HISTORY OF EGYPT

CHALDEA, SYRIA, BABYLONIA, AND ASSYRIA

By G. MASPERO,

Honorable Doctor of Civil Laws, and Fellow of Queen's College,
Oxford; Member of the Institute and Professor at the College of France

Edited by A. H. SAYCE,
Professor of Assyriology, Oxford

Translated by M. L. McCLURE,
Member of the Committee of the EgyptExploration Fund

CONTAINING OVER TWELVE HUNDRED COLORED PLATES AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Volume IV, Part C.

LONDON
THE GROLIER SOCIETY
PUBLISHERS

Thutmosis I.'s campaign in Syria—The organisation of the Egyptianarmy: the infantry of the line, the archers, the horses, and thecharioteers—The classification of the troops according to theirarms—Marching and encampment in the enemy's country: battlearray—Chariot-charges—The enumeration and distribution of thespoil—The vice-royalty of Rush and the adoption of Egyptian customs bythe Ethiopian tribes.

The first successors of Thutmosis I.: Ahmasi and Hatshopsitit,Thûtmosis II—The temple of Deîr el-Bahari and the buildingsof Karnah—The Ladders of Incense—The expedition to Pûanît: barteringwith the natives, the return of the fleet.

Thûtmosis III.: his departure for Asia, the battle of Megiddo andthe subjection of Southern Syria—The year 23 to the year 28 of hisreign—Conquest of Lotanû and of Mitânni—The campaign of the 33rd yearof the king's reign.

Contents

List of Illustrations

CHAPTER III—THE EIGHTEENTH THEBAN DYNASTY

Thûtmosis I. and his army—Hâtshopsîtû and Thûtmosis III.

The account of the first expedition undertaken by Thûtmosis in Asia,a region at that time new to the Egyptians, would be interesting ifwe could lay our hands upon it. We should perhaps find in the midst ofofficial documents, or among the short phrases of funerary biographies,some indication of the impression which the country produced upon itsconquerors.

With the exception of a few merchants or adventurers, no one from Thebesto Memphis had any other idea of Asia than that which could be gatheredfrom the scattered notices of it in the semi-historical romances ofthe preceding age. The actual sight of the country must have been arevelation; everything appearing new and paradoxical to men of whomthe majority had never left their fatherland, except on some warlikeexpedition into Ethiopia or on some rapid raid along the coasts of theRed Sea. Instead of their own narrow valley, extending between its twomountain ranges, and fertilised by the periodical overflowing of theNile which recurred regularly almost to a day, they had before themwide irregular plains, owing their fertility not to inundations, butto occasional rains or the influence of insignificant streams; hills ofvarying heights covered with vines and other products of cultivation;mountains of different altitudes irregularly distributed, clothed withforests, furrowed with torrents, their summits often crowned with snoweven in the hottest period of summer: and in this region of nature,where everything was strange to them, they found nations differingwidely from each other in appearance and customs, towns with crenellatedwalls perched upon heights difficult of access; and finally, acivilization far excelling that which they encountered anywhere inAfrica outside their own boundaries. Thûtmosis succeeded in reaching onhis first expedition a limit which none of his successors was ableto surpass, and the road taken by him in this campaign—from Gaza toMegiddo, from Megiddo to Qodshû, from Qodshû to Carchemish—was thatwhich was followed henceforward by the Egyptian troops in all theirexpeditions to the Euphrates. Of the difficulties which he encounteredon his way we have no information. On arriving at Naharaim, however,we know that he came into contact with the army of the enemy, whichwas under the command of a single general—perhaps the King of Mitannihimself, or one of the lieutenants of the "Cossæan King of Babylon"—whohad collected together most of the petty princes of the northern countryto resist the advance of the intruder. The contest was hotly fought outon both sides, but victory at length remained with the invaders, andinnumerable prisoners fell into their hands. The veteran Âhmosi, sonof Abîna, who was serving in his last campaign, and his cousin, ÂhmosiPannekhabît, distinguished themselves according to their wont. Theformer, having seized upon a chariot, brought it, with the threesoldiers who occupied it, to the Pharaoh, and received once more "thecollar of gold;" the latter killed twenty-one of the enemy, carryingoff their hands as trophies, captured a chariot, took one prisoner, andobtained as reward a valuable collection of jewellery, consisting ofcollars, bracelets, sculptured lions, choice vases, and costly weapons.A stele, erected on the banks of the Euphrates not far from the scene ofthe battle, marked the spot which the conqueror wished to be recognisedhenceforth as the frontier of his empire. He re-entered Thebes withimmense booty, by which gods as well as men profited, for he consecrateda part of it to the embellishment of the temple of Amon, and the sightof the spoil undoubtedly removed the lingering prejudices which thepeople had cherished against expeditions beyond the isthmus. Thûtmosiswas held up by his subjects to the praise of posterity as having comeinto actual contact with that country and its people, which had hithertobeen known to the Egyptians merely through the more or less veracioustales of exiles and travellers. The aspect of the great river of theNaharaim, which could be compared with the Nile for the volume of itswaters, excited their admiration. They were, however, puzzled by thefact that it flowed from north to south, and even were accustomedto joke at the necessity of reversing the terms employed in Egypt toexpress going up or down the river. This first Syrian campaign becamethe model for most of those subsequently undertaken by the Pharaohs. Ittook the form of a bold advance of troops, directed from Zalû towardsthe north-east, in a diagonal line through the country, who routed onthe way any armies which might be opposed to them, carrying by assaultsuch towns as were easy of capture, while passing by others which seemedstrongly defended—pillaging, burning, and slaying on every side. Therewas no suspension of hostilities, no going into winter quarters, but atriumphant return of the expedition at the end of four or five months,with the probability of having to begin fresh operations in thefollowing year should the vanquished break out into revolt.*

     * From the account of the campaigns of Amenôthes II., I     thought we might conclude that this Pharaoh wintered in     Syria at least once; but the text does not admit of this     interpretation, and we must, therefore, for the present give     up the idea that the Pharaohs ever spent more than a few     months of the year on hostile territory.

The troops employed in these campaigns were superior to any othershitherto put into the field. The Egyptian army, inured to war by itslong struggle with the Shepherd-kings, and kept in training since thereign of Âhmosis by having to repulse the perpetual incursions of theEthiopian or Libyan barbarians, had no difficulty, in overcoming theSyrians; not that the latter were wanting in courage or discipline,but owing to their limited supply of recruits, and the politicaldisintegration of the country, they could not readily place under armssuch enormous numbers as those of the Egyptians. Egyptian militaryorganisation had remained practically unchanged since early times: thearmy had always consisted, firstly, of the militia who held fiefs, andwere under the obligation of personal service either to the prince ofthe nome or to the sovereign; secondly, of a permanent force, which wasdivided into two corps, distributed respectively between the Sa'id andthe Delta. Those companies which were quartered on the frontier, orabout the king either at Thebes or at one of the royal residences, werebound to hold themselves in readiness to muster for a campaign at anygiven moment. The number of natives liable to be levied when occasionrequired, by "generations," or as we should say by classes, may haveamounted to over a hundred thousand men,* but they were never allcalled out, and it does not appear that the army on active serviceever contained more than thirty thousand men at a time, and probably onordinary occasions not much more than ten or fifteen thousand.**

     * The only numbers which we know are those given by     Herodotus for the Saïte period, which are evidently     exaggerated. Coming down to modern times, we see that     Mehemet-Ali, from 1830 to 1840, had nearly 120,000 men in     Syria, Egypt, and the Sudan; and in 1841, at the time when     the treaties imposed upon him the ill-kept obligation of     reducing his army to 18,000 men, it still contained 81,000.     We shall probably not be far wrong in estimating the total     force which the Pharaohs of the XVIIIth dynasty, lords of     the whole valley of the Nile, and of part of Asia, had at     their disposal at 120,000 or 130,000 men; these, however,     were never all called out at once.     ** We have no direct information respecting the armies     acting in Syria; we only know that, at the battle of Qodshû,     Ramses II. had against him 2500 chariots containing three     men each, making 7500 charioteers, besides a troop estimated     at the Ramesseum at 8000 men, at Luxor at 9000, so that the     Syrian army probably contained about 20,000 men. It would     seem that the Egyptian army was less numerous, and I     estimate it with great hesitation at about 15,000 or 18,000     men: it was considered a powerful army, while that of the     Hittites was regarded as an innumerable host. A passage in     the Anastasi Papyrus, No. 1, tells us the composition of a     corps led by Ramses II. against the tribes in the vicinity     of Qocoîr and the Rahanû valley; it consisted of 5000 men,     of whom 620 were Shardana, 1600 Qahak, 70 Mashaûasha, and     880 Negroes.

The infantry was, as we should expect, composed of troops of the lineand light troops. The former wore either short wigs arranged in rowsof curls, or a kind of padded cap by way of a helmet, thick enough todeaden blows; the breast and shoulders were undefended, but a shortloin-cloth was wrapped round the hips, and the stomach and upper partof the thighs were protected by a sort of triangular apron, sometimesscalloped at the sides, and composed of leather thongs attached to abelt. A buckler of moderate dimensions had been substituted for thegigantic shield of the earlier Theban period; it was rounded at thetop and often furnished with a solid metal boss, which the experiencedsoldiers always endeavoured to present to the enemy's lances andjavelins. Their weapons consisted of pikes about five feet long, withbroad bronze or copper points, occasionally of flails, axes, daggers,short curved swords, and spears; the trumpeters were armed with daggersonly, and the officers did not as a rule encumber themselves with eitherbuckler or pike, but bore and axe and dagger, an occasionally a bow.

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph taken by Naville.

The light infantry was composed chiefly of bowmen—pidâtû—thecelebrated archers of Egypt, whose long bows and arrows, used withdeadly skill, speedily became renowned throughout the East; the quiver,of the use of which their ancestors were ignorant, had been borrowedfrom the Asiatics, probably from the Hyksôs, and was carried hanging atthe side or slung over the shoulder. Both spearmen and archers were forthe most part pure-bred Egyptians, and were divided into regiments ofunequal strength, each of which usually bore the name of some god—as,for example, the regiment of Ra or of Phtah, of Arnon or of Sûtkhû*—inwhich the feudal contingents, each commanded by its lord or hislieutenants, fought side by side with the king's soldiers furnishedfrom the royal domains. The effective force of the army was made up byauxiliaries taken from the tribes of the Sahara and from the negroes ofthe Upper Nile.**

     * The army of Ramses II. at the battle of Qodshû comprised     four corps, which bore the names of Amon, Râ, Phtah, and     Sûtkhû. Other lesser corps were named the Tribe of     Pharaoh, the Tribe of the Beauty of the Solar dish.     These, as far as I can judge, must have been troops raised     on the royal domains by a system of local recruiting, who     were united by certain common privileges and duties which     constituted them an hereditary militia, whence they were     called tribes.     ** These Ethiopian recruits are occasionally represented in     the Theban tombs of the XVIIIth dynasty, among others in the     tomb of Pahsûkhîr.

These auxiliaries were but sparingly employed in early times, but theirnumbers were increased as wars became more frequent and necessitatedmore troops to carry them on. The tribes from which they were drawnsupplied the Pharaohs with an inexhaustible reserve; they werecourageous, active, indefatigable, and inured to hardships, and if ithad not been for their turbulent nature, which incited them to continualinternal dissensions, they might readily have shaken off the yoke ofthe Egyptians. Incorporated into the Egyptian army, and placed underthe instruction of picked officers, who subjected them to rigorousdiscipline, and accustomed them to the evolutions of regular troops,they were transformed from disorganised hordes into tried and invinciblebattalions.*

     * The armies of Hâtshopsîtû already included Libyan     auxiliaries, some of which are represented at Deîr el-     Baharî; others of Asiatic origin are found under Amenôthes     IV., but they are not represented on the monuments among the     regular troops until the reign of Ramses II., when the     Shardana appear for the first time among the king's body-     guard.

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

The old army, which had conquered Nubia in the days of the Papis andUsirtasens, had consisted of these three varieties of foot-soldiersonly, but since the invasion of the Shepherds, a new element had beenincorporated into the modern army in the-shape of the chariotry, whichanswered to some extent to the cavalry of our day as regards theirtactical employment and efficacy. The horse, when once introduced intoEgypt, soon became fairly adapted to its environment. It retained bothits height and size, keeping the convex forehead—which gave the head aslightly curved profile—the slender neck, the narrow hind-quarters, thelean and sinewy legs, and the long flowing tail which had characterisedit in its native country. The climate, however, was enervating, andconstant care had to be taken, by the introduction of new blood fromSyria, to prevent the breed from deteriorating.*

     * The numbers of horses brought from Syria either as spoils     of war or as tribute paid by the vanquished are frequently     recorded in the Annals of Thûtmosis III. Besides the usual     species, powerful stallions were imported from Northern     Syria, which were known by the Semitic name of Abîri, the     strong. In the tombs of the XVIIIth dynasty, the arrival of     Syrian horses in Egypt is sometimes represented.

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph taken by Petrie.

The Pharaohs kept studs of horses in the principal cities of the Nilevalley, and the great feudal lords, following their example, vied witheach other in the possession of numerous breeding stables. The office ofsuperintendent to these establishments, which was at the disposal ofthe Master of the Horse, became in later times one of the most importantState appointments.*

     * In the story of the conquest of Egypt by the Ethiopian     Piônkhi, studs are indicated at Hermopolis, at Athribis, in     the towns to the east and in the centre of the Delta, and at     Sais. Diodorus Siculus relates that, in his time, the     foundations of 100 stables, each capable of containing 200     horses, were still to be seen on the western bank of the     river between Memphis and Thebes.

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

The first chariots introduced into Egypt were, like the horses, offoreign origin, but when built by Egyptian workmen they soon became moreelegant, if not stronger than their models. Lightness was the qualitychiefly aimed at; and at length the weight was so reduced that itwas possible for a man to carry his chariot on his shoulders withoutfatigue. The materials for them were on this account limited to oak orash and leather; metal, whether gold or silver, iron or bronze, beingused but sparingly, and then only for purposes of ornamentation. Thewheels usually had six, but sometimes eight spokes, or occasionally onlyfour. The axle consisted of a single stout pole of acacia. The frameworkof the chariot was composed of two pieces of wood mortised together soas to form a semicircle or half-ellipse, and closed by a straight bar;to this frame was fixed a floor of sycomore wood or of plaited leatherthongs. The sides of the chariot were formed of upright panels, solidin front and open at the sides, each provided with a handrail. The pole,which was of a single piece of wood, was bent into an elbow at aboutone-fifth of its length from the end, which was inserted into the centreof the axletree. On the gigantic T thus formed was fixed the body of thechariot, the hinder part resting on the axle, and the front attachedto the bent part of the pole, while the whole was firmly bound togetherwith double leather thongs. A yoke of hornbeam, shaped like a bow, towhich the horses were harnessed, was fastened to the other extremity ofthe pole. The Asiatics placed three men in a chariot, but the Egyptiansonly two; the warrior—sinni—whose business it was to fight, andthe shield-bearer—qazana—who protected his companion with a bucklerduring the engagement. A complete set of weapons was carried inthe chariot—lances, javelins, and daggers, curved spear, club, andbattle-axe—while two bow-cases as well as two large quivers were hungat the sides. The chariot itself was very liable to upset, the slightestcause being sufficient to overturn it. Even when moving at a slow pace,the least inequality of the ground shook it terribly, and when drivenat full speed it was only by a miracle of skill that the occupants couldmaintain their equilibrium. At such times the charioteer would standastride of the front panels, keeping his right foot only inside thevehicle, and planting the other firmly on the pole, so as to lessenthe jolting, and to secure a wider base on which to balance himself.To carry all this into practice long education was necessary, for whichthere were special schools of instruction, and those who were destinedto enter the army were sent to these schools when little more thanchildren. To each man, as soon as he had thoroughly mastered all thedifficulties of the profession, a regulation chariot and pair of horseswere granted, for which he was responsible to the Pharaoh or to hisgenerals, and he might then return to his home until the next call toarms. The warrior took precedence of the shield-bearer, and both wereconsidered superior to the foot-soldier; the chariotry, in fact, likethe cavalry of the present day, was the aristocratic branch of the army,in which the royal princes, together with the nobles and their sons,enlisted. No Egyptian ever willingly trusted himself to the back of ahorse, and it was only in the thick of a battle, when his chariot wasbroken, and there seemed no other way of escaping from the mêlée, that awarrior would venture to mount one of his steeds. There appear, however,to have been here and there a few horsemen, who acted as couriers oraides-de-camp; they used neither saddle-cloth nor stirrups, but wereprovided with reins with which to guide their animals, and their seaton horseback was even less secure than the footing of the driver in hischariot.

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Flinders Petrie.

The infantry was divided into platoons of six to ten men each, commandedby an officer and marshalled round an ensign, which represented eithera sacred animal, an emblem of the king or of his double, or a divinefigure placed upon the top of a pike; this constituted an object ofworship to the group of soldiers to whom it belonged. We are unableto ascertain how many of these platoons, either of infantry or ofchariotry, went to form a company or a battalion, or by what ensigns thedifferent grades were distinguished from each other, or what was theirrelative order of rank. Bodies of men, to the number of forty or fifty,are sometimes represented on the monuments, but this may be merely bychance, or because the draughtsman did not take the trouble to give theproper number accurately. The inferior officers were equipped very muchlike the soldiers, with the exception of the buckler, which they do notappear to have carried, and certainly did not when on the march: thesuperior officers might be known by their umbrella or flabellum, adistinction which gave them the right of approaching the king's person.

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

The military exercises to which all these troops were accustomedprobably differed but little from those which were in vogue with thearmies of the Ancient Empire; they consisted in wrestling, boxing,jumping, running either singly or in line at regular distances fromeach other, manual exercises, fencing, and shooting at a target; thewar-dance had ceased to be in use among the Egyptian regiments as amilitary exercise, but it was practised by the Ethiopian and Libyanauxiliaries. At the beginning of each campaign, the men destined toserve in it were called out by the military scribes, who supplied themwith arms from the royal arsenals. Then followed the distribution ofrations. The soldiers, each carrying a small linen bag, came up insquads before the commissariat officers, and each received his ownallowance.*

     * We see the distribution of arms made by the scribes and     other officials of the royal arsenals represented in the     pictures at Medinet-Abu. The calling out of the classes was     represented in the Egyptian tombs of the XVIIIth dynasty, as     well as the distribution of supplies.

Once in the enemy's country the army advanced in close order, theinfantry in columns of four, the officers in rear, and the chariotseither on the right or left flank, or in the intervals betweendivisions. Skirmishers thrown out to the front cleared the line ofmarch, while detached parties, pushing right and left, collectedsupplies of cattle, grain, or drinking-water from the fields andunprotected villages. The main body was followed by the baggage train;it comprised not only supplies and stores, but cooking-utensils,coverings, and the entire paraphernalia of the carpenters' andblacksmiths' shops necessary for repairing bows, lances, daggers, andchariot-poles, the whole being piled up in four-wheeled carts drawn byasses or oxen. The army was accompanied by a swarm of non-combatants,scribes, soothsayers, priests, heralds, musicians, servants, andwomen of loose life, who were a serious cause of embarrassment to thegenerals, and a source of perpetual danger to military discipline. Atnightfall they halted in a village, or more frequently bivouacked in anentrenched camp, marked out to suit the circumstances of the case. Thisentrenchment was always rectangular, its length being twice as great asits width, and was surrounded by a ditch, the earth from which, beingbanked up on the inside, formed a rampart from five to six feet inheight; the exterior of this was then entirely faced with shields,square below, but circular in shape at the top. The entrance to the campwas by a single gate in one of the longer sides, and a plank served as abridge across the trench, close to which two detachments mounted guard,armed with clubs and naked swords.

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

The royal quarters were situated at one end of the camp. Here, within anenclosure, rose an immense tent, where the Pharaoh found all the luxuryto which he was accustomed in his palaces, even to a portable chapel,in which each morning he could pour out water and burn incense to hisfather, Amon-Râ of Thebes. The princes of the blood who formed hisescort, his shield-bearers and his generals, were crowded together hardby, and beyond, in closely packed lines, were the horses and chariots,the draught bullocks, the workshops and the stores.

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Beato. It represents     the camp of Ramses II. before Qodshû: the upper angle of the     enclosure and part of the surrounding wall have been     destroyed by the Khâti, whose chariots are pouring in at the     breach. In the centre is the royal tent, surrounded by     scenes of military life. This picture has been sculptured     partly over an earlier one representing one of the episodes     of the battle; the latter had been covered with stucco, on     which the new subject was executed. Part of the stucco has     fallen away, and the king in his chariot, with a few other     figures, has reappeared, to the great detriment of the later     picture.

The soldiers, accustomed from childhood to live in the open air,erected no tents or huts of boughs for themselves in these temporaryencampments, but bivouacked in the open, and the sculptures on thefaçades of the Theban pylons give us a minute picture of the way inwhich they employed themselves when off duty. Here one man, whilecleaning his armour, superintends the cooking. Another, similarlyengaged, drinks from a skin of wine held up by a slave. A third hastaken his chariot to pieces, and t is replacing some portion the worsefor wear. Some are sharpening their daggers or lances; others mend theirloin-cloths or sandals, or exchange blows with fists and sticks. Thebaggage, linen, arms, and provisions are piled in disorder on theground; horses, oxen, and asses are eating or chewing the cud at theirease; while here and there a donkey, relieved of his burden, rollshimself on the ground and brays with delight.*

     * We are speaking of the camp of Thûtmosis III. near Âlûna,     the day before the battle of Megiddo, and the words put into     the mouths of the soldiers to mark their vigilance are the     same as those which we find in the Ramesseum and at Luxor,     written above the guards of the camp where Ramses II. is     reposing.

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

The success of the Egyptians in battle was due more to the courage andhardihood of the men than to the strategical skill of their commanders.We find no trace of manouvres, in the sense in which we understand theword, either in their histories or on their bas-reliefs, but they joinedbattle boldly with the enemy, and the result was decided by a more orless bloody conflict. The heavy infantry was placed in the centre, thechariots were massed on the flanks, while light troops thrown out tothe front began the action by letting fly volleys of arrows and stones,which through the skill of the bowmen and slingers did deadly execution;then the pikemen laid their spears in rest, and pressing straightforward, threw their whole weight against the opposing troops. At thesame moment the charioteers set off at a gentle trot, and graduallyquickened their pace till they dashed at full speed upon the foe, amidthe confused rumbling of wheels and the sharp clash of metal.

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a drawing by Champolion.

The Egyptians, accustomed by long drilling to the performance of suchevolutions, executed these charges as methodically as though they werestill on their parade-ground at Thebes; if the disposition of the groundwere at all favourable, not a single chariot would break the line, andthe columns would sweep across the field without swerving or fallinginto disorder. The charioteer had the reins tied round his body, andcould, by throwing his weight either to the right or the left, or byslackening or increasing the pressure through a backward or forwardmotion, turn, pull up, or start his horses by a simple movement of theloins: he went into battle with bent bow, the string drawn back tohis ear, the arrow levelled ready to let fly, while the shield-bearer,clinging to the body of the chariot with one hand, held out his bucklerwith the other to shelter his comrade. It would seem that the Syrianswere less skilful; their bows did not carry so far as those of theiradversaries, and consequently they came within the enemy's range somemoments before it was possible for them to return the volley witheffect. Their horses would be thrown down, their drivers would fallwounded, and the disabled chariots would check the approach of thosefollowing and overturn them, so that by the time the main body came upwith the enemy the slaughter would have been serious enough to rendervictory hopeless. Nevertheless, more than one charge would be necessaryfinally to overturn or scatter the Syrian chariots, which, onceaccomplished, the Egyptian charioteer would turn against thefoot-soldiers, and, breaking up their ranks, would tread them down underthe feet of his horses.*

     * The whole of the above description is based on incidents     from the various pictures of battles which appear on the     monuments of Ramses II.

Nor did the Pharaoh spare himself in the fight; his splendid dress, theurasus on his forehead, and the nodding plumes of his horses made hima mark for the blows of the enemy, and he would often find himself inpositions of serious danger. In a few hours, as a rule, the conflictwould come to an end.

Once the enemy showed signs of giving way, the Egyptian chariots dashedupon them precipitously, and turned the retreat into a rout: the pursuitwas, however, never a long One; some fortress was always to be foundclose at hand where the remnant of the defeated host could take refuge.*The victors, moreover, would be too eager to secure the booty, and tostrip the bodies of the dead, to allow time for following up the foe.

     * After the battle of Megiddo, the remnants of the Syrian     army took refuge in the city, where Thûtmosis III. besieged     them; similarly under Ramses II. the Hittite princes took     refuge in Qodshû after their defeat.

The prisoners were driven along in platoons, their arms bound in strangeand contorted attitudes, each under the charge of his captor; then camethe chariots, arms, slaves, and provisions collected on the battle-fieldor in the camp, then other trophies of a kind unknown in modern warfare.When an Egyptian killed or mortally wounded any one, he cut off, notthe head, but the right hand or the phallus, and brought it to theroyal scribes. These made an accurate inventory of everything, and evenPharaoh did not disdain to be present at the registration. The booty didnot belong to the persons who obtained it, but was thrown into a commonstock which was placed at the disposal of the sovereign: one part hereserved for the gods, especially for his father Amon of Thebes, whohad given him the victory; another part he kept for himself, and theremainder was distributed among his army. Each man received a rewardin proportion to his rank and services, such as male or female slaves,bracelets, necklaces, arms, vases, or a certain measured weight of gold,known as the "gold of bravery." A similar sharing of the spoil tookplace after every successful engagement: from Pharaoh to the meanestcamp-follower, every man who had contributed to the success of acampaign returned home richer than he had set out, and the profits whichhe derived from a war were a liberal compensation for the expenses inwhich it had involved him.

The results of the first expedition of Thûtmosis I. were of a decisivecharacter; so much so, indeed, that he never again, it would seem,found it necessary during the remainder of his life to pass the isthmus.Northern Syria, it is true, did not remain long under tribute, ifindeed it paid any at all after the departure of the Egyptians, butthe southern part of the country, feeling itself in the grip of the newmaster, accepted its defeat: Gaza became the head-quarters of a garrisonwhich secured the door of Asia for future invasion,* and Pharaoh, freedfrom anxiety in this quarter, gave his whole time to the consolidationof his power in Ethiopia.

     * This fact is nowhere explicitly stated on the monuments:     we may infer it, however, from the way in which Thûtmosis     III. tells how he reached Gaza without opposition at the     beginning of his first campaign, and celebrated the     anniversary of his coronation there. On the other hand, we     learn from details in the lists that the mountains and     plains beyond Gaza were in a state of open rebellion.

The river and desert tribes of this region soon forgot the severe lessonwhich he had given them: as soon as the last Egyptian soldier had lefttheir territory they rebelled once more, and began a fresh series ofinroads which had to be repressed anew year after year. Thûtmosis I. hadseveral times to drive them back in the years II. and III., but was ableto make short work of their rebellions. An inscription at Tombos on theNile, in the very midst of the disturbed districts, told them in bravewords what he was, and what he had done since he had come to the throne.Wherever he had gone, weapon in hand, "seeking a warrior, he had foundnone to withstand him; he had penetrated to valleys which were unknownto his ancestors, the inhabitants of which had never beheld the wearersof the double diadem." All this would have produced but little effecthad he not backed up his words by deeds, and taken decisive measuresto restrain the insolence of the barbarians. Tombos lies opposite toHannek, at the entrance to that series of rapids known as the ThirdCataract. The course of the Nile is here barred by a formidable dykeof granite, through which it has hollowed out six winding channels ofvarying widths, dotted here and there with huge polished boulders andverdant islets. When the inundation is at its height, the rocks arecovered and the rapids disappear, with the exception of the lowest,which is named Lokoli, where faint eddies mark the place of the moredangerous reefs; and were it not that the fall here is rather morepronounced and the current somewhat stronger, few would suspect theexistence of a cataract at the spot. As the waters go down, however, thechannels gradually reappear. When the river is at its lowest, the threewesternmost channels dry up almost completely, leaving nothing but aseries of shallow pools; those on the east still maintain their flow,but only one of them, that between the islands of Tombos and Abadîn,remains navigable. Here Thûtmosis built, under invocation of the gods ofHeliopolis, one of those brickwork citadels, with its rectangular keep,which set at nought all the efforts and all the military science of theEthiopians: attached to it was a harbour, where each vessel on its waydownstream put in for the purpose of hiring a pilot.*

The monarchs of the XIIth and XIIIth dynasties had raised fortificationsat the approaches to Wady Haifa, and their engineers skilfully chose thesites so as completely to protect from the ravages of the Nubian piratesthat part of the Nile which lay between Wady Haifa and Philse.*

     * The foundation of this fortress is indicated in an     emphatic manner in the Tombos inscription: "The masters of     the Great Castle (the gods of Heliopolis) have made a     fortress for the soldiers of the king, which the nine     peoples of Nubia combined could not carry by storm, for,     like a young panther before a bull which lowers its head,     the souls of his Majesty have blinded them with     fear." Quarries of considerable size, where Cailliaud     imagined he could distinguish an overturned colossus, show     the importance which the establishment had attained in     ancient times; the ruins of the town cover a fairly large     area near the modern village of Kerman.

Henceforward the garrison at Tombos was able to defend the mighty curvedescribed by the river through the desert of Mahas, together with theisland of Argo, and the confines of Dongola. The distance between Thebesand this southern frontier was a long one, and communication was slowduring the winter months, when the subsidence of the waters had renderedthe task of navigation difficult for the Egyptian ships. The kingwas obliged, besides, to concentrate his attention mainly on Asiaticaffairs, and was no longer able to watch the movements of the Africanraces with the same vigilance as his predecessors had exercised beforeEgyptian armies had made their way as far as the banks of the Euphrates.Thutmosis placed the control of the countries south of Assuan in thehands of a viceroy, who, invested with the august title of "Royal Son ofKûsh," must have been regarded as having the blood of Râ himself runningin his veins.*

     * The meaning of this title was at first misunderstood.     Champollion and Rosellini took it literally, and thought it     referred to Ethiopian princes, who were vassals or enemies     of Egypt. Birch persists in regarding them as Ethiopians     driven out by their subjects, restored by the Pharaohs as     viceroys, while admitting that they may have belonged to the     solar family.

Sura, the first of these viceroys whose name has reached us, was inoffice at the beginning of the campaign of the year III.* He belonged,it would seem, to a Theban family, and for several centuries afterwardshis successors are mentioned among the nobles who were in the habitof attending the court. Their powers were considerable: they commandedarmies, built or restored temples, administered justice, and receivedthe homage of loyal sheikhs or the submission of rebellious ones.** Theperiod for which they were appointed was not fixed by law, and they heldoffice simply at the king's pleasure. During the XIXth dynasty it wasusual to confer this office, the highest in the state, on a son of thesovereign, preferably the heir-apparent. Occasionally his appointmentwas purely formal, and he continued in attendance on his father, whilea trusty substitute ruled in his place: often, however, he took thegovernment on himself, and in the regions of the Upper Nile served anapprenticeship to the art of ruling.

     * He is mentioned in the Sehêl inscriptions as "the royal     son Sura." Nahi, who had been regarded as the first holder of     the office, and who was still in office under Thutmosis     III., had been appointed by Thutmosis I., but after Sura.     ** Under Thutmosis III., the viceroy Nahi restored the     temple at Semneh; under Tutankhamon, the viceroy Hui     received tribute from the Ethiopian princes, and presented     them to the sovereign.

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

This district was in a perpetual state of war—a war without danger, butfull of trickery and surprises: here he prepared himself for the largerarena of the Syrian campaigns, learning the arts of generalship moreperfectly than was possible in the manouvres of the parade-ground.Moreover, the appointment was dictated by religious as well as bypolitical considerations. The presumptive heir to the throne was to hisfather what Horus had been to Osiris—his lawful successor, or, if needbe, his avenger, should some act of treason impose on him the duty ofvengeance: and was it not in Ethiopia that Horus had gained his firstvictories over Typhon? To begin like Horus, and flesh his maiden steelon the descendants of the accomplices of Sit, was, in the case of thefuture sovereign, equivalent to affirming from the outset the reality ofhis divine extraction.*

     * In the Orbiney Papyrus the title of "Prince of Kûsh" was     assigned to the heir-presumptive to the throne.

As at the commencement of the Theban dynasties, it was the river valleyonly in these regions of the Upper Nile which belonged to the Pharaohs.From this time onward it gave support to an Egyptian population as faras the juncture of the two Niles: it was a second Egypt, but a poorerone, whose cities presented the same impoverished appearance as thatwhich we find to-day in the towns of Nubia. The tribes scattered rightand left in the desert, or distributed beyond the confluence of the twoNiles among the plains of Sennar, were descended from the old indigenousraces, and paid valuable tribute every year in precious metals, ivory,timber, or the natural products of their districts, under penalty ofarmed invasion.*

     * The tribute of the Ganbâtiû, or people of the south, and          that of Kûsh and of the Ûaûaîû, is mentioned repeatedly          in the Annales de Thûtmosis III. for the year XXXI.,          for the year XXXIII., and for the year XXXIV. The          regularity with which this item recurs, unaccompanied by          any mention of war, following after each Syrian campaign,          shows that it was an habitual operation which was          registered as an understood thing. True, the inscription          does not give the item for every year, but then it only          dealt with Ethiopian affairs in so far as they were          subsidiary to events in Asia; the payment was none the          less an annual one, the amount varying in accordance with          local agreement.

Among these races were still to be found descendants of the Mazaiû andÛaûaîû, who in days gone by had opposed the advance of the victoriousEgyptians: the name of the Uaûaîû was, indeed, used as a generic term todistinguish all those tribes which frequented the mountains between theNile and the Red Sea,* but the wave of conquest had passed far beyondthe boundaries reached in early campaigns, and had brought the Egyptiansinto contact with nations with whom they had been in only indirectcommercial relations in former times.

     * The Annals of Thûtmosis III. mention the tribute of Pûanît     for the peoples of the coast, the tribute of Uaûaît for the     peoples of the mountain between the Nile and the sea, the     tribute of Kûsh for the peoples of the south, or Ganbâtiû.

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger.

Some of these were light-coloured men of a type similar to that of themodern Abyssinians or Gallas: they had the same haughty and imperiouscarriage, the same well-developed and powerful frames, and the same loveof fighting. Most of the remaining tribes were of black blood, and suchof them as we see depicted on the monuments resemble closely the negroesinhabiting Central Africa at the present day.

They have the same elongated skull, the low prominent forehead, hollowtemples, short flattened nose, thick lips, broad shoulders, and salientbreast, the latter contrasting sharply with the undeveloped appearanceof the lower part of the body, which terminates in thin legs almostdevoid of calves. Egyptian civilization had already penetrated amongthese tribes, and, as far as dress and demeanour were concerned, theirchiefs differed in no way from the great lords who formed the escortof the Pharaoh. We see these provincial dignitaries represented in thewhite robe and petticoat of starched, pleated, and gauffered linen;an innate taste for bright colours, even in those early times, beingbetrayed by the red or yellow scarf in which they wrapped themselves,passing it over one shoulder and round the waist, whence the endsdepended and formed a kind of apron. A panther's skin covered the back,and one or two ostrich-feathers waved from the top of the head orwere fastened on one side to the fillet confining the hair, which wasarranged in short curls and locks, stiffened with gum and matted withgrease, so as to form a sort of cap or grotesque aureole round theskull. The men delighted to load themselves with rings, bracelets,earrings, and necklaces, while from their arms, necks, and belts hunglong strings of glass beads, which jingled with every movement of thewearer. They seem to have frequently chosen a woman as their ruler, andher dress appears to have closely resembled that of the Egyptianladies. She appeared before her subjects in a chariot drawn by oxen,and protected from the sun by an umbrella edged with fringe. The commonpeople went about nearly naked, having merely a loin-cloth of some wovenstuff or an animal's skin thrown round their hips. Their heads wereeither shaven, or adorned with tufts of hair stiffened with gum. Thechildren of both sexes wore no clothes until the age of puberty; thewomen wrapped themselves in a rude garment or in a covering of linen,and carried their children on the hip or in a basket of esparto grass onthe back, supported by a leather band which passed across the forehead.One characteristic of all these tribes was their love of singing anddancing, and their use of the drum and cymbals; they were active andindustrious, and carefully cultivated the rich soil of the plain,devoting themselves to the raising of cattle, particularly of oxen,whose horns they were accustomed to train fantastically into the shapesof lyres, bows, and spirals, with bifurcations at the ends, or withsmall human figures as terminations. As in the case of other negrotribes, they plied the blacksmith's and also the goldsmith's trade,working up both gold and silver into rings, chains, and quaintly shapedvases, some specimens of their art being little else than toys, similarin design to those which delighted the Byzantine Caesars of later date.

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a painting on the tomb of Hûi.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,from a photograph byEmil Brugsch-Bey.

A wall-painting remains of a gold epergne, which represents men andmonkeys engaged in gathering the fruit of a group of dôm-palms. Twoindividuals lead each a tame giraffe by the halter, others kneeling onthe rim raise their hands to implore mercy from an unseen enemy, whilenegro prisoners, grovelling on their stomachs, painfully attemptto raise their head and shoulders from the ground. This, doubtless,represents a scene from the everyday life of the people of the UpperNile, and gives a faithful picture of what took place among many of itstribes during a rapid inroad of some viceroy of Kush or a raid by hislieutenants.

The resources which Thûtmosis I. was able to draw regularly from thesesouthern regions, in addition to the wealth collected during his Syriancampaign, enabled him to give a great impulse to building work. Thetutelary deity of his capital—Amon-Râ—who had ensured him the victoryin all his battles, had a prior claim on the bulk of the spoil; hereceived it as a matter of course, and his temple at Thebes was therebyconsiderably enlarged; we are not, however, able to estimate exactlywhat proportion fell to other cities, such as Kummeh, Elephantine,*Abydos,** and Memphis, where a few scattered blocks of stone still bearthe name of the king. Troubles broke out in Lower Egypt, but they werespeedily subdued by Thûtmosis, and he was able to end his days in theenjoyment of a profound peace, undisturbed by any care save that ofensuring a regular succession to his throne, and of restraining theambitions of those who looked to become possessed of his heritage.***

     * Wiedemann found his name there     cut in a block of brown     freestone.     ** A stele at Abydos speaks of the     building operations carried on by      Thûtmosis I. in that town.     *** The expressions from which we      gather that his reign was disturbed     by outbreaks of internal rebellion     seem to refer to a period subsequent     to the Syrian expedition, and prior     to his alliance  with the Princess     Hâtshopsîtû.

His position was, indeed, a curious one; although de facto absolute inpower, his children by Queen Ahmasi took precedence of him, for by hermother's descent she had a better right to the crown than her husband,and legally the king should have retired in favour of hie sons as soonas they were old enough to reign. The eldest of them, Uazmosû, diedearly.* The second, Amenmosu, lived at least to attain adolescence; hewas allowed to share the crown with his father from the fourth year ofthe latter's reign, and he also held a military command in the Delta,**but before long he also died, and Thûtmosis I. was left with only oneson—a Thûtmosis like himself—to succeed him. The mother of this princewas a certain Mûtnofrit,*** half-sister to the king on his father'sside, who enjoyed such a high rank in the royal family that her husbandallowed her to be portrayed in royal dress; her pedigree on the mother'sside, however, was not so distinguished, and precluded her son frombeing recognised as heir-apparent, hence the occupation of the "seat ofHorus" reverted once more to a woman, Hâtshopsîtû, the eldest daughterof Âhmasi.

     * Uazmosû is represented on the tomb of Pahiri at El-Kab,     where Mr. Griffith imagines he can trace two distinct     Uazmosû; for the present, I am of opinion that there was but     one, the son of Thûtmosis I. His funerary chapel was     discovered at Thebes; it is in a very bad state of     preservation.     ** Amenmosû is represented at El-Kab, by the side of his     brother Uazmosû. Also on a fragment where we find him, in     the fourth year of his father's reign, honoured with a     cartouche at Memphis, and consequently associated with his     father in the royal power.     *** Mûtnofrit was supposed by Mariette to have been a     daughter of Thûtmosis II; the statue reproduced on p. 345     has shown us that she was wife of Thûtmosis I. and mother of     Thûtmosis II.

Hâtshopsîtû herself was not, however, of purely divine descent. Hermaternal ancestor, Sonisonbû, had not been a scion of the royal house,and this flaw in her pedigree threatened to mar, in her case, thesanctity of the solar blood. According to Egyptian belief, this defectof birth could only be remedied by a miracle,* and the ancestral god,becoming incarnate in the earthly father at the moment of conception,had to condescend to infuse fresh virtue into his race in this manner.

* A similar instance of divine substitution is known to us in the caseof two other sovereigns, viz. Amenôthes III., whose father, TitmosisIV., was born under conditions analogous to those attending the birth ofThûtmosis I.; and Ptolemy Caesarion, whose father, Julius Cæsar, was notof Egyptian blood.

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Naville.

The inscriptions with which Hâtshopsîtû decorated her chapel relate how,on that fateful night, Amon descended upon Ahmasi in a flood of perfumeand light. The queen received him favourably, and the divine spouse onleaving her announced to her the approaching birth of a daughter, inwhom his valour and strength should be manifested once more here below.The sequel of the story is displayed in a series of pictures before oureyes.

The protecting divinities who preside over the birth of children conductthe queen to her couch, and the sorrowful resignation depicted on herface, together with the languid grace of her whole figure, display inthis portrait of her a finished work of art. The child enters the worldamid shouts of joy, and the propitious genii who nourish both her andher double constitute themselves her nurses. At the appointed time,her earthly father summons the great nobles to a solemn festival, andpresents to them his daughter, who is to reign with him over Egypt andthe world.*

     * The association of Hâtshopsîtû with her father on the     throne, has now been placed beyond doubt by the inscriptions     discovered and commented on by Naville in 1895.

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

From henceforth Hâtshopsîtû adopts every possible device to conceal herreal sex. She changes the termination of her name, and calls herselfHâtshopsîû, the chief of the nobles, in lieu of Hâtshopsîtû, the chiefof the favourites. She becomes the King Mâkerî, and on the occasionof all public ceremonies she appears in male costume. We see herrepresented on the Theban monuments with uncovered shoulders, devoid ofbreasts, wearing the short loin-cloth and the keffieh, while the diademrests on her closely cut hair, and the false beard depends from herchin.

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by M. de Mertens.     This was the head of one of the sphinxes which formed an     avenue at Deîr el-Baharî; it was brought over by Lepsius and     is now in the Berlin Museum. The fragment has undergone     extensive restoration, but this has been done with the help     of fragments of other statues, in which the details here     lost were in a good state of preservation.

She retained, however, the feminine pronoun in speaking of herself, andalso an epithet, inserted in her cartouche, which declared her to be thebetrothed of Amon—khnûmît Amaûnû.*

     * We know how greatly puzzled the early Egyptologists were     by this manner of depicting the queen, and how Champollion,     in striving to explain the monuments of the period, was     driven to suggest the existence of a regent, Amenenthes, the     male counterpart and husband of Hâtshopsîtû, whose name he     read Amense. This hypothesis, adopted by Rosellini, with     some slight modifications, was rejected by Birch. This     latter writer pointed out the identity of the two personages     separated by Champollion, and proved them to be one and the     same queen, the Amenses of Manetho; he called her Amûn-nûm-     hc, but he made her out to be a sister of Amenôthes I.,     associated on the throne with her brothers Thûtmosis I. and     Thûtmosis IL, and regent at the beginning of the reign of     Thûtmosis III. Hineks tried to show that she was the     daughter of Thûtmosis I., the wife of Thûtmosis II. and the     sister of Thûtmosis III.; it is only quite recently that her     true descent and place in the family tree has been     recognised. She was, not the sister, but the aunt of     Thûtmosis III. The queen, called by Birch Amûn-nûm-het, the     latter part of her name being dropped and the royal prenomen     being joined to her own name, was subsequently styled Ha-asû     or Hatasû, and this form is still adopted by some writers;     the true reading is Hâtshopsîtû or Hâtshopsîtû, then     Hâtshopsîû, or Hâtshepsîû, as Naville has pointed out.

Her father united her while still young to her brother Thûtmosis, whoappears to have been her junior, and this fact doubtless explains thevery subordinate part which he plays beside the queen. When ThûtmosisI. died, Egyptian etiquette demanded that a man should be at the head ofaffairs, and this youth succeeded his father in office: but Hâtshopsîtû,while relinquishing the semblance of power and the externals of pomp toher husband,* kept the direction of the state entirely in her own hands.The portraits of her which have been preserved represent her as havingrefined features, with a proud and energetic expression. The oval ofthe face is elongated, the cheeks a little hollow, and the eyes deep setunder the arch of the brow, while the lips are thin and tightly closed.

     * It is evident, from the expressions employed by Thûtmosis     I. in associating his daughter with himself on the throne,     that she was unmarried at the time, and Naville thinks that     she married her brother Thûtmosis II. after the death of her     father. It appears to me more probable that Thûtmosis I.     married her to her brother after she had been raised to the     throne, with a view to avoiding complications which might     have arisen in the royal family after his own death. The     inscription at Shutt-er-Ragel, which has furnished Mariette     with the hypothesis that Thûtmosis I. and Thûtmosis IL     reigned simultaneously, proves that the person mentioned in     it, a certain Penaîti, flourished under both these Pharaohs,     but by no means shows that these two reigned together; he     exercised the functions which he held by their authority     during their successive reigns.

She governed with so firm a hand that neither Egypt nor its foreignvassals dared to make any serious attempt to withdraw themselves fromher authority. One raid, in which several prisoners were taken, punisheda rising of the Shaûsû in Central Syria, while the usual expeditionsmaintained order among the peoples of Ethiopia, and quenched any attemptwhich they might make to revolt. When in the second year of his reignthe news was brought to Thutmosis II. that the inhabitants of the UpperNile had ceased to observe the conditions which his father had imposedupon them, he "became furious as a panther," and assembling his troopsset out for war without further delay. The presence of the king with thearmy filled the rebels with dismay, and a campaign of a few weeks put anend to their attempt at rebelling.

The earlier kings of the XVIIIth dynasty had chosen for their lastresting-place a spot on the left bank of the Nile at Thebes, where thecultivated land joined the desert, close to the pyramids built by theirpredecessors. Probably, after the burial of Amenôthes, the space wasfully occupied, for Thutmosis I. had to seek his burying-ground some wayup the ravine, the mouth of which was blocked by their monuments. TheLibyan chain here forms a kind of amphitheatre of vertical cliffs, whichdescend to within some ninety feet of the valley, where a sloping massof detritus connects them by a gentle declivity with the plain.

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

The great lords and the queens in the times of the Antufs and theUsirtasens had taken possession of this spot, but their chapels were bythis period in ruins, and their tombs almost all lay buried under thewaves of sand which the wind from the desert drives perpetually overthe summit of the cliffs. This site was seized on by the architectsof Thûtmosis, who laid there the foundations of a building which wasdestined to be unique in the world. Its ground plan consisted of anavenue of sphinxes, starting from the plain and running between thetombs till it reached a large courtyard, terminated on the west by acolonnade, which was supported by a double row of pillars.

     Drawn by Bouclier, from a photograph supplied by Naville.

Above and beyond this was the vast middle platform,* connected with theupper court by the central causeway which ran through it from end toend; this middle platform, like that below it, was terminated on thewest by a double colonnade, through which access was gained to twochapels hollowed out of the mountain-side, while on the north it wasbordered with excellent effect by a line of proto-Dorio columns rangedagainst the face of the cliff.

     * The English nomenclature employed in describing this     temple is that used in the Guide to Deir el-Bahari,     published by the Egypt Exploration Fund.—Tr.

This northern colonnade was never completed, but the existing part is ofas exquisite proportions as anything that Greek art has ever produced.At length we reach the upper platform, a nearly square courtyard,cutting on one side into the mountain slope, the opposite side beingenclosed by a wall pierced by a single door, while to right and left rantwo lines of buildings destined for purposes connected with the dailyworship of the temple. The sanctuary was cut out of the solid rock,but the walls were faced with white limestone; some of the chambersare vaulted, and all of them decorated with bas-reliefs of exquisiteworkmanship, perhaps the finest examples of this period. Thûtmosis I.scarcely did more than lay the foundations of this magnificent building,but his mummy was buried in it with great pomp, to remain there until aperiod of disturbance and general insecurity obliged those in charge ofthe necropolis to remove the body, together with those of his family, tosome securer hiding-place.* The king was already advanced in age at thetime of his death, being over fifty years old, to judge by the incisorteeth, which are worn and corroded by the impurities of which theEgyptian bread was full.

     * Both E. de Rougé and Mariette were opposed to the view     that the temple was founded by Thûtmosis I., and Naville     agrees with them. Judging from the many new texts discovered     by Naville, I am inclined to think that Thûtmosis I. began     the structure, but from plans, it would appear, which had     not been so fully developed as they afterwards became. Prom     indications to be found here and there in the inscriptions     of the Ramesside period, I am not, moreover, inclined to     regard Deîr el-Bâhâri as the funerary chapel of tombs which     were situated in some unknown place elsewhere, but I believe     that it included the burial-places of Thûtmosis I.,     Thûtmosis II., Queen Hâtshopsîtû, and of numerous     representatives of their family; indeed, it is probable that     Thûtmosis III. and his children found here also their last     resting-place.

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

The body, though small and emaciated, shows evidence of unusual muscularstrength; the head is bald, the features are refined, and the mouthstill bears an expression characteristic of shrewdness and cunning.*

     * The coffin of Thûtmosis I. was usurped by the priest-king     Pinozmû I., son of Piônkhi, and the mummy was lost. I fancy     I have discovered it in mummy No. 5283, of which the head     presents a striking resemblance to those of Thûtmosis II.     and III.

Thûtmosis II. carried on the works begun by his father, but did not longsurvive him.* The mask on his coffin represents him with a smiling andamiable countenance, and with the fine pathetic eyes which show hisdescent from the Pharaohs of the XIIth dynasty.

     * The latest year up to the present known of this king is     the IInd, found upon the Aswan stele. Erman, followed by Ed.     Meyer, thinks that Hâtshop-sîtû could not have been free     from complicity in the premature death of Thûtmosis II.; but     I am inclined to believe, from the marks of disease found on     the skin of his mummy, that the queen was innocent of the     crime here ascribed to her.

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph in the possession of     Emil Brugsch Bey.

His statues bear the same expression, which indeed is that of the mummyitself. He resembles Thûtmosis I., but his features are not so marked,and are characterised by greater gentleness. He had scarcely reached theage of thirty when he fell a victim to a disease of which the process ofembalming could not remove the traces. The skin is scabrous in patches,and covered with scars, while the upper part of the skull is bald; thebody is thin and somewhat shrunken, and appears to have lacked vigourand muscular power. By his marriage with his sister, Thûtmosis leftdaughters only,* but he had one son, also a Thûtmosis, by a woman oflow birth, perhaps merely a slave, whose name was Isis.** Hâtshopsîtûproclaimed this child her successor, for his youth and humble parentagecould not excite her jealousy. She betrothed him to her one survivingdaughter, Hâtshopsîtû II., and having thus settled the succession in themale line, she continued to rule alone in the name of her nephew who wasstill a minor, as she had done formerly in the case of her half-brother.

     * Two daughters of Queen Hâtshopsîtû I. are known, of whom     one, Nofîrûrî, died young, and Hâtshopsîtû II. Marîtrî, who     was married to her half-brother on her father's side,     Thûtmosis III., who was thus her cousin as well. Amenôthes     II. was offspring of this marriage.     ** The name of the mother of Thûtmosis III. was revealed to     us on the wrappings found with the mummy of this king in the     hiding-place of Deîr el-Baharî; the absence of princely     titles, while it shows the humble extraction of the lady     Isis, explains at the same time the somewhat obscure     relations between Hâtshopsîtû and her nephew.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,from a photograph inthe possession of EmilBrugsch-Bey.

Her reign was a prosperous one, but whether the flourishing conditionof things was owing to the ability of her political administration orto her fortunate choice of ministers, we are unable to tell. She pressedforward the work of building with great activity, under the directionof her architect Sanmût, not only at Deîr el-Baharî, but at Karnak, andindeed everywhere in Thebes. The plans of the building had been arrangedunder Thûtmosis I., and their execution had been carried out so quickly,that in many cases the queen had merely to see to the sculpturalornamentation on the all but completed walls.

This work, however, afforded her sufficient excuse, according toEgyptian custom, to attribute the whole structure to herself, and theopinion she had of her own powers is exhibited with great naiveness inher inscriptions. She loves to pose as premeditating her actions longbeforehand, and as never venturing on the smallest undertaking withoutreference to her divine father.

This is what I teach to mortals who shall live in centuries to come, andwhose hearts shall inquire concerning the monument which I have raisedto my father, speaking and exclaiming as they contemplate it: as for me,when I sat in the palace and thought upon him who created me, my heartprompted me to raise to him two obelisks of electrum, whose apicesshould pierce the firmaments, before the noble gateway which is betweenthe two great pylons of the King Thûtmosis I. And my heart led me toaddress these words to those who shall see my monuments in after-yearsand who shall speak of my great deeds: Beware of saying, 'I know not,I know not why it was resolved to carve this mountain wholly of gold!'These two obelisks, My Majesty has made them of electrum for my fatherAnion, that my name may remain and live on in this temple for ever andever; for this single block of granite has been cut, without let orobstacle, at the desire of My Majesty, between the first of the secondmonth of Pirîfc of the Vth year, and the 30th of the fourth month ofShomû of the VIth year, which makes seven months from the day when theybegan to, quarry it. One of these two monoliths is still standing amongthe ruins of Karnak, and the grace of its outline, the finish of itshieroglyphics, and the beauty of the figures which cover it, amplyjustify the pride which the queen and her brother felt in contemplatingit.

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by M. de Mortens:     the original is in the Berlin Museum, whither Lepsius     brought it. Sanmût is squatting and holding between his     arras and knees the young king Thût-mosis III,, whose head     with the youthful side lock appears from under his chin.

The tops of the pyramids were gilt, so that "they could be seen fromboth banks of the river," and "their brilliancy lit up the two lands ofEgypt:" needless to say these metal apices have long disappeared.

Later on, in the the queen's reign, Amon enjoined a work which was moredifficult to carry out. On a day when Hâtshopsîtû had gone to the templeto offer prayers, "her supplications arose up before the throne of theLord of Karnak, and a command was heard in the sanctuary, a behest ofthe god himself, that the ways which lead to Pûanît should be explored,and that the roads to the 'Ladders of Incense' should be trodden."*

     * The word "Ladders" is the translation of the Egyptian word     "Khâtiû," employed in the text to designate the country laid     out in terraces where the incense trees grew; cf. with a     different meaning, the "ladders" of the eastern     Mediterranean.

Gums required for the temple service had hitherto reached the Thebanpriests solely by means of foreign intermediaries; so that in the slowtransport across Africa they lost much of their freshness, besides beingdefiled by passing through impure hands. In addition to these drawbacks,the merchants confounded under the one term "Anîti" substances whichdiffered considerably both in value and character, several of them,indeed, scarcely coming under the category of perfumes, and hence beingunacceptable to the gods. One kind, however, found favour with themabove all others, being that which still abounds in Somali-land at thepresent day—a gum secreted by the incense sycomore.*

     * From the form of the trees depicted on the monument, it is     certain that the Egyptians went to Pûanît in search of the     Boswellia Thurifera Cart.; but they brought back with them     other products also, which they confounded together under     the name "incense."

Drawn by Fauchon-Gudin,from a photograph by Gayet.

It was accounted a pious work to send and obtain it direct from thelocality in which it grew, and if possible to procure the plantsthemselves for acclimatisation in the Nile valley. But the relationsmaintained in former times with the people of these aromatic regionshad been suspended for centuries. "None now climbed the 'Ladders ofIncense,' none of the Egyptians; they knew of them from hearsay, fromthe stories of people of ancient times, for these products were broughtto the kings of the Delta, thy fathers, to one or other of them, fromthe times of thy ancestors the kings of the Said who lived of yore." Allthat could be recalled of this country was summed up in the facts, thatit lay to the south or to the extreme east, that from thence many of thegods had come into Egypt, while from out of it the sun rose anew everymorning. Amon, in his omniscience, took upon himself to describe it andgive an exact account of its position. "The 'Ladders of Incense' is asecret province of Tonûtir, it is in truth a place of delight. I createdit, and I thereto lead Thy Majesty, together with Mût, Hâthor, Uîrît,the Lady of Pûanît, Uîrît-hikaû, the magician and regent of the gods,that the aromatic gum may be gathered at will, that the vessels may beladen joyfully with living incense trees and with all the products ofthis earth." Hâtshopsîtû chose out five well-built galleys, andmanned them with picked crews. She caused them to be laden with suchmerchandise as would be most attractive to the barbarians, and placingthe vessels under the command of a royal envoy, she sent them forth onthe Bed Sea in quest of the incense.

We are not acquainted with the name of the port from which the fleet setsail, nor do we know the number of weeks it took to reach the land ofPûanît, neither is there any record of the incidents which befell itby the way. It sailed past the places frequented by the mariners ofthe XIIth dynasty—Suakîn, Massowah, and the islands of the Ked Sea;it touched at the country of the Ilîm which lay to the west of the Babel-Mandeb, went safely through the Straits, and landed at last in theLand of Perfumes on the Somali coast.* There, between the bay of Zeîlahand Bas Hafun, stretched the Barbaric region, frequented in later timesby the merchants of Myos Hormos and of Berenice.

     * That part of Pûanît where the Egyptians landed was at     first located in Arabia by Brugsch, then transferred to     Somali-land by Mariette, whose opinion was accepted by most     Egyptologists. Dumichen, basing his hypothesis on a passage     where Pûanît is mentioned as "being on both sides of the     sea," desired to apply the name to the Arabian as well as to     the African coast, to Yemen and Hadhramaut as well as to     Somali-land; this suggestion was adopted by Lieblein, and     subsequently by Ed. Meyer, who believed that its inhabitants     were the ancestors of the Sabseans. Since then Krall has     endeavoured to shorten the distance between this country and     Egypt, and he places the Pûanît of Hâtshopsîtû between     Suakin and Massowah. This was, indeed, the part of the     country known under the XIIth dynasty at the time when it     was believed that the Nile emptied itself thereabouts into     the Red Sea, in the vicinity of the Island of the Serpent     King, but I hold, with Mariette, that the Pûanît where the     Egyptians of Hâtshopsîtû's time landed is the present     Somali-land—a view which is also shared by Navillo, but     which Brugsch, in the latter years of his life, abandoned.

The first stations which the latter encountered beyond CapeDireh—Avails, Malao, Mundos, and Mosylon—were merely open roadsteadsoffering no secure shelter; but beyond Mosylon, the classical navigatorsreported the existence of several wadys, the last of which, the ElephantRiver, lying between Bas el-Eîl and Cape Guardafui, appears to have beenlarge enough not only to afford anchorage to several vessels of lightdraught, but to permit of their performing easily any evolutionsrequired. During the Roman period, it was there, and there only, thatthe best kind of incense could be obtained, and it was probably at thispoint also that the Egyptians of Hâtshopsîtû's time landed. The Egyptianvessels sailed up the river till they reached a place beyond theinfluence of the tide, and then dropped anchor in front of a villagescattered along a bank fringed with sycomores and palms.*

     * I have shown, from a careful examination of the bas-     reliefs, that the Egyptians must have landed, not on the     coast itself, as was at first believed, but in the estuary     of a river, and this observation has been accepted as     decisive by most Egyptologists; besides this, newly     discovered fragments show the presence of a hippopotamus.     Since then I have sought to identify the landing-place of     the Egyptians with the most important of the creeks     mentioned by the Græco-Roman merchants as accessible for     their vessels, viz. that which they called the Elephant     River, near to the present Ras el-Fîl.

The huts of the inhabitants were of circular shape, each beingsurmounted with a conical roof; some of them were made of closelyplaited osiers, and there was no opening in any of them save the door.They were built upon piles, as a protection from the rise of theriver and from wild animals, and access to them was gained by means ofmoveable ladders. Oxen chewing the cud rested beneath them. The nativesbelonged to a light-coloured race, and the portraits we possess of themresemble the Egyptian type in every particular. They were tall and thin,and of a colour which varied between brick-red and the darkest brown.Their beards were pointed, and the hair was cut short in some instances,while in others it was arranged in close rows of curls or in smallplaits. The costume of the men consisted of a loin-cloth only, while thedress of the women was a yellow garment without sleeves, drawn in at thewaist and falling halfway below the knee.

The royal envoy landed under an escort of eight soldiers and an officer,but, to prove his pacific intentions, he spread out upon a low table avariety of presents, consisting of five bracelets two gold necklaces, adagger with strap and sheath complete, a battle-axe, and eleven stringsof glass beads.

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

The inhabitants, dazzled by the display of so many valuable objects, ranto meet the new-comers, headed by their sheikh, and expressed a naturalastonishment at the sight of the strangers. "How is it," they exclaimed,"that you have reached this country hitherto unknown to men? Have youcome down by way of the sky, or have you sailed on the waters of theTonûtir Sea? You have followed the path of the sun, for as for the kingof the land of Egypt, it is not possible to elude him, and we live, yea,we ourselves, by the breath which he gives us." The name of their chiefwas Parihû, who was distinguished from his subjects by the boomerangwhich he carried, and also by his dagger and necklace of beads: hisright leg, moreover, appears to have been covered with a kind ofsheath composed of rings of some yellow metal, probably gold.* He wasaccompanied by his wife Ati, riding on an ass, from which she alightedin order to gain a closer view of the strangers. She was endowed witha type of beauty much admired by the people of Central Africa, being soinordinately fat that the shape of her body was scarcely recognisableunder the rolls of flesh which hung down from it. Her daughter, whoappeared to be still young, gave promise of one day rivalling, if notexceeding, her mother in size.**

     * Mariette compares this kind of armour to the "dangabor" of     the Congo tribes, but the "dangabor "is worn on the arm.     Livingstone saw a woman, the sister of Sebituaneh, the     highest lady of the Sesketeh, who wore on each leg eighteen     rings of solid brass as thick as the finger, and three rings     of copper above the knee. The weight of these shining rings     impeded her walking, and produced sores on her ankles; but     it was the fashion, and the inconvenience became nothing. As     to the pain, it was relieved by a bit of rag applied to the     lower rings.     ** These are two instances of abnormal fat production—the     earliest with which we are acquainted.

After an exchange of compliments, the more serious business of theexpedition was introduced. The Egyptians pitched a tent, in which theyplaced the objects of barter with which they were provided, and toprevent these from being too great a temptation to the natives, theysurrounded the tent with a line of troops.

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.

The main conditions of the exchange were arranged at a banquet, inwhich they spread before the barbarians a sumptuous display of Egyptiandelicacies, consisting of bread, beer, wine, meat, and carefullyprepared and flavoured vegetables. Payment for every object was to bemade at the actual moment of purchase. For several days there was aconstant stream of people, and asses groaned beneath their burdens. TheEgyptian purchases comprised the most varied objects: ivory tusks, gold,ebony, cassia, myrrh, cynocephali and green monkeys, greyhounds, leopardskins, large oxen, slaves, and last, but not least, thirty-one incensetrees, with their roots surrounded by a ball of earth and placed inlarge baskets. The lading of the ships was a long and tedious affair.All available space being at length exhausted, and as much cargo placedon board as was compatible with the navigation of the vessel, thesquadron set sail and with all speed took its way northwards.

     Drawn by Bouclier, from a photograph by Beato.

The Egyptians touched at several places on the coast on their returnjourney, making friendly alliances with the inhabitants; the Him addeda quota to their freight, for which room was with difficulty found onboard,—it consisted not only of the inevitable gold, ivory, and skins,but also of live leopards and a giraffe, together with plants and fruitsunknown on the banks of the Nile.*

     * Lieblein thought that their country was explored, not by     the sailors who voyaged to Pûanît, but by a different body     who proceeded by land, and this view was accepted by Ed.     Meyer. The completed text proves that there was but a single     expedition, and that the explorers of Pûanît visited the     Ilîm also. The giraffe which they gave does not appear in     the cargo of the vessels at Pûanît; the visit must,     therefore, have been paid on the return voyage, and the     giraffe was probably represented on the destroyed part of     the walls where Naville found the image of this animal     wandering at liberty among the woods.

The fleet at length made its reappearance in Egyptian ports, havingon board the chiefs of several tribes on whose coasts the sailors hadlanded, and "bringing back so much that the like had never been broughtof the products of Pûanît to other kings, by the supreme favour ofthe venerable god, Amon Râ, lord of Karnak." The chiefs mentioned wereprobably young men of superior family, who had been confided to theofficer in command of the squadron by local sheikhs, as pledges to thePharaoh of good will or as commercial hostages. National vanity, nodoubt, prompted the Egyptians to regard them as vassals coming to dohomage, and their gifts as tributes denoting subjection. The Queeninaugurated a solemn festival in honour of the explorers. The Thebanmilitia was ordered out to meet them, the royal flotilla escorting themas far as the temple landing-place, where a procession was formed tocarry the spoil to the feet of the god. The good Theban folk, assembledto witness their arrival, beheld the march past of the native hostages,the incense sycomores, the precious gum itself, the wild animals,the giraffe, and the oxen, whose numbers were doubtless increased ahundredfold in the accounts given to posterity with the usual officialexaggeration. The trees were planted at Deîr el-Baharî, where a sacredgarden was prepared for them, square trenches being cut in the rock andfilled with earth, in which the sycomore, by frequent watering, came toflourish well.*

     * Naville found these trenches still filled with vegetable     mould, and in several of them roots, which gave every     indication of the purpose to which the trenches were     applied. A scene represents seven of the incense sycomores     still growing in their pots, and offered by the queen to the     Majesty "of this god Amonrâ of Karnak."

The great heaps of fresh resin were next the objects of specialattention. Hâtshopsîtû "gave a bushel made of electrum to gauge the massof gum, it being the first time that they had the joy of measuring theperfumes for Amon, lord of Karnak, master of heaven, and of presentingto him the wonderful products of Pûanît. Thot, the lord of Hermo-polis,noted the quantities in writing; Safkhîtâbûi verified the list. HerMajesty herself prepared from it, with her own hands, a perfumed unguentfor her limbs; she gave forth the smell of the divine dew, her perfumereached even to Pûanît, her skin became like wrought gold,* and hercountenance shone like the stars in the great festival hall, in thesight of the whole earth."

     * In order to understand the full force of the imagery here     employed, one must remember that the Egyptian artists     painted the flesh of women as light yellow.

Hâtshopsîtû commanded the history of the expedition to be carved on thewall of the colonnades which lay on the west side of the middle platformof her funerary chapel: we there see the little fleet with sailsspread, winging its way to the unknown country, its safe arrival at itsdestination, the meeting with the natives, the animated palavering, theconsent to exchange freely accorded; and thanks to the minutenesswith which the smallest details have been portrayed, we can as it werewitness, as if on the spot, all the phases of life on board ship, notonly on Egyptian vessels, but, as we may infer, those of otherOriental nations generally. For we may be tolerably sure that when thePhoenicians ventured into the distant parts of the Mediterranean, it wasafter a similar fashion that they managed and armed their vessels.

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

Although the natural features of the Asiatic or Greek coast on whichthey effected a landing differed widely from those of Pûanît, thePhoenician navigators were themselves provided with similar objects ofexchange, and in their commercial dealings with the natives the methodsof procedure of the European traders were doubtless similar to those ofthe Egyptians with the barbarians of the Red Sea.

Hâtshopsîtû reigned for at least eight years after this memorableexpedition, and traces of her further activity are to be observed inevery part of the Nile valley. She even turned her attention to theDelta, and began the task of reorganising this part of her kingdom,which had been much neglected by her predecessors. The wars between theTheban princes and the lords of Avaris had lasted over a century, andduring that time no one had had either sufficient initiative or leisureto superintend the public works, which were more needed here than in anyother part of Egypt. The canals were silted up with mud, the marshes andthe desert had encroached on the cultivated lands, the towns had becomeimpoverished, and there were some provinces whose population consistedsolely of shepherds and bandits. Hâtshopsîtû desired to remedy theseevils, if only for the purpose of providing a practicable road for herarmies marching to Zalû en route for Syria.*

     * This follows from the great inscription at Stabl-Antar,     which is commonly interpreted as proving that the Shepherd-     kings still held sway in Egypt in the reign of Thûtmosis     III., and that they were driven out by him and his aunt. It     seems to me that the queen is simply boasting that she had     repaired the monuments which had been injured by the     Shepherds during the time they sojourned in Egypt, in the     land of Avaris. Up to the present time no trace of these     restorations has been found on the sites. The expedition to     Pûanît being mentioned in lines 13, 14, they must be of     later date than the year IX. of Hâtshopsîtû and Thûtmosis     III.

She also turned her attention to the mines of Sinai, which had not beenworked by the Egyptian kings since the end of the XIIth dynasty. In theyear XVI. an officer of the queen's household was despatched to theWady Magharah, the site of the ancient works, with orders to inspect thevalleys, examine the veins, and restore there the temple of the goddessHâthor; having accomplished his mission, he returned, bringing withhim a consignment of those blue and green stones which were so highlyesteemed by the Egyptians.

Meanwhile, Thûtmosis III. was approaching manhood, and his aunt, thequeen, instead of abdicating in his favour, associated him with herselfmore frequently in the external acts of government.*

     * The account of the youth of Thûtmosis III., such as     Brugsch made it out to be from an inscription of this king,     the exile of the royal child at Bûto, his long sojourn in     the marshes, his triumphal return, must all be rejected.     Brugsch accepted as actual history a poetical passage where     the king identifies himself with Horus son of Isis, and     goes so far as to attribute to himself the adventures of the     god.

She was forced to yield him precedence in those religious ceremonieswhich could be performed by a man only, such as the dedication of one ofthe city gates of Ombos, and the foundation and marking out of a templeat Medinet-Habû; but for the most part she obliged him to remain inthe background and take a secondary place beside her. We are unable todetermine the precise moment when this dual sovereignty came to an end.It was still existent in the XVIth year of the reign, but it had ceasedbefore the XXIInd year. Death alone could take the sceptre from thehands that held it, and Thûtmosis had to curb his impatience for manya long day before becoming the real master of Egypt. He was abouttwenty-five years of age when this event took place, and he immediatelyrevenged himself for the long repression he had undergone, byendeavouring to destroy the very remembrance of her whom he regarded asa usurper. Every portrait of her that he could deface without exposinghimself to being accused of sacrilege was cut away, and he substitutedfor her name either that of Thûtmosis I. or of Thûtmosis II.

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

A complete political change was effected both at home and abroad fromthe first day of his accession to power. Hâtshopsîtû had been averse towar. During the whole of her reign there had not been a single campaignundertaken beyond the isthmus of Suez, and by the end of her life she hadlost nearly all that her father had gained in Syria; the people of Kharuhad shaken off the yoke,* probably at the instigation of the king of theAmorites,** and nothing remained to Egypt of the Asiatic province butGaza, Sharûhana,*** and the neighbouring villages. The young king setout with his army in the latter days of the year XXII. He reached Gazaon the 3rd of the month of Pakhons, in time to keep the anniversaryof his coronation in that town, and to inaugurate the 24th year of hisreign by festivals in honour of his father Amon.**** They lasted theusual length of time, and all the departments of State took part inthem, but it was not a propitious moment for lengthy ceremonies.

     * E. de Rougé thought that he had discovered, in a slightly     damaged inscription bearing upon the Pûanît expedition, the     mention of a tribute paid by the Lotanû. There is nothing in     the passage cited but the mention of the usual annual dues     paid by the chiefs of Pûanît and of the Ilîm.     ** This is at least what may be inferred from the account of     the campaign, where the Prince of Qodshû, a town of the     Amaûru (Amorites), figures at the head of the coalition     formed against Thûtmosis III.     *** This is the conclusion to be adopted from the beginning     of the inscription of Thûtmosis III.: "Now, during the     duration of these same years, the country of the Lotanû was     in discord until other times succeeded them, when the people     who were in the town of Sharûhana, from the town of Yûrza,     to the most distant regions of the earth, succeeded in     making a revolt against his Majesty."     **** The account of this campaign has been preserved to us     on a wall adjoining the granite sanctuary at Karnak.

The king left Gaza the following day, the 5th of Pakhons; he marchedbut slowly at first, following the usual caravan route, and despatchingtroops right and left to levy contributions on the cities of thePlain—Migdol, Yapu (Jaffa), Lotanû, Ono—and those within reach on themountain spurs, or situated within the easily accessible wadys, such asSauka (Socho), Hadid, and Harîlu. On the 16th day he had not proceededfurther than Yahmu, where he received information which caused him topush quickly forward. The lord of Qodshû had formed an alliance with theSyrian princes on the borders of Naharaim, and had extorted from thempromises of help; he had already gone so far as to summon contingentsfrom the Upper Orontes, the Litany, and the Upper Jordan, and wasconcentrating them at Megiddo, where he proposed to stop the way of theinvading army. Thûtmosis called together his principal officers, andhaving imparted the news to them, took counsel with them as to a planof attack. Three alternative routes were open to him. The most directapproached the enemy's position on the front, crossing Mount Carmel bythe saddle now known as the Umm el-Fahm; but the great drawback attachedto this route was its being so restricted that the troops would beforced to advance in too thin a file; and the head of the column wouldreach the plain and come into actual conflict with the enemy while therear-guard would only be entering the defiles in the neighbourhoodof Aluna. The second route bore a little to the east, crossing themountains beyond Dutîna and reaching the plain near Taânach; but itoffered the same disadvantages as the other. The third road ran northof Zafîti, to meet the great highway which cuts the hill-district ofNablûs, skirting the foot of Tabor near Jenîn, a little to the north ofMegiddo. It was not so direct as the other two, but it was easier fortroops, and the king's generals advised that it should be followed. Theking was so incensed that he was tempted to attribute their prudence tocowardice. "By my life! by the love that Râ hath for me, by the favourthat I enjoy from my master Amon, by the perpetual youth of my nostrilin life and power, My Majesty will go by the way of Aluna, and let himthat will go by the roads of which ye have spoken, and let him that willfollow My Majesty. What will be said among the vile enemies detested ofRâ: 'Doth not His Majesty go by another way? For fear of us he givesus a wide berth,' they will cry." The king's counsellors did not insistfurther. "May thy father Amon of Thebes protect thee!" they exclaimed;"as for us, we will follow Thy Majesty whithersoever thou goest, as itbefitteth a servant to follow his master." The word of command was givento the men; Thûtmosis himself led the vanguard, and the whole army,horsemen and foot-soldiers, followed in single file, wending their waythrough the thickets which covered the southern slopes of Mount Carmel.*

     * The position of the towns mentioned and of the three roads     has been discussed by E. de Rougé, also by P. de Saulcy, who     fixed the position of Yahmu at El-Kheimeh, and showed that     the Egyptian army must have passed through the defiles of     Umm el-Rahm. Conder disagreed with this opinion in certain     respects, and identified Aluna, Aruna, at first with     Arrabeh, and afterwards with Arraneh; he thought that     Thûtmosis came out upon Megiddo from the south-east, and he     placed Megiddo at Mejeddah, near Beisan, while Tomkins     placed Aruna in the Wady el-Arriân. W. Max Millier seems to     place Yahinu too much to the north, in the neighbourhood of     Jett.

They pitched their camp on the evening of the 19th near Aluna, and onthe morning of the 20th they entered the wild defiles through which itwas necessary to pass in order to reach the enemy. The king had takenprecautionary measures against any possible attempt of the natives tocut the main column during this crossing of the mountains. His positionmight at any moment have become a critical one, had the allies takenadvantage of it and attacked each battalion as it issued on to the plainbefore it could re-form. But the Prince of Qodshû, either from ignoranceof his adversary's movements, or confident of victory in the open,declined to take the initiative. Towards one o'clock in the afternoon,the Egyptians found themselves once more united on the further side ofthe range, close to a torrent called the Qina, a little to the south ofMegiddo. When the camp was pitched, Thûtmosis announced his intention ofengaging the enemy on the morrow. A council of war was held to decideon the position that each corps should occupy, after which the officersreturned to their men to see that a liberal supply of rations was servedout, and to organise an efficient system of patrols. They passed roundthe camp to the cry: "Keep a good heart: courage! Watch well, watchwell! Keep alive in the camp!" The king refused to retire to rest untilhe had been assured that "the country was quiet, and also the host, bothto south and north." By dawn the next day the whole army was in motion.It was formed into a single line, the right wing protected by thetorrent, the left extended into the plain, stretching beyond Megiddotowards the north-west. Thûtmosis and his guards occupied the centre,standing "armed in his chariot of electrum like unto Horus brandishinghis pike, and like Montû the Theban god." The Syrians, who had notexpected such an early attack, were seized with panic, and fled in thedirection of the town, leaving their horses and chariots on the field;but the citizens, fearing lest in the confusion the Egyptians shouldeffect an entrance with the fugitives, had closed their gates andrefused to open them. Some of the townspeople, however, let down ropesto the leaders of the allied party, and drew them up to the top of theramparts: "and would to heaven that the soldiers of His Majesty had notso far forgotten themselves as to gather up the spoil left by the vileenemy! They would then have entered Megiddo forthwith; for while the menof the garrison were drawing up the Lord of Qodshû and their own prince,the fear of His Majesty was upon their limbs, and their hands failedthem by reason of the carnage which the royal urous carried intotheir ranks." The victorious soldiery were dispersed over the fields,gathering together the gilded and silvered chariots of the Syrianchiefs, collecting the scattered weapons and the hands of the slain, andsecuring the prisoners; then rallying about the king, they greeted himwith acclamations and filed past to deliver up the spoil. He reproachedthem for having allowed themselves to be drawn away from the heat ofpursuit. "Had you carried Megiddo, it would have been a favour grantedto me by Râ my father this day; for all the kings of the country beingshut up within it, it would have been as the taking of a thousand townsto have seized Megiddo." The Egyptians had made little progress in theart of besieging a stronghold since the times of the XIIth dynasty. Whenscaling failed, they had no other resource than a blockade, and even themost stubborn of the Pharaohs would naturally shrink from the tedium ofsuch an undertaking. Thûtmosis, however, was not inclined to lose theopportunity of closing the campaign by a decisive blow, and began theinvestment of the town according to the prescribed modes.

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Beato.

His men were placed under canvas, and working under the protection ofimmense shields, supported on posts, they made a ditch around the walls,strengthening it with a palisade. The king constructed also on the eastside a fort which he called "Manakhpirrî-holds-the-Asiatics." Faminesoon told on the demoralised citizens, and their surrender brought aboutthe submission of the entire country. Most of the countries situatedbetween the Jordan and the sea—Shunem, Cana, Kinnereth, Hazor, Bedippa,Laish, Merom, and Acre—besides the cities of the Haurân—Hamath,Magato, Ashtarôth, Ono-repha, and even Damascus itself—recognised thesuzerainty of Egypt, and their lords came in to the camp to do homage.*

     * The names of these towns are inscribed on the lists of     Karnak published by Mariette.

The Syrian losses did not amount to more than 83 killed and 400prisoners, showing how easily they had been routed; but they hadabandoned considerable supplies, all of which had fallen into the handsof the victors. Some 724 chariots, 2041 mares, 200 suits of armour, 602bows, the tent of the Prince of Qodshû with its poles of cypress inlaidwith gold, besides oxen, cows, goats, and more than 20,000 sheep, wereamong the spoil. Before quitting the plain of Bsdraelon, the king causedan official survey of it to be made, and had the harvest reaped. Ityielded 208,000 bushels of wheat, not taking into account what had beenlooted or damaged by the marauding soldiery. The return homewards of theEgyptians must have resembled the exodus of some emigrating tribe ratherthan the progress of a regular army

Thûtmosis caused a long list of the vanquished to be engraved on thewalls of the temple which he was building at Karnak, thus affording thegood people of Thebes an opportunity for the first time of readingon the monuments the titles of the king's Syrian subjects written inhieroglyphics. One hundred and nineteen names follow each other inunbroken succession, some of them representing mere villages, whileothers denoted powerful nations; the catalogue, however, was not to endeven here. Having once set out on a career of conquest, the Pharaoh hadno inclination to lay aside his arms. From the XXIIth year of his reignto that of his death, we have a record of twelve military expeditions,all of which he led in person. Southern Syria was conquered at theoutset—the whole of Kharû as far as the Lake of Grennesareth, and theAmorite power was broken at one blow.

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

The three succeeding campaigns consolidated the rule of Egypt in thecountry of the Negeb, which lay to the south-west of the Dead Sea, inPhoenicia, which prudently resigned itself to its fate, and in that partof Lotanii occupying the northern part of the basin of the Orontes.**

     * We know of these three campaigns from the indirect     testimony of the Annals, which end in the year XXIX. with     the mention of the fifth campaign. The only dated one is     referred to the year XXV., and we know of that of the Negeb     only by the Inscription of Amenemhabî, 11. 3-5: the     campaign began in the Negeb of Judah, but the king carried     it to Naharaim the same year.

None of these expeditions appear to have been marked by any successescomparable to the victory at Megiddo, for the coalition of the Syrianchiefs did not survive the blow which they then sustained; but Qodshûlong remained the centre of resistance, and the successive defeats whichits inhabitants suffered never disarmed for more than a short intervalthe hatred which they felt for the Egyptian.

     On One Of The Pylons Of The Temple At Karnak. Drawn by     Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.

During these years of glorious activity considerable tribute poured into both Memphis and Thebes; not only ingots of gold and silver, bars andblocks of copper and lead, blocks of lapis-lazuli and valuable vases,but horses, oxen, sheep, goats, and useful animals of every kind, inaddition to all of which we find, as in Hâtshopsîtû's reign, the mentionof rare plants and shrubs brought back from countries traversed by thearmies in their various expeditions. The Theban priests and savantsexhibited much interest in such curiosities, and their royal pupil gaveorders to his generals to collect for their benefit all that appearedeither rare or novel. They endeavoured to acclimatise the species orthe varieties likely to be useful, and in order to preserve a record ofthese experiments, they caused a representation of the strange plants oranimals to be drawn on the walls of one of the chapels which they werethen building to one of their gods. These pictures may still be seenthere in interminable lines, portraying the specimens brought fromthe Upper Lotanû in the XXVth year of Thûtmosis, and we are able todistinguish, side by side with many plants peculiar to the regions ofthe Euphrates, others having their habitat in the mountains and valleysof tropical Africa.

This return to an aggressive policy on the part of the Egyptians, afterthe weakness they had exhibited during the later period of Hâtshopsîtû'sregency, seriously disconcerted the Asiatic sovereigns. They had vainlyflattered themselves that the invasion of Thûtmosis I. was merely thecaprice of an adventurous prince, and they hoped that when his love ofenterprise had expended itself, Egypt would permanently withdraw withinher traditional boundaries, and that the relations of Elam with Babylon,Carchemish with Qodshû, and the barbarians of the Persian Gulf with theinhabitants of the Iranian table-land would resume their former course.This vain delusion was dispelled by the advent of a new Thûtmosis, whoshowed clearly by his actions that he intended to establish and maintainthe sovereignty of Egypt over the western dependencies, at least, ofthe ancient Chaldæan empire, that is to say, over the countries whichbordered the middle course of the Euphrates and the coasts of theMediterranean. The audacity of his marches, the valour of his men, thefacility with which in a few hours he had crushed the assembled forcesof half Syria, left no room to doubt that he was possessed of personalqualities and material resources sufficient to carry out projects ofthe most ambitious character. Babylon, enfeebled by the perpetualdissensions of its Cossæan princes, was no longer in a position tocontest with him the little authority she still retained over thepeoples of Naharaim or of Coele-Syria; protected by the distance whichseparated her from the Nile valley, she preserved a sullen neutrality,while Assyria hastened to form a peaceful alliance with the invadingpower. Again and again its kings sent to Thûtmosis presents inproportion to their resources, and the Pharaoh naturally treated theiradvances as undeniable proofs of their voluntary vassalage. Each timethat he received from them a gift of metal or lapis-lazuli, he proudlyrecorded their tribute in the annals of his reign; and if, in exchange,he sent them some Egyptian product, it was in smaller quantities, asmight be expected from a lord to his vassal.*

     * The "tribute of Assûr" is mentioned in this way under the     years XXIII. and XXIV. The presents sent by the Pharaoh in     return are not mentioned in any Egyptian text, but there is     frequent reference to them in the Tel el-Amarna tablets. It     may be mentioned here that the name of Nineveh does not     occur on the Egyptian monuments, but only that of the town     Nîi, in which Champollion wrongly recognised the later     capital of Assyria.

Sometimes there would accompany the convoy, surrounded by an escort ofslaves and women, some princess, whom the king would place in his haremor graciously pass on to one of his children; but when, on the otherhand, an even distant relative of the Pharaoh was asked in marriage forsome king on the banks of the Tigris or Euphrates, the request was metwith a disdainful negative: the daughters of the Sun were of too noblea race to stoop to such alliances, and they would count it a humiliationto be sent in marriage to a foreign court.

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after Champollion.

Free transit on the main road which ran diagonally through Kharû wasensured by fortresses constructed at strategic points,* and from thistime forward Thûtmosis was able to bring the whole force of his armyto bear upon both Coele-Syria and Naharaim.** He encamped, in the yearXXVII., on the table-land separating the Afrîn and the Orontes from theEuphrates, and from that centre devastated the district of Ûânît,***which lay to the west of Aleppo; then crossing "the water of Naharaim"in the neighbourhood of Carchemish, he penetrated into the heart ofMitanni.

     * The castle, for instance, near Megiddo, previously     referred to, which, after having contributed to the siege of     the town, probably served to keep it in subjection.     ** The accounts of the campaigns of Thûtmosis III. have been     preserved in the Annals in a very mutilated condition, the     fragments of which were discovered at different times. They     are nothing but extracts from an official account, made for     Amon and his priests.     *** The province of the Tree Ûanû; cf. with this designation     the epithet "Shad Erini," "mountain of the cedar tree,"     which the Assyrians bestowed on the Amanus.

The following year he reappeared in the same region. Tunipa, which hadmade an obstinate resistance, was taken, together with its king, and 329of his nobles were forced to yield themselves prisoners. Thûtmosis "witha joyous heart" was carrying them away captive, when it occurred to himthat the district of Zahi, which lay away for the most part from thegreat military highroads, was a tempting prey teeming with spoil. Thebarns were stored with wheat and barley, the cellars were filled withwine, the harvest was not yet gathered in, and the trees bent under theweight of their fruit. Having pillaged Senzaûrû on the Orontes,* hemade his way to the westwards through the ravine formed by the Ishahrel-Kebîr, and descended suddenly on the territory of Arvad. The townsonce more escaped pillage, but Thutmosis destroyed the harvests,plundered the orchards, carried off the cattle, and pitilessly wastedthe whole of the maritime plain.

     * Senzaûrû was thought by Ebers to be "the double Tyre."     Brugsch considered it to be Tyre itself. It is, I believe,     the Sizara of classical writers, the Shaizar of the Arabs,     and is mentioned in one of the Tel el-Amarna tablets in     connection with Nîi.

There was such abundance within the camp that the men were continuallygetting drunk, and spent their time in anointing themselves with oil,which they could do only in Egypt at the most solemn festivals. Theyreturned to Syria in the year XXX., and their good fortune againfavoured them. The stubborn Qodshû was harshly dealt with; Simyra andArvad, which hitherto had held their own, now opened their gates to him;the lords of Upper Lotanû poured in their contributions without delay,and gave up their sons and brothers as hostages. In the year XXXI., thecity of Anamut in Tikhisa, on the shores of Lake Msrana, yielded in itsturn;* on the 3rd of Pakhons, the anniversary of his coronation, theLotanû renewed their homage to him in person.

     * The site of the Tikhisa country is imperfectly defined.     Nisrana was seemingly applied to the marshy lake into which     the Koweik flows, and it is perhaps to be found in the name     Kin-nesrîn. In this case Tikhisa would be the country near     the lake; the district of the Grseco-Roruan Chalkis is     situated on the right of the military road.

The return of the expedition was a sort of triumphal procession. Atevery halting-place the troops found quarters and provisions preparedfor them, bread and cakes, perfumes, oil, wine, and honey being providedin such quantities that they were obliged on their departure to leavethe greater part behind them. The scribes took advantage of thispeaceful state of affairs to draw up minute accounts of the products ofLotanû—corn, barley, millet, fruits, and various kinds of oil—prompteddoubtless by the desire to arrive at a fairly just apportionment ofthe tribute. Indeed, the results of the expedition were considered sosatisfactory that they were recorded on a special monument dedicated inthe palace at Thebes. The names of the towns and peoples might changewith every war, but the spoils suffered no diminution. In the yearXXXIII., the kingdoms situated to the west of the Euphrates were sofar pacified that Thutmosis was able without risk to carry his arms toMesopotamia. He entered the country by the fords of Carchemish, near tothe spot where his grandfather, Thutmosis I., had erected his stele halfa century previously. He placed another beside this, and a third to theeastward to mark the point to which he had extended the frontier of hisempire.. The Mitanni, who exercised a sort of hegemony over the whole ofNaharaim, were this time the objects of his attack. Thirty-two of theirtowns fell one after another, their kings were taken captive and thewalls of their cities were razed, without any serious resistance. Thebattalions of the enemy were dispersed at the first shock, and Pharaoh"pursued them for the space of a mile, without one of them daring tolook behind him, for they thought only of escape, and fled before himlike a flock of goats." Thutmosis pushed forward as far certainly as theBalikh, and perhaps on to the Khabur or even to the Hermus; and as heapproached the frontier, the king of Singar, a vassal of Assyria, senthim presents of lapis-lazuli.

When this prince had retired, another chief, the lord of the GreatKkati, whose territory had not even been threatened by the invaders,deemed it prudent to follow the example of the petty princes of theplain of the Euphrates, and despatched envoys to the Pharaoh bearingpresents of no great value, but testifying to his desire to live on goodterms with Egypt. Still further on, the inhabitants of Nîi begged theking's acceptance of a troop of slaves and two hundred and sixty mares;he remained among them long enough to erect a stele commemorating histriumph, and to indulge in one of those extensive hunts which were thedelight of Oriental monarchs. The country abounded in elephants. Thesoldiers were employed as beaters, and the king and his court succeededin killing one hundred and twenty head of big game, whose tusks wereadded to the spoils. These numbers indicate how the extinction of suchanimals in these parts was brought about. Beyond these regions, again,the sheikhs of the Lamnaniû came to meet the Pharaoh. They were a poorpeople, and had but little to offer, but among their gifts were somebirds of a species unknown to the Egyptians, and two geese, with which,however, His Majesty deigned to be satisfied.*

     * The campaign of the year XXXI. It is mentioned in the     Annals of Thulmosis III., 11. 17-27; the reference to the     elephant-hunt occurs only in the Inscription of     Amenemhabi, 11. 22, 23; an allusion to the defeat of the     kings of Mitanni is found in a mutilated inscription from     the tomb of Manakhpirrîsonbû. It was probably on his return     from this campaign that Thûtmosis caused the great list to     be engraved which, while it includes a certain number of     names assigned to places beyond the Euphrates, ought     necessarily to contain the cities of the Mitanni.