the son of Petosiris.'"

In this, as in many other doc.u.ments, the testimony required is very remarkable, sixteen witnesses being thought necessary for the sale of a moiety of the sums collected on account of a few tombs, and for services performed to the dead, the total value of which was only 400 pieces of bra.s.s; and the name of each person is introduced, in the true Oriental style, with that of his father. Nor is it unreasonable to suppose that the same precautions and minute formulas were observed in similar transactions during the reigns of the Pharaonic kings, however great may have been the change introduced by the Ptolemies and Romans into the laws and local government of Egypt.