FIG. 57. CLIFF-TOMB OF AN EGYPTIAN NOBLE OF THE FEUDAL AGE

This tomb is not a masonry structure like the tomb of the Pyramid Age (Fig. 42), but it is cut into the face of the cliff. The chapel entered through this door contains painted reliefs like those of the Pyramid Age (Figs. 43-47) and also many written records. In this chapel the noble tells of his kind treatment of his people; he says: “There was no citizen’s daughter whom I misused; there was no widow whom I oppressed; there was no peasant whom I evicted; there was no shepherd whom I expelled; . . . there was none wretched in my community, there was none hungry in my time. When years of famine came I plowed all the fields of the Oryx barony [his estate]  preserving its people alive and furnishing its food so that there was none hungry therein. I gave to the widow as to her who had a husband; I did not exalt the great above the humble in anything that  I gave” (§ 100). All this we can read inscribed in this tomb.