The ordeal was a terrible one for the Khati; but when the first moment of defeat was over, they again took courage and resumed the campaign. This single effort had not exhausted their resources, and they rapidly filled up the gaps which had been made in their ranks. The plains of Naharaim and the mountains of Cilicia supplied them with fresh chariots and foot-soldiers in the place of those they had lost, and bands of mercenaries were furnished from the table-lands of Asia Minor, so that when Ramses II. reappeared in Syria, he found himself confronted by a completely fresh army. Khatusaru, having profited by experience, did not again attempt a general engagement, but contented himself with disputing step by step the upper valleys of the Litany and Orontes. Meantime his emissaries spread themselves over Phoenicia and Kharu, sowing the seeds of rebellion, often only too successfully. In the king's VIIIth year there was a general rising in Galilee, and its towns—Galaput in the hill-country of Bit-Aniti, Merorn, Shalama, Dapur, and Anamaim*—had to be reduced one after another.

* Episodes from this war are represented at Karnak. The list of the towns taken, now much mutilated, comprised twenty- four names, which proves the importance of the revolt.

Dapur was the hardest to carry. It crowned the top of a rocky eminence, and was protected by a double wall, which followed the irregularities of the hillside. It formed a rallying-point for a large force, which had to be overcome in the open country before the investment of the town could be attempted. The siege was at last brought to a conclusion, after a series of skirmishes, and the town taken by scaling, four Egyptian princes having been employed in conducting the attack. In the Pharaoh's IXth year a revolt broke out on the Egyptian frontier, in the Shephelah, and the king placed himself at the head of his troops to crush it. Ascalon, in which the peasantry and their families had found, as they hoped, a safe refuge, opened its gates to the Pharaoh, and its fall brought about the submission of several neighbouring places. This, it appears, was the first time since the beginning of the conquests in Syria that the inhabitants of these regions attempted to take up arms, and we may well ask what could have induced them thus to renounce their ancient loyalty. Their defection reduced Egypt for the moment almost to her natural frontiers. Peace had scarcely been resumed when war again broke out with fresh violence in Coele-Syria, and one year it reached even to Naharaim, and raged around Tunipa as in the days of Thutmosis III. "Pharaoh assembled his foot-soldiers and chariots, and he commanded his foot-soldiers and his chariots to attack the perverse Khati who were in the neighbourhood of Tunipa, and he put on his armour and mounted his chariot, and he waged battle against the town of the perverse Khati at the head of his foot-soldiers and his chariots, covered with his armour;" the fortress, however, did not yield till the second attack. Ramses carried his arms still further afield, and with such results, that, to judge merely from the triumphal lists engraved on the walls of the temple of Karnak, the inhabitants on the banks of the Euphrates, those in Carchemish, Mitanni, Singar, Assyria, and Mannus found themselves once more at the mercy of the Egyptian battalions. These victories, however brilliant, were not decisive; if after any one of them the princes of Assyria and Singar may have sent presents to the Pharaoh, the Hittites, on the other hand, did not consider themselves beaten, and it was only after fifteen campaigns that they were at length sufficiently subdued to propose a treaty. At last, in the Egyptian king's XXIst year, on the 21st of the month Tybi, when the Pharaoh, then residing in his good town of Anakhitu, was returning from the temple where he had been offering prayers to his father Amon-Ea, to Harmakhis of Heliopolis, to Phtah, and to Sutkhu the valiant son of Nuit, Eamses, one of the "messengers" who filled the office of lieutenant for the king in Asia, arrived at the palace and presented to him Tartisubu, who was authorised to make peace with Egypt in the name of Khatusaru.* Tartisubu carried in his hand a tablet of silver, on which his master had prescribed the conditions which appeared to him just and equitable. A short preamble recalling the alliances made between the ancestors of both parties, was followed by a declaration of friendship, and a reciprocal obligation to avoid in future all grounds of hostility.

* The treaty of Ramses II. with the Prince of the Khati was sculptured at Karnak.

Not only was a perpetual truce declared between both peoples, but they agreed to help each other at the first demand. "Should some enemy march against the countries subject to the great King of Egypt, and should he send to the great Prince of the Khati, saying: 'Come, bring me forces against them,' the great Prince of the Khati shall do as he is asked by the great King of Egypt, and the great Prince of the Khati shall destroy his enemies. And if the great Prince of the Khati shall prefer not to come himself, he shall send his archers and his chariots to the great King of Egypt to destroy his enemies." A similar clause ensured aid in return from Ramses to Khatusaru, "his brother," while two articles couched in identical terms made provision against the possibility of any town or tribe dependent on either of the two sovereigns withdrawing its allegiance and placing it in the hands of the other party. In this case the Egyptians as well as the Hittites engaged not to receive, or at least not to accept, such offers, but to refer them at once to the legitimate lord. The whole treaty was placed under the guarantee of the gods both, of Egypt and of the Khati, whose names were given at length: "Whoever shall fail to observe the stipulations, let the thousand gods of Khati and the thousand gods of Egypt strike his house, his land, and his servants. But he who shall observe the stipulations engraved on the tablet of silver, whether he belong to the Hittite people or whether he belong to the people of Egypt, as he has not neglected them, may the thousand gods of Khati and the thousand gods of Egypt give him health, and grant that he may prosper, himself, the people of his house, and also his land and his servants." The treaty itself ends by a description of the plaque of silver on which it was engraved. It was, in fact, a facsimile in metal of one of those clay tablets on which the Chaldaeans inscribed their contracts. The preliminary articles occupied the upper part in closely written lines of cuneiform characters, while in the middle, in a space left free for the purpose, was the impress of two seals, that of the Prince of the Khati and of his wife Puukhipa. Khatusaru was represented on them as standing upright in the arms of Sutkhu, while around the two figures ran the inscription, "Seal of Sutkhu, the sovereign of heaven." Puukhipa leaned on the breast of a god, the patron of her native town of Aranna in Qaauadana, and the legend stated that this was the seal of the Sun of the town of Aranna, the regent of the earth. The text of the treaty was continued beneath, and probably extended to the other side of the tablet. The original draft had terminated after the description of the seals, but, to satisfy the Pharaoh, certain additional articles were appended for the protection of the commerce and industry of the two countries, for the prevention of the emigration of artisans, and for ensuring that steps taken against them should be more effectual and less cruel. Any criminal attempting to evade the laws of his country, and taking refuge in that of the other party to the agreement, was to be expelled without delay and consigned to the officers of his lord; any fugitive not a criminal, any subject carried off or detained by force, any able artisan quitting either territory to take up permanent residence in the other, was to be conducted to the frontier, but his act of folly was not to expose him to judicial condemnation. "He who shall thus act, his fault shall not be brought up against him; his house shall not be touched, nor his wife, nor his children; he shall not have his throat cut, nor shall his eyes be touched, nor his mouth, nor his feet; no criminal accusation shall be made against him."

This treaty is the most ancient of all those of which the text has come down to us; its principal conditions were—perfect equality and reciprocity between the contracting sovereigns, an offensive and defensive alliance, and the extradition of criminals and refugees. The original was drawn up in Chaldaean script by the scribes of Khatusaru, probably on the model of former conventions between the Pharaohs and the Asiatic courts, and to this the Egyptian ministers had added a few clauses relative to the pardon of emigrants delivered up by one or other of the contracting parties. When, therefore, Tartisubu arrived in the city of Eamses, the acceptance of the treaty was merely a matter of form, and peace was virtually concluded. It did not confer on the conqueror the advantages which we might have expected from his successful campaigns: it enjoined, on the contrary, the definite renunciation of those countries, Mitanni, Naharaim, Alasia, and Amurru, over which Thutmosis III. and his immediate successors had formerly exercised an effective sovereignty. Sixteen years of victories had left matters in the same state as they were after the expedition of Harmhabi, and, like his predecessor, Ramses was able to retain merely those Asiatic provinces which were within the immediate influence of Egypt, such as the Phoenician coast proper, Kharu, Persea beyond Jordan, the oases of the Arabian desert, and the peninsula of Sinai.*

* The Anastasi Papyrus I. mentions a place called Zaru of Sesostris, in the neighbourhood of Aleppo, in a part of Syria which was not in Egyptian territory: the frontier in this locality must have passed between Arvad and Byblos on the coast, and between Qodshu and Hazor from Merom inland. Egyptian rule on the other side of the Jordan seems to be proved by the monument discovered a few years ago in the Hauran, and known under the name of the "Stone of Job" by the Bedawin of the neighbourhood.

This apparently unsatisfactory result, after such supreme efforts, was, however, upon closer examination, not so disappointing. For more than half a century at least, since the Hittite kingdom had been developed and established under the impulse given to it by Sapalulu, everything had been in its favour. The campaign of Seti had opposed merely a passing obstacle to its expansion, and had not succeeded in discouraging its ambitions, for its rulers still nursed the hope of being able one day to conquer Syria as far as the isthmus. The check received at Qodshu, the abortive attempts to foment rebellion in Galilee and the Shephelah, the obstinate persistence with which Ramses and his army returned year after year to the attack, the presence of the enemy at Tunipa, on the banks of the Euphrates, and in the provinces then forming the very centre of the Hittite kingdom—in short, all the incidents of this long struggle—at length convinced Khatusaru that he was powerless to extend his rule in this direction at the expense of Egypt. Moreover, we have no knowledge of the events which occupied him on the other frontiers of his kingdom, where he may have been engaged at the same time in a conflict with Assyria, or in repelling an incursion of the tribes on the Black Sea. The treaty with Pharaoh, if made in good faith and likely to be lasting, would protect the southern extremities of his kingdom, and allow of his removing the main body of his forces to the north and east in case of attack from either of these quarters. The security which such an alliance would ensure made it, therefore, worth his while to sue for peace, even if the Egyptians should construe his overtures as an acknowledgment of exhausted supplies or of inferiority of strength. Ramses doubtless took it as such, and openly displayed on the walls at Karnak and in the Eamesseum a copy of the treaty so flattering to his pride, but the indomitable resistance which he had encountered had doubtless given rise to reflections resembling those of Khatusaru, and he had come to realise that it was his own interest not to lightly forego the good will of the Khati. Egypt had neighbours in Africa who were troublesome though not dangerous: the Timihu, the Tihonu, the Mashuasha, the negroes of Kush and of Puanit, might be a continual source of annoyance and disturbance, even though they were incapable of disturbing her supremacy. The coast of the Delta, it is true, was exposed to the piracy of northern nations, but up to that time this had been merely a local trouble, easy to meet if not to obviate altogether. The only real danger was on the Asiatic side, arising from empires of ancient constitution like Chaldaea, or from hordes who, arriving at irregular intervals from the north, and carrying all before them, threatened, after the example of the Hyksos, to enter the Delta. The Hittite kingdom acted as a kind of buffer between the Nile valley and these nations, both civilized and barbarous; it was a strongly armed force on the route of the invaders, and would henceforth serve as a protecting barrier, through which if the enemy were able to pass it would only be with his strength broken or weakened by a previous encounter. The sovereigns loyally observed the peace which they had sworn to each other, and in his XXXIVth year the marriage of Ramses with the eldest daughter of Khatusaru strengthened their friendly relations.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the plate in Lepsius; the triad worshipped by Khatusaru and his daughter is composed of Ramses II., seated between Amon-Ra and Phtah-Totunen.

Pharaoh was not a little proud of this union, and he has left us a naive record of the manner in which it came about. The inscription is engraved on the face of the rock at Abu Simbel in Nubia; and Ramses begins by boasting, in a heroic strain, of his own energy and exploits, of the fear with which his victories inspired the whole world, and of the anxiety of the Syrian kinglets to fulfil his least wishes. The Prince of the Khati had sent him sumptuous presents at every opportunity, and, not knowing how further to make himself agreeable to the Pharaoh, had finally addressed the great lords of his court, and reminded them how their country had formerly been ruined by war, how their master Sutkhu had taken part against them, and how they had been delivered from their ills by the clemency of the Sun of Egypt. "Let us therefore take our goods, and placing my eldest daughter at the head of them, let us repair to the domains of the great god, so that the King Sesostris may recognise us." He accordingly did as he had proposed, and the embassy set out with gold and silver, valuable horses, and an escort of soldiers, together with cattle and provisions to supply them with food by the way. When they reached the borders of Kharu, the governor wrote immediately to the Pharaoh as follows: "Here is the Prince of the Khati, who brings his eldest daughter with a number of presents of every kind; and now this princess and the chief of the country of the Khati, after having crossed many mountains and undertaken a difficult journey from distant parts, have arrived at the frontiers of His Majesty. May we be instructed how we ought to act with regard to them." The king was then in residence at Ramses. When the news reached him, he officially expressed his great joy at the event, since it was a thing unheard of in the annals of the country that so powerful a prince should go to such personal inconvenience in order to marry his daughter to an ally. The Pharaoh, therefore, despatched his nobles and an army to receive them, but he was careful to conceal the anxiety which he felt all the while, and, according to custom, took counsel of his patron god Sutkhu: "Who are these people who come with a message at this time to the country of Zahi?" The oracle, however, reassured him as to their intentions, and he thereupon hastened to prepare for their proper reception. The embassy made a triumphal entry into the city, the princess at its head, escorted by the Egyptian troops told off for the purpose, together with the foot-soldiers and charioteers of the Khati, comprising the flower of their army and militia. A solemn festival was held in their honour, in which food and drink were served without stint, and was concluded by the celebration of the marriage in the presence of the Egyptian lords and of the princes of the whole earth.*

* The fact of the marriage is known to us by the decree of Phtah Totunen at Abu Simbel in the XXXVth year of the king's reign. The account of it in the text is taken from the stele at Abu Simbel. The last lines are so mutilated that I have been obliged to paraphrase them. The stele of the Princess of Bakhtan has preserved the romantic version of this marriage, such as was current about the Saite period. The King of the Khati must have taken advantage of the expedition which the Pharaoh made into Asia to send him presents by an embassy, at the head of which he placed his eldest daughter: the princess found favour with Ramses, who married her.

Ramses, unwilling to relegate a princess of such noble birth to the companionship of his ordinary concubines, granted her the title of queen, as if she were of solar blood, and with the cartouche gave her the new name of Uirimaunofiruri—"She who sees the beauties of the Sun." She figures henceforth in the ceremonies and on the monuments in the place usually occupied by women of Egyptian race only, and these unusual honours may have compensated, in the eyes of the young princess, for the disproportion in age between herself and a veteran more than sixty years old. The friendly relations between the two courts became so intimate that the Pharaoh invited his father-in-law to visit him in his own country. "The great Prince of Khati informed the Prince of Qodi: 'Prepare thyself that we may go down into Egypt. The word of the king has gone forth, let us obey Sesostris. He gives the breath of life to those who love him; hence all the earth loves him, and Khati forms but one with him.'" They were received with pomp at Ramses-Anakhitu, and perhaps at Thebes. It was with a mixture of joy and astonishment that Egypt beheld her bitterest foe become her most faithful ally, "and the men of Qimit having but one heart with the chiefs of the Khati, a thing which had not happened since the ages of Pa."

The half-century following the conclusion of this alliance was a period of world-wide prosperity. Syria was once more able to breathe freely, her commerce being under the combined protection of the two powers who shared her territory. Not only caravans, but isolated travellers, were able to pass through the country from north to south without incurring any risks beyond those occasioned by an untrustworthy guide or a few highwaymen. It became in time a common task in the schools of Thebes to describe the typical Syrian tour of some soldier or functionary, and we still possess one of these imaginative stories in which the scribe takes his hero from Qodshu across the Lebanon to Byblos, Berytus, Tyre, and Sidon, "the fish" of which latter place "are more numerous than the grains of sand;" he then makes him cross Galilee and the forest of oaks to Jaffa, climb the mountains of the Dead Sea, and following the maritime route by Raphia, reach Pelusium. The Egyptian galleys thronged the Phoenician ports, while those of Phoenicia visited Egypt. The latter drew so little water that they had no difficulty in coming up the Nile, and the paintings in one of the tombs represent them at the moment of their reaching Thebes. The hull of these vessels was similar to that of the Nile boats, but the bow and stern were terminated by structures which rose at right angles, and respectively gave support to a sort of small platform. Upon this the pilot maintained his position by one of those wondrous feats of equilibrium of which the Orientals were masters.



Drawn by Boudier, from the photograph published by Daressy.

An open rail ran round the sides of the vessel, so as to prevent goods stowed upon the deck from falling into the sea when the vessel lurched. Voyages to Puanit were undertaken more frequently in quest of incense and precious metals. The working of the mines of Akiti had been the source of considerable outlay at the beginning of the reign. The measures taken by Seti to render the approaches to them practicable at all seasons had not produced the desired results; as far back as the IIIrd year of Ramses the overseers of the south had been forced to acknowledge that the managers of the convoys could no longer use any of the cisterns which had been hewn and built at such great expense. "Half of them die of thirst, together with their asses, for they have no means of carrying a sufficient number of skins of water to last during the journey there and back." The friends and officers whose advice had been called in, did not doubt for a moment that the king would be willing to complete the work which his father had merely initiated. "If thou sayest to the water, 'Come upon the mountain,' the heavenly waters will spring out at the word of thy mouth, for thou art Ra incarnate, Khopri visibly created, thou art the living image of thy father Tumu, the Heliopolitan."—"If thou thyself sayest to thy father the Nile, father of the gods," added the Viceroy of Ethiopia, "'Raise the water up to the mountain,' he will do all that thou hast said, for so it has been with all thy projects which have been accomplished in our presence, of which the like has never been heard, even in the songs of the poets." The cisterns and wells were thereupon put into such a condition that the transport of gold was rendered easy for years to come. The war with the Khati had not suspended building and other works of public utility; and now, owing to the establishment of peace, the sovereign was able to devote himself entirely to them. He deepened the canal at Zalu; he repaired the walls and the fortified places which protected the frontier on the side of the Sinaitic Peninsula, and he built or enlarged the strongholds along the Nile at those points most frequently threatened by the incursions of nomad tribes. Ramses was the royal builder par excellence, and we may say without fear of contradiction that, from the second cataract to the mouths of the Nile, there is scarcely an edifice on whose ruins we do not find his name. In Nubia, where the desert approaches close to the Nile, he confined himself to cutting in the solid rock the monuments which, for want of space, he could not build in the open. The idea of the cave-temple must have occurred very early to the Egyptians; they were accustomed to house their dead in the mountain-side, why then should they not house their gods in the same manner? The oldest forms of speos, those near to Beni-Hasan, at Deir el-Bahari, at Bl-Kab, and at Gebel Silsileh, however, do not date further back than the time of the XVIIIth dynasty. All the forms of architectural plan observed in isolated temples were utilised by Ramses and applied to rock-cut buildings with more or less modification, according to the nature of the stratum in which he had to work. Where space permitted, a part only of the temple was cut in the rock, and the approaches to it were built in the open air with blocks brought to the spot, so that the completed speos became only in part a grotto—a hemi-speos of varied construction. It was in this manner that the architects of Ramses arranged the court and pylon at Beit-Wally, the hypostyle hall, rectangular court and pylon at Gerf-Hossein, and the avenue of sphinxes at Wady es-Sebuah, where the entrance to the avenue was guarded by two statues overlooking the river. The pylon at Gerf-Hossein has been demolished, and merely a few traces of the foundations appear here and there above the soil, but a portion of the portico which surrounded the court is still standing, together with its massive architraves and statues, which stand with their backs against the pillars.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.

The sanctuary itself comprised an antechamber, supported by two columns and flanked by two oblong recesses; this led into the Holy of Holies, which was a narrow niche with a low ceiling, placed between two lateral chapels. A hall, nearly square in shape, connected these mysterious chambers with the propylaea, which were open to the sky and faced with Osiride caryatides.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger and Daniel Heron.

These appear to keep rigid and solemn watch over the approaches to the tabernacle, and their faces, half hidden in the shadow, still present such a stern appearance that the semi-barbaric Nubians of the neighbouring villages believe them to be possessed by implacable genii. They are supposed to move from their places during the hours of night, and the fire which flashes from their eyes destroys or fascinates whoever is rash enough to watch them.

Other kings before Ramses had constructed buildings in these spots, and their memory would naturally become associated with his in the future; he wished, therefore, to find a site where he would be without a rival, and to this end he transformed the cliff at Abu Simbel into a monument of his greatness. The rocks here project into the Nile and form a gigantic conical promontory, the face of which was covered with triumphal stelae, on which the sailors or troops going up or down the river could spell out as they passed the praises of the king and his exploits. A few feet of shore on the northern side, covered with dry and knotty bushes, affords in winter a landing-place for tourists. At the spot where the beach ends near the point of the promontory, sit four colossi, with their feet nearly touching the water, their backs leaning against a sloping wall of rock, which takes the likeness of a pylon. A band of hieroglyphs runs above their heads underneath the usual cornice, over which again is a row of crouching cynocephali looking straight before them, their hands resting upon their knees, and above this line of sacred images rises the steep and naked rock. One of the colossi is broken, and the bust of the statue, which must have been detached by some great shock, has fallen to the ground; the others rise to the height of 63 feet, and appear to look across the Nile as if watching the wadys leading to the gold-mines.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger and Daniel Heron.

The pschent crown surmounts their foreheads, and the two ends of the head-dress fall behind their ears; their features are of a noble type, calm and serious; the nose slightly aquiline, the under lip projecting above a square, but rather heavy, chin. Of such a type we may picture Ramses, after the conclusion of the peace with the Khati, in the full vigour of his manhood and at the height of his power.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger and Daniel Heron.

The doorway of the temple is in the centre of the facade, and rises nearly to a level with the elbows of the colossi; above the lintel, and facing the river, stands a figure of the god Ra, represented with a human body and the head of a sparrow-hawk, while two images of the king in profile, one on each side of the god, offer him a figure of Truth. The first hall, 130 feet long by 58 feet broad, takes the place of the court surrounded by a colonnade which in other temples usually follows the pylon. Her eight Osiride figures, standing against as many square pillars, appear to support the weight of the superincumbent rock. Their profile catches the light as it enters through the open doorway, and in the early morning, when the rising sun casts a ruddy ray over their features, their faces become marvellously life-like. We are almost tempted to think that a smile plays over their lips as the first beams touch them. The remaining chambers consist of a hypostyle hall nearly square in shape, the sanctuary itself being between two smaller apartments, and of eight subterranean chambers excavated at a lower level than the rest of the temple. The whole measures 178 feet from the threshold to the far end of the Holy of Holies. The walls are covered with bas-reliefs in which the Pharaoh has vividly depicted the wars which he carried on in the four corners of his kingdom; here we see raids against the negroes, there the war with the Khati, and further on an encounter with some Libyan tribe. Ramses, flushed by the heat of victory, is seen attacking two Timihu chiefs: one has already fallen to the ground and is being trodden underfoot; the other, after vainly letting fly his arrows, is about to perish from a blow of the conqueror.



His knees give way beneath him, his head falls heavily backwards, and the features are contracted in his death-agony. Pharaoh with his left hand has seized him by the arm, while with his right he points his lance against his enemy's breast, and is about to pierce him through the heart. As a rule, this type of bas-relief is executed with a conventional grace which leaves the spectator unmoved, and free to consider the scene merely from its historical point of view, forgetful of the artist.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Mons. do Bock.

An examination of most of the other wall-decorations of the speos will furnish several examples of this type: we see Ramses with a suitable gesture brandishing his weapon above a group of prisoners, and the composition furnishes us with a fair example of official sculpture, correct, conventional, but devoid of interest. Here, on the contrary, the drawing is so full of energy that it carries the imagination hack to the time and scene of those far-off battles.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger.

The indistinct light in which it is seen helps the illusion, and we almost forget that it is a picture we are beholding, and not the action itself as it took place some three thousand years ago. A small speos, situated at some hundred feet further north, is decorated with standing colossi of smaller size, four of which represent Ramses, and two of them his wife, Isit Nofritari. This speos possesses neither peristyle nor crypt, and the chapels are placed at the two extremities of the transverse passage, instead of being in a parallel line with the sanctuary; on the other hand, the hypostyle hall rests on six pillars with Hathor-headed capitals of fine proportions.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the plates in Champollion.

A third excavated grotto of modest dimensions served as an accessory chamber to the two others. An inexhaustible stream of yellow sand poured over the great temple from the summit of the cliff, and partially covered it every year. No sooner were the efforts to remove it relaxed, than it spreads into the chambers, concealing the feet of the colossi, and slowly creeping upwards to their knees, breasts, and necks; at the beginning of this century they were entirely hidden. In spite of all that was done to divert it, it ceaselessly reappeared, and in a few summers regained all the ground which had been previously cleared. It would seem as if the desert, powerless to destroy the work of the conqueror, was seeking nevertheless to hide it from the admiration of posterity.*

* The English engineers have succeeded in barring out the sand, and have prevented it from pouring over the cliff any more.—Ed.

Seti had worked indefatigably at Thebes, but the shortness of his reign prevented him from completing the buildings he had begun there. There existed everywhere, at Luxor, at Karnak, and on the left bank of the Nile, the remains of his unfinished works; sanctuaries partially roofed in, porticoes incomplete, columns raised to merely half their height, halls as yet imperfect with blank walls, here and there covered with only the outlines in red and black ink of their future bas-reliefs, and statues hardly blocked out, or awaiting the final touch of the polisher.*

* This is the description which Ramses gave of the condition in which he found the Memnonium of Abydos. An examination of the inscriptions existing in the Theban temples which Seti I. had constructed, shows that it must have applied also to the appearance of certain portions of Qurneh, Luxor, and Karnak in the time of Ramses II.

Ramses took up the work where his father had relinquished it. At Luxor there was not enough space to give to the hypostyle hall the extension which the original plans proposed, and the great colonnade has an unfinished appearance.



The Nile, in one of its capricious floods, had carried away the land upon which the architects had intended to erect the side aisles; and if they wished to add to the existing structure a great court and a pylon, without which no temple was considered complete, it was necessary to turn the axis of the building towards the east.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.

In their operations the architects came upon a beautiful little edifice of rose granite, which had been either erected or restored by Thutmosis III. at a time when the town was an independent municipality and was only beginning to extend its suburban dwellings to meet those of Karnak. They took care to make no change in this structure, but set to work to incorporate it into their final plans. It still stands at the north-west corner of the court, and the elegance of its somewhat slender little columns contrasts happily with the heaviness of the structure to which it is attached. A portion of its portico is hidden by the brickwork of the mosque of Abu'l Haggag: the part brought to light in the course of the excavations contains between each row of columns a colossal statue of Ramses II. We are accustomed to hear on all sides of the degeneracy of the sculptor's art at this time, and of its having fallen into irreparable neglect. Nothing can be further from the truth than this sweeping statement. There are doubtless many statues and bas-reliefs of this epoch which shock us by their crudity and ugliness, but these owed their origin for the most part to provincial workshops which had been at all times of mediocre repute, and where the artists did not receive orders enough to enable them to correct by practice the defects of their education. We find but few productions of the Theban school exhibiting bad technique, and if we had only this one monument of Luxor from which to form our opinion of its merits, it would be sufficient to prove that the sculptors of Ramses II. were not a whit behind those of Harmham or Seti I. Adroitness in cutting the granite or hard sandstone had in no wise been lost, and the same may be said of the skill in bringing out the contour and life-like action of the figure, and of the art of infusing into the features and demeanour of the Pharaoh something of the superhuman majesty with which the Egyptian people were accustomed to invest their monarchs. If the statues of Ramses II. in the portico are not perfect models of sculpture, they have many good points, and their bold treatment makes them effectively decorative.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.

Eight other statues of Ramses are arranged along the base of the facade, and two obelisks—one of which has been at Paris for half a century*—stood on either side of the entrance.

* The colonnade and the little temple of Thutmosis III. were concealed under the houses of the village; they were first brought to light in the excavations of 1884-86.

The whole structure lacks unity, and there is nothing corresponding to it in this respect anywhere else in Egypt. The northern half does not join on to the southern, but seems to belong to quite a distinct structure, or the two parts might be regarded as having once formed a single edifice which had become divided by an accident, which the architect had endeavoured to unite together again by a line of columns running between two walls. The masonry of the hypostyle hall at Karnak was squared and dressed, but the walls had been left undecorated, as was also the case with the majority of the shafts of the columns and the surface of the architraves. Ramses covered the whole with a series of sculptured and painted scenes which had a rich ornamental effect; he then decorated the pylon, and inscribed on the outer wall to the south the list of cities which he had captured. The temple of Amon then assumed the aspect which it preserved henceforward for centuries. The Ramessides and their successors occupied themselves in filling it with furniture, and in taking steps for the repair of any damage that might accrue to the hall or pillars; they had their cartouches or inscriptions placed in vacant spaces, but they did not dare to modify its arrangement. It was reserved for the Ethiopian and Greek Pharaohs, in presence of the hypostyle and pylon of the XIXth dynasty, to conceive of others on a still vaster scale.



Ramses, having completed the funerary chapel of Seti at Qurneh upon the left bank of the river, then began to think of preparing the edifice destined for the cult of his "double"—that Eamesseum whose majestic ruins still stand at a short distance to the north of the giants of Amenothes. Did these colossal statues stimulate his spirit of emulation to do something yet more marvellous? He erected here, at any rate, a still more colossal figure. The earthquake which shattered Memnon brought it to the ground, and fragments of it still strew the soil where they fell some nineteen centuries ago. There are so many of them that the spectator would think himself in the middle of a granite quarry.*

* The ear measures 3 feet 4 inches (feet ?) in length; the statue is 58 feet high from the top of the head to the sole of the foot, and the weight of the whole has been estimated at over a thousand tons.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato

The portions forming the breast, arms, and thighs are in detached pieces, but they are still recognisable where they lie close to each other. The head has lost nothing of its characteristic expression, and its proportions are so enormous, that a man could sleep crouched up in the hollow of one of its ears as if on a sofa. Behind the court overlooked by this colossal statue lay a second court, surrounded by a row of square pillars, each having a figure of Osiris attached to it. The god is represented as a mummy, the swathings throwing the body and limbs into relief.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Beato; the great blocks in the foreground are the fragments of the colossal statue of Ramses II.

His hands are freed from the bandages and are crossed on the breast, and hold respectively the flail and crook; the smiling face is surmounted by an enormous head-dress. The sanctuary with the buildings attached to it has perished, but enormous brick structures extend round the ruins, forming an enclosure of storehouses. Here the priests of the "double" were accustomed to dwell with their wives and slaves, and here they stored up the products of their domains—meat, vegetables, corn, fowls dried or preserved in fat, and wines procured from all the vineyards of Egypt.

These were merely the principal monuments put up by Ramses II. at Thebes during the sixty-seven years of his rule. There would be no end to the enumeration of his works if we were to mention all the other edifices which he constructed in the necropolis or among the dwellings of the living, all those which he restored, or those which he merely repaired or inscribed with his cartouches. These are often cut over the name of the original founder, and his usurpations of monuments are so numerous that he might be justly accused of having striven to blot out the memory of his predecessors, and of claiming for himself the entire work of the whole line of Pharaohs. It would seem as if, in his opinion, the glory of Egypt began with him, or at least with his father, and that no victorious campaigns had been ever heard of before those which he conducted against the Libyans and the Hittites.

The battle of Qodshu, with its attendant episodes—the flogging of the spies, the assault upon the camp, the charge of the chariots, the flight of the Syrians—is the favourite subject of his inscriptions; and the poem of Pentauirit adds to the bas-reliefs a description worthy of the acts represented. This epic reappears everywhere, in Nubia and in the Said, at Abu Simbel, at Beit-Wally, at Derr, at Luxor, at Karnak, and on the Eamesseum, and the same battle-scenes, with the same accompanying texts, reappear in the Memnonium, whose half-ruined walls still crown the necropolis of Abydos.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.

He had decided upon the erection of this latter monument at the very beginning of his reign, and the artisans who had worked at the similar structure of Seti I. were employed to cover its walls with admirable bas-reliefs. Ramses also laid claim to have his own resting-place at "the Cleft;" in this privilege he associated all the Pharaohs, from whom he imagined himself to be descended, and the same list of their names, which we find engraved in the chapel of his father, appears on his building also. Some ruins, lying beyond Abydos, are too formless to do more than indicate the site of some of his structures. He enlarged the temple of Harshafitu and that of Osiris at Heracleopolis, and, to accomplish these works the more promptly, his workmen had recourse for material to the royal towns of the IVth and XIIth dynasties; the pyramids of Usirtasen II. and Snofrui at Medum suffered accordingly the loss of the best part of their covering. He finished the mausoleum at Memphis, and dedicated the statue which Seti had merely blocked out; he then set to work to fill the city with buildings of his own device—granite and sandstone chambers to the east of the Sacred Lake,* monumental gateways to the south,** and before one of them a fine colossal figure in granite.*** It lay not long ago at the bottom of a hole among the palm trees, and was covered by the inundation every year; it has now been so raised as to be safe from the waters. Ramses could hardly infuse new life into all the provinces which had been devastated years before by the Shepherd-kings; but Heliopolis,**** Bubastes, Athribis, Patumu, Mendis, Tell Moqdam, and all the cities of the eastern corner of the Delta, constitute a museum of his monuments, every object within them testifying to his activity.

* Partly excavated and published by Mariette, and partly by M. de Morgan. This is probably the temple mentioned in the Great Inscription of Abu Simbel.

** These are probably those mentioned by Herodotus, when he says that Sesostris constructed a propylon in the temple of Hephaistos.

*** This is Abu-1-hol of the Arabs.

**** Ruins of the temple of Ra bear the cartouche of Ramses II. "Cleopatra's Needle," transported to Alexandria by one of the Ptolemies, had been set up by Ramses at Heliopolis; it is probably one of the four obelisks which the traditional Sesostris is said to have erected in that city, according to Pliny.

He colonised these towns with his prisoners, rebuilt them, and set to work to rouse them from the torpor into which they had fallen after their capture by Ahmosis. He made a third capital of Tanis, which rivalled both Memphis and Thebes.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph brought back by Benedite.

Before this it had been little more than a deserted ruin: he cleared out the debris, brought a population to the place; rebuilt the temple, enlarging it by aisles which extended its area threefold; and here he enthroned, along with the local divinities, a triad, in which Amonra and Sutkhu sat side by side with his own deified "double." The ruined walls, the overturned stelae, the obelisks recumbent in the dust, and the statues of his usurped predecessors, all bear his name. His colossal figure of statuary sandstone, in a sitting attitude like that at the Eamesseum, projected from the chief court, and seemed to look down upon the confused ruin of his works.*

* The fragments of the colossus were employed in the Graeco- Roman period as building material, and used in the masonry of a boundary wall.

We do not know how many wives he had in his harem, but one of the lists of his children which has come down to us enumerates, although mutilated at the end, one hundred and eleven sons, while of his daughters we know of fifty-five.*

* The list of Abydos enumerates thirty-three of his sons and thirty-two of his daughters, that of Wady-Sebua one hundred and eleven of his sons and fifty-one of his daughters; both lists are mutilated. The remaining lists for the most part record only some of the children living at the time they were drawn up, at Derr, at the Eamesseum, and at Abu Simbel.

The majority of these were the offspring of mere concubines or foreign princesses, and possessed but a secondary rank in comparison with himself; but by his union with his sisters Nofritari Maritmut and Isitnofrit, he had at least half a dozen sons and daughters who might aspire to the throne. Death robbed him of several of these before an opportunity was open to them to succeed him, and among them Amenhikhopshuf, Amenhiunamif, and Ramses, who had distinguished themselves in the campaign against the Khati; and some of his daughters—Bitaniti, Maritamon, Nibittaui—by becoming his wives lost their right to the throne. About the XXXth year of his reign, when he was close upon sixty, he began to think of an associate, and his choice rested on the eldest surviving son of his queen Isitnofrit, who was called Khamoisit. This prince was born before the succession of his father, and had exhibited distinguished bravery under the walls of Qodshu and at Ascalon. When he was still very young he had been invested with the office of high priest of the Memphite Phtah, and thus had secured to him the revenues of the possessions of the god, which were the largest in all Egypt after those of the Theban Anion. He had a great reputation for his knowledge of abstruse theological questions and of the science of magic—a later age attributing to him the composition of several books on magic giving directions for the invocation of spirits belonging to this world and the world beyond. He became the hero also of fantastic romances, in which it was related of him how, in consequence of his having stolen from the mummy of an old wizard the books of Thot, he became the victim of possession by a sort of lascivious and sanguinary ghoul. Ramses relieved himself of the cares of state by handing over to Khamoisifc the government of the country, without, however, conferring upon him the titles and insignia of royalty. The chief concern of Khamoisit was to secure the scrupulous observance of the divine laws. He celebrated at Silsilis the festivals of the inundation; he presided at the commemoration of his father's apotheosis, and at the funeral rites of the Apis who died in the XXXth year of the king's reign. Before his time each sacred bull had its separate tomb in a quarter of the Memphite Necropolis known to the Greeks as the Serapeion. The tomb was a small cone-roofed building erected on a square base, and containing only one chamber. Khamoisit substituted for this a rock-tomb similar to those used by ordinary individuals. He had a tunnel cut in the solid rock to a depth of about a hundred yards, and on either side of this a chamber was prepared for each Apis on its death, the masons closing up the wall after the installation of the mummy. His regency had lasted for nearly a quarter of a century, when, the burden of government becoming too much for him, he was succeeded in the LVth year of Ramses by his younger brother Minephtah, who was like himself a son of Isitnofrit.* Minephtah acted, during the first twelve years of his rule, for his father, who, having now almost attained the age of a hundred, passed peacefully away at Thebes in the LXVIII year of his reign, full of days and sated with glory.** He became the subject of legend almost before he had closed his eyes upon the world.

* Minephtah was in the order of birth the thirteenth son of Ramses II.

** A passage on a stele of Ramses IV. formally attributes to him a reign of sixty-seven years. I procured at Koptos a stele of his year LXVI.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Mariette.

He had obtained brilliant successes during his life, and the scenes describing them were depicted in scores of places. Popular fancy believed everything which he had related of himself, and added to this all that it knew of other kings, thus making him the Pharaoh of Pharaohs—the embodiment of all preceding monarchs. Legend preferred to recall him by the name Sesusu, Sesusturi—a designation which had been applied to him by his contemporaries, and he thus became better known to moderns as Sesostris than by his proper name Ramses Miamun.*

* This designation, which is met with at Medinet-Habu and in the Anmtasi Papyrus I., was shown by E. de Rouge to refer to Ramses II.; the various readings Sesu, Sesusu, Sesusturi, explain the different forms Sesosis, Sesoosis, Sesostris. Wiedemann saw in this name the mention of a king of the XVIIIth dynasty not yet classified.

According to tradition, he was at first sent to Ethiopia with a fleet of four hundred ships, by which he succeeded in conquering the coasts of the Red Sea as far as the Indus. In later times several stelae in the cinnamon country were ascribed to him. He is credited after this with having led into the east a great army, with which he conquered Syria, Media, Persia, Bactriana, and India as far as the ocean; and with having on his return journey through the deserts of Scythia reached the Don [Tanais], where, on the shore of the Masotic Sea, he left a number of his soldiers, whose descendants afterwards peopled Colchis. It was even alleged that he had ventured into Europe, but that the lack of provisions and the inclemency of the climate had prevented him from advancing further than Thrace.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a statue in the British Museum.

He returned to Egypt after an absence of nine years, and after having set up on his homeward journey statues and stelae everywhere in commemoration of his victories. Herodotus asserts that he himself had seen several of these monuments in his travels in Syria and Ionia. Some of these are of genuine Egyptian manufacture, and are to be attributed to our Ramses; they are to be found near Tyre, and on the banks of the Nahr el-Kelb, where they mark the frontier to which his empire extended in this direction. Others have but little resemblance to Egyptian monuments, and were really the work of the Asiatic peoples among whom they were found. The two figures referred to long ago by Herodotus, which have been discovered near Ninfi between Sardis and Smyrna, are instances of the latter.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

The shoes of the figures are turned up at the toe, and the head-dress has more resemblance to the high hats of the people of Asia Minor than to the double crown of Egypt, while the lower garment is striped horizontally in place of vertically. The inscription, moreover, is in an Asiatic form of writing, and has nothing Egyptian about it. Ramses II. in his youth was the handsomest man of his time. He was tall and straight; his figure was well moulded—the shoulders broad, the arms full and vigorous, the legs muscular; the face was oval, with a firm and smiling mouth, a thin aquiline nose, and large open eyes.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph taken from the mummy itself, by Emil Brugsch-Bey.

There may be seen below the cartouche the lines of the official report of inspection written during the XXIst dynasty. Old age and death did not succeed in marring the face sufficiently to disfigure it. The coffin containing his body is not the same as that in which his children placed him on the day of his obsequies; it is another substituted for it by one of the Ramessides, and the mask upon it has but a distant resemblance to the face of the victorious Pharaoh. The mummy is thin, much shrunken, and light; the bones are brittle, and the muscles atrophied, as one would expect in the case of a man who had attained the age of a hundred; but the figure is still tall and of perfect proportions.*

* Even after the coalescence of the vertebrae and the shrinkage produced by mummification, the body of Ramses II. still measures over 5 feet 8 inches.

The head, which is bald on the top, is somewhat long, and small in relation to the bulk of the body; there is but little hair on the forehead, but at the back of the head it is thick, and in smooth stiff locks, still preserving its white colour beneath the yellow balsams of his last toilet. The forehead is low, the supra-orbital ridges accentuated, the eyebrows thick, the eyes small and set close to the nose, the temples hollow, the cheek-bones prominent; the ears, finely moulded, stand out from the head, and are pierced, like those of a woman, for the usual ornaments pendant from the lobe. A strong jaw and square chin, together, with a large thick-lipped mouth, which reveals through the black paste within it a few much-worn but sound teeth, make up the features of the mummied king. His moustache and beard, which were closely shaven in his lifetime, had grown somewhat in his last sickness or after his death; the coarse and thick hairs in them, white like those of the head and eyebrows, attain a length of two or three millimetres. The skin shows an ochreous yellow colour under the black bituminous plaster. The mask of the mummy, in fact, gives a fair idea of that of the living king; the somewhat unintelligent expression, slightly brutish perhaps, but haughty and firm of purpose, displays itself with an air of royal majesty beneath the sombre materials used by the embalmer. The disappearance of the old hero did not produce many changes in the position of affairs in Egypt: Minephtah from this time forth possessed as Pharaoh the power which he had previously wielded as regent. He was now no longer young. Born somewhere about the beginning of the reign of Ramses II., he was now sixty, possibly seventy, years old; thus an old man succeeded another old man at a moment when Egypt must have needed more than ever an active and vigorous ruler. The danger to the country did not on this occasion rise from the side of Asia, for the relations of the Pharaoh with his Kharu subjects continued friendly, and, during a famine which desolated Syria,* he sent wheat to his Hittite allies.

* A document preserved in the Anastasi Papyrus III. shows how regular the relations with Syria had become. It is the journal of a custom-house officer, or of a scribe placed at one of the frontier posts, who notes from day to day the letters, messengers, officers, and troops which passed from the 15th to the 25th of Pachons, in the IIIrd year of the reign.

The nations, however, to the north and east, in Libya and in the Mediterranean islands, had for some time past been in a restless condition, which boded little good to the empires of the old world. The Tirnihu, some of them tributaries from the XIIth, and others from the first years of the XVIIIth dynasty, had always been troublesome, but never really dangerous neighbours. From time to time it was necessary to send light troops against them, who, sailing along the coast or following the caravan routes, would enter their territory, force them from their retreats, destroy their palm groves, carry off their cattle, and place garrisons in the principal oases—even in Siwah itself. For more than a century, however, it would seem that more active and numerically stronger populations had entered upon the stage. A current of invasion, having its origin in the region of the Atlas, or possibly even in Europe, was setting towards the Nile, forcing before it the scattered tribes of the Sudan. Who were these invaders? Were they connected with the race which had planted its dolmens over the plains of the Maghreb? Whatever the answer to this question may be, we know that a certain number of Berber tribes*—the Labu and Mashauasha—who had occupied a middle position between Egypt and the people behind them, and who had only irregular communications with the Nile valley, were now pushed to the front and forced to descend upon it.**

* The nationality of these tribes is evidenced by the names of their chiefs, which recall exactly those of the Numidians—Massyla, Massinissa, Massiva.

** The Labu, Laubu, Lobu, are mentioned for the first time under Ramses II.; these are the Libyans of classical geographers. The Mashauasha answer to the Maxycs of Herodotus; they furnished mercenaries to the armies of Ramses II.

They were men tall of stature and large of limb, with fair skins, light hair, and blue eyes; everything, in fact, indicating their northern origin. They took pleasure in tattooing the skin, just as the Tuaregs and Kabyles are now accustomed to do, and some, if not all, of them practised circumcision, like a portion of the Egyptians and Semites. In the arrangement of the hair, a curl fell upon the shoulder, while the remainder was arranged in small frizzled locks. Their chiefs and braves wore on their heads two flowering plumes. A loin-cloth, a wild-beast's skin thrown over the back, a mantle, or rather a covering of woollen or dyed cloth, fringed and ornamented with many-coloured needlework, falling from the left shoulder with no attachment in front, so as to leave the body unimpeded in walking,—these constituted the ordinary costume of the people. Their arms were similar to those of the Egyptians, consisting of the lance, the mace, the iron or copper dagger, the boomerang, the bow and arrow, and the sling.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

They also employed horses and chariots. Their bravery made them a foe not to be despised, in spite of their ignorance of tactics and their want of discipline. When they were afterwards formed into regiments and conducted by experienced generals, they became the best auxiliary troops which Egypt could boast of. The Labu from this time forward were the most energetic of the tribes, and their chiefs prided themselves upon possessing the leadership over all the other clans in this region of the world.*

* This was the case in the wars of Minephtah and Ramses III., in which the Labu and their kings took the command of the confederate armies assembled against Egypt.

The Labu might very well have gained the mastery over the other inhabitants of the desert at this period, who had become enfeebled by the frequent defeats which they had sustained at the hands of the Egyptians. At the moment when Minephtah ascended the throne, their king, Maraiu, son of Didi, ruled over the immense territory lying between the Fayum and the two Syrtes: the Timihu, the Kahaka, and the Mashauasha rendered him the same obedience as his own people. A revolution had thus occurred in Africa similar to that which had taken place a century previously in Naharaim, when Sapalulu founded the Hittite empire. A great kingdom rose into being where no state capable of disturbing Egyptian control had existed before. The danger was serious. The Hittites, separated from the Nile by the whole breadth of Kharu, could not directly threaten any of the Egyptian cities; but the Libyans, lords of the desert, were in contact with the Delta, and could in a few days fall upon any point in the valley they chose. Minephtah, therefore, hastened to resist the assault of the westerns, as his father had formerly done that of the easterns, and, strange as it may seem, he found among the troops of his new enemies some of the adversaries with whom the Egyptians had fought under the walls of Qodshu sixty years before. The Shardana, Lycians, and others, having left the coasts of the Delta and the Phoenician seaports owing to the vigilant watch kept by the Egyptians over their waters, had betaken themselves to the Libyan littoral, where they met with a favourable reception. Whether they had settled in some places, and formed there those colonies of which a Greek tradition of a recent age speaks, we cannot say. They certainly followed the occupation of mercenary soldiers, and many of them hired out their services to the native princes, while others were enrolled among the troops of the King of the Khati or of the Pharaoh himself. Maraiu brought with him Achaeans, Shardana, Tursha, Shagalasha,* and Lycians in considerable numbers when he resolved to begin the strife.** This was not one of those conventional little wars which aimed at nothing further than the imposition of the payment of a tribute upon the conquered, or the conquest of one of their provinces. Maraiu had nothing less in view than the transport of his whole people into the Nile valley, to settle permanently there as the Hyksos had done before him.

* The Shakalasha, Shagalasha, identified with the Sicilians by E. de Rouge, were a people of Asia Minor whose position there is approximately indicated by the site of the town Sagalassos, named after them.

** The Inscription of Minephtah distinguishes the Libyans of Maraiu from "the people of the Sea."

He set out on his march towards the end of the IVth year of the Pharaoh's reign, or the beginning of his Vth, surrounded by the elite of his troops, "the first choice from among all the soldiers and all the heroes in each land." The announcement of their approach spread terror among the Egyptians. The peace which they had enjoyed for fifty years had cooled their warlike ardour, and the machinery of their military organisation had become somewhat rusty. The standing army had almost melted away; the regiments of archers and charioteers were no longer effective, and the neglected fortresses were not strong enough to protect the frontier. As a consequence, the oases of Farafrah and of the Natron lakes fell into the hands of the enemy at the first attack, and the eastern provinces of the Delta became the possession of the invader before any steps could be taken for their defence. Memphis, which realised the imminent danger, broke out into open murmurs against the negligent rulers who had given no heed to the country's ramparts, and had allowed the garrisons of its fortresses to dwindle away. Fortunately Syria remained quiet. The Khati, in return for the aid afforded them by Minephtah during the famine, observed a friendly attitude, and the Pharaoh was thus enabled to withdraw the troops from his Asiatic provinces. He could with perfect security take the necessary measures for ensuring "Heliopolis, the city of Tumu," against surprise, "for arming Memphis, the citadel of Phtah-Tonen, and for restoring all things which were in disorder: he fortified Pibalisit, in the neighbourhood of the Shakana canal, on a branch of that of Heliopolis," and he rapidly concentrated his forces behind these quickly organised lines.*

* Chabas would identify Pibalisit with Bubastis; I agree with Brugsch in placing it at Belbeis.

Maraiu, however, continued to advance; in the early months of the summer he had crossed the Canopic branch of the Nile, and was now about to encamp not far from the town of Pirici. When the king heard of this "he became furious against them as a lion that fascinates its victim; he called his officers together and addressed them: 'I am about to make you hear the words of your master, and to teach you this: I am the sovereign shepherd who feeds you; I pass my days in seeking out that which is useful for you: I am your father; is there among you a father like me who makes his children live? You are trembling like geese, you do not know what is good to do: no one gives an answer to the enemy, and our desolated land is abandoned to the incursions of all nations. The barbarians harass the frontier, rebels violate it every day, every one robs it, enemies devastate our seaports, they penetrate into the fields of Egypt; if there is an arm of a river they halt there, they stay for days, for months; they come as numerous as reptiles, and no one is able to sweep them back, these wretches who love death and hate life, whose hearts meditate the consummation of our ruin. Behold, they arrive with their chief; they pass their time on the land which they attack in filling their stomachs every day; this is the reason why they come to the land of Egypt, to seek their sustenance, and their intention is to install themselves there; mine is to catch them like fish upon their bellies. Their chief is a dog, a poor devil, a madman; he shall never sit down again in his place.'" He then announced that on the 14th of Epiphi he would himself conduct the troops against the enemy.

These were brave words, but we may fancy the figure that this king of more than sixty years of age would have presented in a chariot in the middle of the fray, and his competence to lead an effective charge against the enemy. On the other hand, his absence in such a critical position of affairs would have endangered the morale of his soldiers and possibly compromised the issue of the battle. A dream settled the whole question.*

* Ed. Meyer sees in this nothing but a customary rhetorical expression, and thinks that the god spoke in order to encourage the king to defend himself vigorously.

While Minephtah was asleep one night, he saw a gigantic figure of Phtah standing before him, and forbidding him to advance. "'Stay,' cried the god to him, while handing him the curved khopesh: 'put away discouragement from thee!' His Majesty said to him: 'But what am I to do then?' And Phtah answered him: 'Despatch thy infantry, and send before it numerous chariots to the confines of the territory of Piriu.'"**

* This name was read Pa-ari by E. de Rouge, Pa-ali by Lauth, and was transcribed Pa-ari-shop by Brugsch, who identified with Prosopitis. The orthography of the text at Athribis shows that we ought to read Piri, Piru, Piriu; possibly the name is identical with that of laru which is mentioned in the Pyramid-texts.

The Pharaoh obeyed the command, and did not stir from his position. Maraiu had, in the mean time, arranged his attack for the 1st of Epiphi, at the rising of the sun: it did not take place, however, until the 3rd. "The archers of His Majesty made havoc of the barbarians for six hours; they were cut off by the edge of the sword." When Maraiu saw the carnage, "he was afraid, his heart failed him; he betook himself to flight as fast as his feet could bear him to save his life, so successfully that his bow and arrows remained behind him in his precipitation, as well as everything else he had upon him." His treasure, his arms, his wife, together with the cattle which he had brought with him for his use, became the prey of the conqueror; "he tore out the feathers from his head-dress, and took flight with such of those wretched Libyans as escaped the massacre, but the officers who had the care of His Majesty's team of horses followed in their steps" and put most of them to the sword. Maraiu succeeded, however, in escaping in the darkness, and regained his own country without water or provisions, and almost without escort. The conquering troops returned to the camp laden with booty, and driving before them asses carrying, as bloody tokens of victory, quantities of hands and phalli cut from the dead bodies of the slain. The bodies of six generals and of 6359 Libyan soldiers were found upon the field of battle, together with 222 Shagalasha, 724 Tursha, and some hundreds of Shardana and Achaeans: several thousands of prisoners passed in procession before the Pharaoh, and were distributed among such of his soldiers as had distinguished themselves. These numbers show the gravity of the danger from which Egypt had escaped: the announcement of the victory filled the country with enthusiasm, all the more sincere because of the reality of the panic which had preceded it. The fellahin, intoxicated with joy, addressed each other: "'Come, and let us go a long distance on the road, for there is now no fear in the hearts of men.'The fortified posts may at last be left; the citadels are now open; messengers stand at the foot of the walls and wait in the shade for the guard to awake after their siesta, to give them entrance. The military police sleep on their accustomed rounds, and the people of the marshes once more drive their herds to pasture without fear of raids, for there are no longer marauders near at hand to cross the river; the cry of the sentinels is heard no more in the night: 'Halt, thou that comest, thou that comest under a name which is not thine own—sheer off!' and men no longer exclaim on the following morning: 'Such or such a thing has been stolen;' but the towns fall once more into their usual daily routine, and he who works in the hope of the harvest, will nourish himself upon that which he shall have reaped." The return from Memphis to Thebes was a triumphal march.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Deveria.

"He is very strong, Binri Minephtah," sang the court poets, "very wise are his projects—his words have as beneficial effect as those of Thot—everything which he does is completed to the end.—When he is like a guide at the head of his armies—his voice penetrates the fortress walls.—Very friendly to those who bow their backs—before Miamun—his valiant soldiers spare him who humbles himself—before his courage and before his strength;—they fall upon the Libyans—they consume the Syrian;—the Shardana whom thou hast brought back by thy sword—make prisoners of their own tribes.—Very happy thy return to Thebes—victorious! Thy chariot is drawn by hand—the conquered chiefs march backwards before thee—whilst thou leadest them to thy venerable father—Amon, husband of his mother." And the poets amuse themselves with summoning Maraiu to appear in Egypt, pursued as he was by his own people and obliged to hide himself from them. "He is nothing any longer but a beaten man, and has become a proverb among the Labu, and his chiefs repeat to themselves: 'Nothing of the kind has occurred since the time of Ra.' The old men say each one to his children: 'Misfortune to the Labu! it is all over with them! No one can any longer pass peacefully across the country; but the power of going out of our land has been taken from us in a single day, and the Tihonu have been withered up in a single year; Sutkhu has ceased to be their chief, and he devastates their "duars;" there is nothing left but to conceal one's self, and one feels nowhere secure except in a fortress.'" The news of the victory was carried throughout Asia, and served to discourage the tendencies to revolt which were beginning to make themselves manifest there. "The chiefs gave there their salutations of peace, and none among the nomads raised his head after the crushing defeat of the Libyans; Khati is at peace, Canaan is a prisoner as far as the disaffected are concerned, the inhabitant of Ascalon is led away, Gezer is carried into captivity, Ianuamim is brought to nothing, the Israilu are destroyed and have no longer seed, Kharu is like a widow of the land of Egypt."*

* This passage is taken from a stele discovered by Petrie in 1896, on the site of the Amenophium at Thebes. The mention of the Israilu immediately calls to mind the place-names Yushaph-ilu, Yakob-ilu, on lists of Thutmosis III. which have been compared with the names Jacob and Joseph.

Minephtah ought to have followed up his opportunity to the end, but he had no such intention, and his inaction gave Maraiu time to breathe. Perhaps the effort which he had made had exhausted his resources, perhaps old age prevented him from prosecuting his success; he was content, in any case, to station bodies of pickets on the frontier, and to fortify a few new positions to the east of the Delta. The Libyan kingdom was now in the same position as that in which the Hittite had been after the campaign of Seti I.: its power had been checked for the moment, but it remained intact on the Egyptian frontier, awaiting its opportunity.

Minephtah lived for some time after this memorable year* and the number of monuments which belong to this period show that he reigned in peace. We can see that he carried out works in the same places as his father before him; at Tanis as well as Thebes, in Nubia as well as in the Delta. He worked the sandstone quarries for his building materials, and continued the custom of celebrating the feasts of the inundation at Silsileh. One at least of the stelae which he set up on the occasion of these feasts is really a chapel, with its architraves and columns, and still, excites the admiration of the traveller on account both of its form and of its picturesque appearance.

* The last known year of his reign is the year VIII. The lists of Manetho assign to him a reign of from twenty to forty years; Brugsch makes it out to have been thirty-four years, from 1300 to 1266 B.C., which is evidently too much, but we may attribute to him without risk of serious error a reign of about twenty years.

The last years of his life were troubled by the intrigues of princes who aspired to the throne, and by the ambition of the ministers to whom he was obliged to delegate his authority.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.

One of the latter, a man of Semite origin, named Ben-Azana, of Zor-bisana, who had assumed the appellation of his first patron, ramsesupirniri, appears to have acted for him as regent. Minephtah was succeeded, apparently, by one of his sons, called Seti, after his great-grandfather.* Seti II. had doubtless reached middle age at the time of his accession, but his portraits represent him, nevertheless, with the face and figure of a young man.** The expression in these is gentle, refined, haughty, and somewhat melancholic. MU It is the type of Seti I. and Ramses II., but enfeebled and, as it were, saddened. An inscription of his second year attributes to him victories in Asia,*** but others of the same period indicate the existence of disturbances similar to those which had troubled the last years of his father.

* E. de Rouge introduced Amenmeses and Siphtah between Minephtah and Seti II., and I had up to the present followed his example; I have come back to the position of Chabas, making Seti II. the immediate successor of Minephtah, which is also the view of Brugsch, Wiedemann, and Ed. Meyer. The succession as it is now given does not seem to me to be free from difficulties; the solution generally adopted has only the merit of being preferable to that of E. de Rouge, which I previously supported.

** The last date known of his reign is the year II. which is found at Silsilis; Chabas was, nevertheless, of the opinion that he reigned a considerable time.

*** The expressions employed in this document do not vary much from the usual protocol of all kings of this period. The triumphal chant of Seti II. preserved in the Anastasi Papyrus IV. is a copy of the triumphal chant of Minephtah, which is in the same Papyrus.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

These were occasioned by a certain Aiari, who was high priest of Phtah, and who had usurped titles belonged ordinarily to the Pharaoh or his eldest son, in the house of Sibu, "heir and hereditary prince of the two lands." Seti died, it would seem, without having had time to finish his tomb. We do not know whether he left any legitimate children, but two sovereigns succeeded him who were not directly connected with him, but were probably the grandsons of the Amenmesis and the Siphtah, whom we meet with among the children of Ramses. The first of these was also called Amenmesis,* and he held sway for several years over the whole of Egypt, and over its foreign possessions.

* Graffiti of this sovereign have been found at the second cataract. Certain expressions have induced E. de Rouge to believe that he, as well as Siphtah, came originally from Khibit in the Aphroditopolite nome. This was an allusion, as Chabas had seen, to the myth of Horus, similar to that relating to Thutmosis III., and which we more usually meet with in the cases of those kings who were not marked out from their birth onwards for the throne.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.

The second, who was named Siphtah-Minephtah, ascended "the throne of his father" thanks to the devotion of his minister Bai,* but in a greater degree to his marriage with a certain princess called Tausirit. He maintained himself in this position for at least six years, during which he made an expedition into Ethiopia, and received in audience at Thebes messengers from all foreign nations. He kept up so zealously the appearance of universal dominion, that to judge from his inscriptions he must have been the equal of the most powerful of his predecessors at Thebes.

Egypt, nevertheless, was proceeding at a quick pace towards its downfall. No sooner had this monarch disappeared than it began to break up.** There were no doubt many claimants for the crown, but none of them succeeded in disposing of the claims of his rivals, and anarchy reigned supreme from one end of the Nile valley to the other. The land of Qimit began to drift away, and the people within it had no longer a sovereign, and this, too, for many years, until other times came; for "the land of Qimit was in the hands of the princes ruling over the nomes, and they put each other to death, both great and small.

* Bai has left two inscriptions behind him, one at Silsilis and the other at Sehel, and the titles he assumes on both monuments show the position he occupied at the Theban court during the reign of Siphtah-Minephtah. Chabas thought that Bai had succeeded in maintaining his rights to the crown against the claims of Amenmesis.

** The little that we know about this period of anarchy has been obtained from the Harris Papyrus.

Other times came afterwards, during years of nothingness, in which Arisu, a Syrian,* was chief among them, and the whole country paid tribute before him; every one plotted with his neighbour to steal the goods of others, and it was the same with regard to the gods as with regard to men, offerings were no longer made in the temples."

* The name of this individual was deciphered by Chabas; Lauth, and after him Krall, were inclined to read it as Ket, Ketesh, in order to identify it with the Ketes of Diodorus Siculus. A form of the name Arisai in the Bible may be its original, or that of Arish which is found in Phoenician, especially Punic, inscriptions.

This was in truth the revenge of the feudal system upon Pharaoh. The barons, kept in check by Ahmosis and Amenothes I., restricted by the successors of these sovereigns to the position of simple officers of the king, profited by the general laxity to recover as many as possible of their ancient privileges. For half a century and more, fortune had given them as masters only aged princes, not capable of maintaining continuous vigilance and firmness. The invasions of the peoples of the sea, the rivalry of the claimants to the throne, and the intrigues of ministers had, one after the other, served to break the bonds which fettered them, and in one generation they were able to regain that liberty of action of which they had been deprived for centuries. To this state of things Egypt had been drifting from the earliest times. Unity could be maintained only by a continuous effort, and once this became relaxed, the ties which bound the whole country together were soon broken. There was another danger threatening the country beside that arising from the weakening of the hands of the sovereign, and the turbulence of the barons. For some three centuries the Theban Pharaohs were accustomed to bring into the country after each victorious campaign many thousands of captives. The number of foreigners around them had, therefore, increased in a striking manner. The majority of these strangers either died without issue, or their posterity became assimilated to the indigenous inhabitants. In many places, however, they had accumulated in such proportions that they were able to retain among themselves the remembrance of their origin, their religion, and their customs, and with these the natural desire to leave the country of their exile for their former fatherland. As long as a strict watch was kept over them they remained peaceful subjects, but as soon as this vigilance was relaxed rebellion was likely to break out, especially amongst those who worked in the quarries. Traditions of the Greek period contain certain romantic episodes in the history of these captives. Some Babylonian prisoners brought back by Sesostris, these traditions tell us, unable to endure any longer the fatiguing work to which they were condemned, broke out into open revolt.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after a picture in Rosellini.

They made themselves masters of a position almost opposite Memphis, and commanding the river, and held their ground there with such obstinacy that it was found necessary to give up to them the province which they occupied: they built here a town, which they afterwards called Babylon. A similar legend attributes the building of the neighbouring village of Troiu to captives from Troy.*

The scattered barbarian tribes of the Delta, whether Hebrews or the remnant of the iiyksos, had endured there a miserable lot ever since the accession of the Ramessides. The rebuilding of the cities which had been destroyed there during the wars with the Hyksos had restricted the extent of territory on which they could pasture their herds. Ramses II. treated them as slaves of the treasury,** and the Hebrews were not long under his rule before they began to look back with regret on the time of the monarchs "who knew Joseph."**