Home › Manners and Customs of the Egyptians › Manners and Customs of the Egyptians: Chnumhotep

Manners and Customs of the Egyptians: Chnumhotep

Forced by causes unknown, by a famine, perhaps, they have, like the sons of Jacob, abandoned their country; they present themselves, thirty-seven persons in number-men, women and children-before Chnumhotep, the governor of the nome of Sah, to solicit help or an asylum at his hands. A temple scribe called Neferhotep is offering to the nomarch a sheet of papyrus covered with an inscription bearing at GAUCHARD Nomads from Asia coming into Egypt to solicit an asylum from the governor of a province. APPENDIX. the top the date of the year six of Usertesen II., and the number of the strangers. The chief or sheik of the little tribe, named Abu-sa, first respectfully approaches the person of Chnumhotep and offers him a young wild-goat as a present. Behind him are his companions armed with spears, clubs and bows; their women clad in richly colored tunics, and their children carried in wicker paniers slung over the backs of donkeys. The musician and minstrel of the clan closes the march playing on a sort of lyre.

Are not these the pioneers, or, if the term be preferable, the forlorn hope of the vanguard of those nomadic hordes which were, at a later period, to inundate the valley of the Nile ?

X.