Another picture, not as widely reproduced as the first, depicts a naked singing girl with her instrument. Long-legged, large-breasted, and slender, this Egyptian miss would have fit neatly into any show in Las Vegas. The cleansing passage of thousands of years has reformed the singing girls; they are called exotic dancers, go-go girls, or strippers now, and have been stripped of their priestly protection. Morality is satisfied.

Slavery in ancient Egypt was legal but rare, perhaps mostly because of the many protections afforded slaves by the law. Aside from galley slaves, such slaves as Egypt had were nearly all servants in upper-class households. If a free man married a slave, their children were slaves; to forestall this, the bride was often freed before marriage.

Many writers on popular Egyptology dwell on Egypt's supposed isolation and peaceful character. These suppositions are erroneous to the point of absurdity. The delta lay open to the Mediterranean and seaborne invasion. The as-yet-unidentified "Sea Peoples" struck by sea and overland (from the east) in the time of Ramses the Third. The date would have been approximately 1176 B.C. To the west, the Libyan nomads were numerous and warlike. To the east, Egypt's immense border beckoned any army with sense enough to follow the coast, as the Persians did-twice.

To the south lay the valiant, half-savage nation we call Nubia. The Nubians conquered all Egypt at one point, giving it an entire dynasty of Black pharaohs that lasted from 780 to 656 B.C. The mysterious Hyksos (although often translated as "shepherd kings," this name probably meant "foreign rulers") had overcome Egypt a thousand years earlier, around 1800 B.C.; their rule endured for 150 years.

Not only was Egypt open to foreign invasions, it was subject to internecine fighting of every kind. When the monarchy was weak, local governors behaved as local governors have elsewhere.