The social classes of early Egypt (Fig. $\displaystyle 4.32$, top to bottom)
Pharaoh — the ruler, alone at the top.
Government officials, nobles and priests.
Free landholders, artisans and merchants.
Serfs and slaves — the base of the pyramid.
The kinds of occupations the chapter names
Ruling: the pharaoh, whose reign was itself celebrated with festivals — the Sed festival marked a king's 30th year on the throne.
Administering: an administrative class, which the chapter says grew because digging ditches and constructing dams required collective effort, and which was probably the earliest form of local government in Egypt.
Religion: priests, who served the gods and led the festival at which each god's statue was paraded, accompanied by music played on instruments such as the sistrum.
Farming: free landholders, who dug ditches to divert Nile water into their fields and stored water in reservoirs for later use.
Craft and trade: artisans, who made the daily items shown in Fig. $\displaystyle 4.33$, and merchants. Records were kept on papyrus, made by cutting the inner trunk of the papyrus plant into strips, criss-crossing, pressing, drying and polishing them into sheets, and stored as scrolls in labelled jars in libraries.
Labour: serfs and slaves.
A day for each class — every routine below is imagined, and built only from work and leisure the chapter mentions1. The pharaoh
Hears his officials on the state of the Nile, because the flood decides the year's harvest and everything else waits on it.
Orders and approves the ditches, dams and reservoirs that no single family could build alone.
Appears at a god's festival as the statue is carried in procession — and, in the thirtieth year of his reign, at his own Sed festival.
Gives time to the tomb being made ready for him, since he believes his ka, a spiritual double, lives on after death only if the body is preserved by mummification.
2. Government officials, nobles and priests
An official counts the days since the last Nile flood — the chapter says the Egyptian calendar was worked out from exactly this counting.
He inspects the ditches and reservoirs and arranges the collective labour that keeps them clear, the work out of which local government grew.
A priest tends his god's temple and prepares the statue, the music and the procession for the coming festival.
At a death, the priests carry out mummification — the internal organs removed except the heart, the body dried with natron, then oiled, wrapped in linen strips, placed in a coffin and buried with rituals.
The evening may go in music, dancing or a board game.
3. Free landholders, artisans and merchants
The farmer's day follows the calendar's three seasons — Inundation (autumn), Peret, growing (winter) and shemu, harvest (summer) — so he is mending ditches, sowing or reaping, depending on where in the year he stands.
He opens the ditch that brings Nile water into his field and checks the reservoir holding water for later use.
The artisan spends the day on the sort of things shown in Fig. $\displaystyle 4.33$ — ornaments, dress and household items — for the households above him; the merchant carries such goods to buyers.
A woman of this class may own property and run a business of her own, a right the chapter says Egyptian women generally had.
Free time goes on swimming or canoeing in the river, board games, or music and dancing; at festival time the family stands in the street as the god's statue is paraded past.
4. Serfs and slaves
The heavy, repeated work: digging out and clearing the irrigation ditches, and raising the dams before the flood arrives.
Labour in other people's fields at sowing and at harvest.
Very probably the hauling and carrying behind the great tombs, such as the step pyramid at Saqqara — the chapter does not say who did this work, so treat this line as reasoning, not as fact.
The least free time of the four tiers; a public festival in the street is the leisure open to them. (Also reasoning — the chapter describes the festivals but does not say who attended.)
What a good answer must contain
All four tiers named in the book's own order, top to bottom.
At least one occupation for each tier.
One routine for every tier — four in all, not a single routine.
Routines built only from what the chapter mentions — farming, ditch and dam work, crafts, trade, temple duties and mummification, swimming, canoeing, board games, music, dancing and festivals — with a clear line saying they are imagined.
