“Come, may I describe to you the soldier’s condition, rich of torments. When he’s a little more than a boy, he’s taken and imprisoned in barrocks. He’s submitted to hard punishments, put down and beaten as a papyrus. Come, may I describe to you his journey in Syria and his march on the hills. His bread and his water are on his shoulders as a pack animal; he drinks putrid water and is still only when he’s on guard. When he gets to the battle he’s like a plucked bird and has no strnght in his body.When he returns to Egypt he’s like a stick eaten away by worms: he’s sick and must be carried on shoulder. It’s anyway difficult that these descriptions correspond to reality: the scribes in fact tried to demonstrate that the military carreer was socially inferior to their own and in the descriptions they make are not either tender or objective.

Well armed and organized, the soldiers let a quite hard life and full of risks, but, as mony documents proove (mostly from the new reign), they could count on rich rewards and partecipate to the division of the war booty; moreover, when they retired from the service they often received as a reward some land to cultivate.
Recruited by the scribes, they lived in the barraks where they were trained for the techniques of attack and defense, to make and maintain efficient arms, and to carefully follow the orders. In war the victorious result depended by the discipline and the training, because each battle ended with great fights in which the formation and the manoeuvre speed could win over the number of the rival troops.