    69

    NOTES

    1. For the reality of barbarian lifestyles  (they wore beards, dressed in furs, couldn't

    read, and drank like fiends), see: Edward Gibbon, The Decline & Fall of the Roman

    Empire, Volume I, pp. 190-193.  Gibbon reports that the barbarians were illiterate,

    had crude technology at best, wore simple furs, and that they were usually drunk;

    Justine Davis Randers-Pehrson, Barbarians and Romans, University of Oklahoma

    Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1983, p.  39; and Tim Newark, The Barbarians:

    Warriors & Wars of the Dark Ages, p. 7.  For the Roman impression (barbarians

    were dirty, dressed in the tattered skins of mice, drank blood, ate raw food, slept on

    their horses, and couldn't comprehend even the most infantile technology), see:

    Michel Rouche, "The Early Middle Ages in the West," in Paul Veyne, ed., Arthur

    Goldhammer, trans., A History of Private Life: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium,

    Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1987, pp. 419, 421; Justine

    Davis Randers-Pehrson, Barbarians and Romans,  p. 41; and Philip Dixon, The

    Making of the Past: Barbarian Europe, Phaidon Press, Ltd., Oxford, England, 1976,

    p. 13.

    2. For the latest archaeological evidence on Egyptian life shortly before Menes

    united Egypt, see Michael Hoffman, "Before The Pharaohs: How Egypt Became

    The World's First Nation-State," The Sciences, January/February, 1988, pp. 40-47.

    3. For a first-hand sense of the opulence of early Egyptian life, see the Egyptian

    collection of the British Museum.  See also The Age of the God Kings, Time-Life

    Books, Alexandria, Virginia, 1987, p. 67, and the diagram of a nobleman's home in

    B.W.B. Garthoff, "Egyptian Art and Architecture," Academic American

    Encyclopedia, Vol. 7, p. 86.  The living room of a wealthy Egyptian was an

    impressively high-ceilinged central hall.

    4. As early as the fourth millennium B.C., for example, pottery was already

    mass-produced in a large section of town set aside for this sort of organized

    enterprise.  The industrialists who spearheaded the process shipped the finished

    goods to distant markets on paddle and sail-driven riverboats, and used their profits

    to acquire political power.  In the days before the pharaohs, some of these early

    titans of industry probably became local kings.  It is even possible that the first

    pharaoh came from among their ranks. (Michael Hoffman, "Before The Pharaohs:

    How Egypt Became The World's First Nation-State," pp. 44-47.)

    5. The Hyksos came up with a host of military innovations--among them chain

    armor, the battle-axe, the composite bow and the chariot.  (The editors of Time-Life

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