[Every detail of this description of an Egyptian school is derived
from sources dating from the reign of Rameses II. and his
successor, Merneptah.]

First there was the high-school, in which priests, physicians, judges,
mathematicians, astronomers, grammarians, and other learned men, not only
had the benefit of instruction, but, subsequently, when they had won
admission to the highest ranks of learning, and attained the dignity of
"Scribes," were maintained at the cost of the king, and enabled to pursue
their philosophical speculations and researches, in freedom from all
care, and in the society of fellow-workers of equal birth and identical
interests.

An extensive library, in which thousands of papyrus-rolls were preserved,
and to which a manufactory of papyrus was attached, was at the disposal
of the learned; and some of them were intrusted with the education of the
younger disciples, who had been prepared in the elementary school, which
was also dependent on the House--or university--of Seti. The lower
school was open to every son of a free citizen, and was often frequented
by several hundred boys, who also found night-quarters there. The
parents were of course required either to pay for their maintenance, or
to send due supplies of provisions for the keep of their children at
school.

In a separate building lived the temple-boarders, a few sons of the
noblest families, who were brought up by the priests at a great expense
to their parents.

Seti I., the founder of this establishment, had had his own sons, not