42 Outlines of European History Section 8. The Feudal Age The Nile Probably there is no journey more interesting than the voy- thn?mb"'l)f age up the Nile with all its revelations of the story of the Nile the Feudal dwellers. As the river swings from cliff to cliff the steamer in Age which the traveler leaves Cairo is carried under many a tomb door cut in the face of the cliff and giving entrance to a tomb excavated in the rock (Fig. 25). Here are the tombs of the nobles of some 2000 B.C. Their ancestors were officials of the Pharaohs in the Pyramid Age. But the nobles who made these later tombs have succeeded in gaining greater power than their ancestors. They no longer live at the court of the king, nor build their tombs around the pyramid of the Pharaoh. They are barons holding large estates, which they bequeath to their sons, and the Pharaoh has only a very loose control over them, by ar- rangements which in later ages are called feudal (Chapter XVI). We therefore call this the Feudal Age, in Egyptian history. It lasted for several centuries and was flourishing by 2000 B.C. The kindly These feudal barons ruled the people on their great domains feudS ^ ^ with much kindness. The age made great progress in the realm barons; their ^f conduct and kindly treatment of one's neighbors and espe- 'cially of those over whom one had power (Fig. 25). In the story of man we find here the earliest chapter in human kindness. The evidence for it is not lacking in the cemetery, but in the Feudal Age our story is not drawn from the tomb records only, as in the Pyramid Age. Fortunately fragments from the libraries of these feudal barons — the oldest libraries in the world — have been discovered in their tombs. These oldest of all books are in the form of rolls of papyrus which once were packed in jars, neatly labeled and ranged in rows on the noble's library shelves. Here are the oldest storybooks in the world : tales of wander- ings and adventures in Asia ; tales of shipwreck at the gate of the unknown ocean beyond the Red Sea — the earliest Sind- bad the Sailor ; and tales of wonders wrought by ancient wise men and magicians.
