Chapter III: The Eighteenth Theban Dynasty (1)

_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 if we could lay our hands upon it. We should perhaps find in the midst of official documents, or among the short phrases of funerary biographies, some indication of the impression which the country produced upon its conquerors.

With the exception of a few merchants or adventurers, no one from Thebes to Memphis had any other idea of Asia than that which could be gathered from the scattered notices of it in the semi-historical romances of the preceding age. The actual sight of the country must have been a revelation; everything appearing new and paradoxical to men of whom the majority had never left their fatherland, except on some warlike expedition into Ethiopia or on some rapid raid along the coasts of the Red Sea. Instead of their own narrow valley, extending between its two mountain ranges, and fertilised by the periodical overflowing of the Nile which recurred regularly almost to a day, they had before them wide irregular plains, owing their fertility not to inundations, but to occasional rains or the influence of insignificant streams; hills of varying heights covered with vines and other products of cultivation; mountains of different altitudes irregularly distributed, clothed with forests, furrowed with torrents, their summits often crowned with snow even in the hottest period of summer: and in this region of nature, where everything was strange to them, they found nations differing widely from each other in appearance and customs, towns with crenellated walls perched upon heights difficult of access; and finally, a civilization far excelling that which they encountered anywhere in Africa outside their own boundaries. Thûtmosis succeeded in reaching on his first expedition a limit which none of his successors was able to surpass, and the road taken by him in this campaign--from Gaza to Megiddo, from Megiddo to Qodshû, from Qodshû to Carchemish--was that which was followed henceforward by the Egyptian troops in all their expeditions to the Euphrates. Of the difficulties which he encountered on his way we have no information. On arriving at Naharaim, however, we know that he came into contact with the army of the enemy, which was under the command of a single general--perhaps the King of Mitanni himself, or one of the lieutenants of the Cossæan King of Babylon--who had collected together most of the petty princes of the northern country to resist the advance of the intruder. The contest was hotly fought out on both sides, but victory at length remained with the invaders, and innumerable prisoners fell into their hands. The veteran Âhmosi, son of Abîna, who was serving in his last campaign, and his cousin, Âhmosi Pannekhabît, distinguished themselves according to their wont. The former, having seized upon a chariot, brought it, with the three soldiers who occupied it, to the Pharaoh, and received once more the collar of gold; the latter killed twenty-one of the enemy, carrying off their hands as trophies, captured a chariot, took one prisoner, and obtained as reward a valuable collection of jewellery, consisting of collars, bracelets, sculptured lions, choice vases, and costly weapons. A stele, erected on the banks of the Euphrates not far from the scene of the battle, marked the spot which the conqueror wished to be recognised henceforth as the frontier of his empire. He re-entered Thebes with immense booty, by which gods as well as men profited, for he consecrated a part of it to the embellishment of the temple of Amon, and the sight of the spoil undoubtedly removed the lingering prejudices which the people had cherished against expeditions beyond the isthmus. Thûtmosis was held up by his subjects to the praise of posterity as having come into actual contact with that country and its people, which had hitherto been known to the Egyptians merely through the more or less veracious tales of exiles and travellers. The aspect of the great river of the Naharaim, which could be compared with the Nile for the volume of its waters, excited their admiration. They were, however, puzzled by the fact that it flowed from north to south, and even were accustomed to joke at the necessity of reversing the terms employed in Egypt to express going up or down the river. This first Syrian campaign became the model for most of those subsequently undertaken by the Pharaohs. It took the form of a bold advance of troops, directed from Zalû towards the north-east, in a diagonal line through the country, who routed on the way any armies which might be opposed to them, carrying by assault such towns as were easy of capture, while passing by others which seemed strongly defended--pillaging, burning, and slaying on every side. There was no suspension of hostilities, no going into winter quarters, but a triumphant return of the expedition at the end of four or five months, with the probability of having to begin fresh operations in the following 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 others hitherto put into the field. The Egyptian army, inured to war by its long struggle with the Shepherd-kings, and kept in training since the reign of Âhmosis by having to repulse the perpetual incursions of the Ethiopian or Libyan barbarians, had no difficulty, in overcoming the Syrians; not that the latter were wanting in courage or discipline, but owing to their limited supply of recruits, and the political disintegration of the country, they could not readily place under arms such enormous numbers as those of the Egyptians. Egyptian military organisation had remained practically unchanged since early times: the army had always consisted, firstly, of the militia who held fiefs, and were under the obligation of personal service either to the prince of the nome or to the sovereign; secondly, of a permanent force, which was divided into two corps, distributed respectively between the Said and the Delta. Those companies which were quartered on the frontier, or about the king either at Thebes or at one of the royal residences, were bound to hold themselves in readiness to muster for a campaign at any given moment. The number of natives liable to be levied when occasion required, by generations, or as we should say by classes, may have amounted to over a hundred thousand men,* but they were never all called out, and it does not appear that the army on active service ever contained more than thirty thousand men at a time, and probably on ordinary 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 line and light troops. The former wore either short wigs arranged in rows of curls, or a kind of padded cap by way of a helmet, thick enough to deaden blows; the breast and shoulders were undefended, but a short loin-cloth was wrapped round the hips, and the stomach and upper part of the thighs were protected by a sort of triangular apron, sometimes scalloped at the sides, and composed of leather thongs attached to a belt. A buckler of moderate dimensions had been substituted for the gigantic shield of the earlier Theban period; it was rounded at the top and often furnished with a solid metal boss, which the experienced soldiers always endeavoured to present to the enemys lances and javelins. Their weapons consisted of pikes about five feet long, with broad bronze or copper points, occasionally of flails, axes, daggers, short curved swords, and spears; the trumpeters were armed with daggers only, and the officers did not as a rule encumber themselves with either buckler 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_--the celebrated archers of Egypt, whose long bows and arrows, used with deadly skill, speedily became renowned throughout the East; the quiver, of the use of which their ancestors were ignorant, had been borrowed from the Asiatics, probably from the Hyksôs, and was carried hanging at the side or slung over the shoulder. Both spearmen and archers were for the most part pure-bred Egyptians, and were divided into regiments of unequal 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*--in which the feudal contingents, each commanded by its lord or his lieutenants, fought side by side with the kings soldiers furnished from the royal domains. The effective force of the army was made up by auxiliaries taken from the tribes of the Sahara and from the negroes of the 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 their numbers were increased as wars became more frequent and necessitated more troops to carry them on. The tribes from which they were drawn supplied the Pharaohs with an inexhaustible reserve; they were courageous, active, indefatigable, and inured to hardships, and if it had not been for their turbulent nature, which incited them to continual internal dissensions, they might readily have shaken off the yoke of the Egyptians. Incorporated into the Egyptian army, and placed under the instruction of picked officers, who subjected them to rigorous discipline, and accustomed them to the evolutions of regular troops, they were transformed from disorganised hordes into tried and invincible battalions.*

* 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 kings body-
guard.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

The old army, which had conquered Nubia in the days of the Papis and Usirtasens, had consisted of these three varieties of foot-soldiers only, but since the invasion of the Shepherds, a new element had been incorporated into the modern army in the-shape of the chariotry, which answered to some extent to the cavalry of our day as regards their tactical employment and efficacy. The horse, when once introduced into Egypt, soon became fairly adapted to its environment. It retained both its height and size, keeping the convex forehead--which gave the head a slightly curved profile--the slender neck, the narrow hind-quarters, the lean and sinewy legs, and the long flowing tail which had characterised it in its native country. The climate, however, was enervating, and constant care had to be taken, by the introduction of new blood from Syria, 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 Nile valley, and the great feudal lords, following their example, vied with each other in the possession of numerous breeding stables. The office of superintendent to these establishments, which was at the disposal of the Master of the Horse, became in later times one of the most important State 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, of foreign origin, but when built by Egyptian workmen they soon became more elegant, if not stronger than their models. Lightness was the quality chiefly aimed at; and at length the weight was so reduced that it was possible for a man to carry his chariot on his shoulders without fatigue. The materials for them were on this account limited to oak or ash and leather; metal, whether gold or silver, iron or bronze, being used but sparingly, and then only for purposes of ornamentation. The wheels usually had six, but sometimes eight spokes, or occasionally only four. The axle consisted of a single stout pole of acacia. The framework of the chariot was composed of two pieces of wood mortised together so as 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 leather thongs. The sides of the chariot were formed of upright panels, solid in 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 about one-fifth of its length from the end, which was inserted into the centre of the axletree. On the gigantic T thus formed was fixed the body of the chariot, the hinder part resting on the axle, and the front attached to the bent part of the pole, while the whole was firmly bound together with double leather thongs. A yoke of hornbeam, shaped like a bow, to which the horses were harnessed, was fastened to the other extremity of the pole. The Asiatics placed three men in a chariot, but the Egyptians only two; the warrior--_sinni_--whose business it was to fight, and the shield-bearer--_qazana_--who protected his companion with a buckler during the engagement. A complete set of weapons was carried in the chariot--lances, javelins, and daggers, curved spear, club, and battle-axe--while two bow-cases as well as two large quivers were hung at the sides. The chariot itself was very liable to upset, the slightest cause being sufficient to overturn it. Even when moving at a slow pace, the least inequality of the ground shook it terribly, and when driven at full speed it was only by a miracle of skill that the occupants could maintain their equilibrium. At such times the charioteer would stand astride of the front panels, keeping his right foot only inside the vehicle, and planting the other firmly on the pole, so as to lessen the jolting, and to secure a wider base on which to balance himself. To carry all this into practice long education was necessary, for which there were special schools of instruction, and those who were destined to enter the army were sent to these schools when little more than children. To each man, as soon as he had thoroughly mastered all the difficulties of the profession, a regulation chariot and pair of horses were granted, for which he was responsible to the Pharaoh or to his generals, and he might then return to his home until the next call to arms. The warrior took precedence of the shield-bearer, and both were considered superior to the foot-soldier; the chariotry, in fact, like the 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 a horse, and it was only in the thick of a battle, when his chariot was broken, and there seemed no other way of escaping from the mêlée, that a warrior would venture to mount one of his steeds. There appear, however, to have been here and there a few horsemen, who acted as couriers or aides-de-camp; they used neither saddle-cloth nor stirrups, but were provided with reins with which to guide their animals, and their seat on horseback was even less secure than the footing of the driver in his chariot.

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

The infantry was divided into platoons of six to ten men each, commanded by an officer and marshalled round an ensign, which represented either a sacred animal, an emblem of the king or of his double, or a divine figure placed upon the top of a pike; this constituted an object of worship to the group of soldiers to whom it belonged. We are unable to ascertain how many of these platoons, either of infantry or of chariotry, went to form a company or a battalion, or by what ensigns the different grades were distinguished from each other, or what was their relative order of rank. Bodies of men, to the number of forty or fifty, are sometimes represented on the monuments, but this may be merely by chance, or because the draughtsman did not take the trouble to give the proper number accurately. The inferior officers were equipped very much like the soldiers, with the exception of the buckler, which they do not appear to have carried, and certainly did not when on the march: the superior officers might be known by their umbrella or flabellum, a distinction which gave them the right of approaching the kings person.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

The military exercises to which all these troops were accustomed probably differed but little from those which were in vogue with the armies of the Ancient Empire; they consisted in wrestling, boxing, jumping, running either singly or in line at regular distances from each other, manual exercises, fencing, and shooting at a target; the war-dance had ceased to be in use among the Egyptian regiments as a military exercise, but it was practised by the Ethiopian and Libyan auxiliaries. At the beginning of each campaign, the men destined to serve in it were called out by the military scribes, who supplied them with arms from the royal arsenals. Then followed the distribution of rations. The soldiers, each carrying a small linen bag, came up in squads before the commissariat officers, and each received his own allowance.*

* 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 enemys country the army advanced in close order, the infantry in columns of four, the officers in rear, and the chariots either on the right or left flank, or in the intervals between divisions. Skirmishers thrown out to the front cleared the line of march, while detached parties, pushing right and left, collected supplies of cattle, grain, or drinking-water from the fields and unprotected 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 and blacksmiths shops necessary for repairing bows, lances, daggers, and chariot-poles, the whole being piled up in four-wheeled carts drawn by asses or oxen. The army was accompanied by a swarm of non-combatants, scribes, soothsayers, priests, heralds, musicians, servants, and women of loose life, who were a serious cause of embarrassment to the generals, and a source of perpetual danger to military discipline. At nightfall they halted in a village, or more frequently bivouacked in an entrenched camp, marked out to suit the circumstances of the case. This entrenchment was always rectangular, its length being twice as great as its width, and was surrounded by a ditch, the earth from which, being banked up on the inside, formed a rampart from five to six feet in height; the exterior of this was then entirely faced with shields, square below, but circular in shape at the top. The entrance to the camp was by a single gate in one of the longer sides, and a plank served as a bridge 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 an enclosure, rose an immense tent, where the Pharaoh found all the luxury to 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 his father, Amon-Râ of Thebes. The princes of the blood who formed his escort, his shield-bearers and his generals, were crowded together hard by, 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 temporary encampments, but bivouacked in the open, and the sculptures on the façades of the Theban pylons give us a minute picture of the way in which they employed themselves when off duty. Here one man, while cleaning his armour, superintends the cooking. Another, similarly engaged, drinks from a skin of wine held up by a slave. A third has taken his chariot to pieces, and t is replacing some portion the worse for wear. Some are sharpening their daggers or lances; others mend their loin-cloths or sandals, or exchange blows with fists and sticks. The baggage, linen, arms, and provisions are piled in disorder on the ground; horses, oxen, and asses are eating or chewing the cud at their ease; while here and there a donkey, relieved of his burden, rolls himself 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 and hardihood of the men than to the strategical skill of their commanders. We find no trace of manouvres, in the sense in which we understand the word, either in their histories or on their bas-reliefs, but they joined battle boldly with the enemy, and the result was decided by a more or less bloody conflict. The heavy infantry was placed in the centre, the chariots were massed on the flanks, while light troops thrown out to the 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 straight forward, threw their whole weight against the opposing troops. At the same moment the charioteers set off at a gentle trot, and gradually quickened their pace till they dashed at full speed upon the foe, amid the 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 such evolutions, executed these charges as methodically as though they were still on their parade-ground at Thebes; if the disposition of the ground were at all favourable, not a single chariot would break the line, and the columns would sweep across the field without swerving or falling into disorder. The charioteer had the reins tied round his body, and could, by throwing his weight either to the right or the left, or by slackening or increasing the pressure through a backward or forward motion, turn, pull up, or start his horses by a simple movement of the loins: he went into battle with bent bow, the string drawn back to his 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 buckler with the other to shelter his comrade. It would seem that the Syrians were less skilful; their bows did not carry so far as those of their adversaries, and consequently they came within the enemys range some moments before it was possible for them to return the volley with effect. Their horses would be thrown down, their drivers would fall wounded, and the disabled chariots would check the approach of those following and overturn them, so that by the time the main body came up with the enemy the slaughter would have been serious enough to render victory hopeless. Nevertheless, more than one charge would be necessary finally to overturn or scatter the Syrian chariots, which, once accomplished, the Egyptian charioteer would turn against the foot-soldiers, and, breaking up their ranks, would tread them down under the 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, the urasus on his forehead, and the nodding plumes of his horses made him a mark for the blows of the enemy, and he would often find himself in positions of serious danger. In a few hours, as a rule, the conflict would come to an end.

Once the enemy showed signs of giving way, the Egyptian chariots dashed upon them precipitously, and turned the retreat into a rout: the pursuit was, however, never a long One; some fortress was always to be found close at hand where the remnant of the defeated host could take refuge.* The victors, moreover, would be too eager to secure the booty, and to strip 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 strange and contorted attitudes, each under the charge of his captor; then came the chariots, arms, slaves, and provisions collected on the battle-field or 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, not the head, but the right hand or the phallus, and brought it to the royal scribes. These made an accurate inventory of everything, and even Pharaoh did not disdain to be present at the registration. The booty did not belong to the persons who obtained it, but was thrown into a common stock which was placed at the disposal of the sovereign: one part he reserved for the gods, especially for his father Amon of Thebes, who had given him the victory; another part he kept for himself, and the remainder was distributed among his army. Each man received a reward in 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 took place after every successful engagement: from Pharaoh to the meanest camp-follower, every man who had contributed to the success of a campaign returned home richer than he had set out, and the profits which he derived from a war were a liberal compensation for the expenses in which it had involved him.

The results of the first expedition of Thûtmosis I. were of a decisive character; 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, if indeed it paid any at all after the departure of the Egyptians, but the southern part of the country, feeling itself in the grip of the new master, accepted its defeat: Gaza became the head-quarters of a garrison which secured the door of Asia for future invasion,* and Pharaoh, freed from anxiety in this quarter, gave his whole time to the consolidation of 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 lesson which he had given them: as soon as the last Egyptian soldier had left their territory they rebelled once more, and began a fresh series of inroads which had to be repressed anew year after year. Thûtmosis I. had several times to drive them back in the years II. and III., but was able to make short work of their rebellions. An inscription at Tombos on the Nile, in the very midst of the disturbed districts, told them in brave words 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 found none to withstand him; he had penetrated to valleys which were unknown to his ancestors, the inhabitants of which had never beheld the wearers of the double diadem. All this would have produced but little effect had he not backed up his words by deeds, and taken decisive measures to restrain the insolence of the barbarians. Tombos lies opposite to Hannek, at the entrance to that series of rapids known as the Third Cataract. The course of the Nile is here barred by a formidable dyke of granite, through which it has hollowed out six winding channels of varying widths, dotted here and there with huge polished boulders and verdant islets. When the inundation is at its height, the rocks are covered and the rapids disappear, with the exception of the lowest, which is named Lokoli, where faint eddies mark the place of the more dangerous reefs; and were it not that the fall here is rather more pronounced and the current somewhat stronger, few would suspect the existence of a cataract at the spot. As the waters go down, however, the channels gradually reappear. When the river is at its lowest, the three westernmost channels dry up almost completely, leaving nothing but a series 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 of Heliopolis, one of those brickwork citadels, with its rectangular keep, which set at nought all the efforts and all the military science of the Ethiopians: attached to it was a harbour, where each vessel on its way downstream put in for the purpose of hiring a pilot.*

The monarchs of the XIIth and XIIIth dynasties had raised fortifications at the approaches to Wady Haifa, and their engineers skilfully chose the sites so as completely to protect from the ravages of the Nubian pirates that 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 curve described by the river through the desert of Mahas, together with the island of Argo, and the confines of Dongola. The distance between Thebes and this southern frontier was a long one, and communication was slow during the winter months, when the subsidence of the waters had rendered the task of navigation difficult for the Egyptian ships. The king was obliged, besides, to concentrate his attention mainly on Asiatic affairs, and was no longer able to watch the movements of the African races with the same vigilance as his predecessors had exercised before Egyptian armies had made their way as far as the banks of the Euphrates. Thutmosis placed the control of the countries south of Assuan in the hands of a viceroy, who, invested with the august title of Royal Son of Kûsh, must have been regarded as having the blood of Râ himself running in 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 in office at the beginning of the campaign of the year III.* He belonged, it would seem, to a Theban family, and for several centuries afterwards his successors are mentioned among the nobles who were in the habit of attending the court. Their powers were considerable: they commanded armies, built or restored temples, administered justice, and received the homage of loyal sheikhs or the submission of rebellious ones.** The period for which they were appointed was not fixed by law, and they held office simply at the kings pleasure. During the XIXth dynasty it was usual to confer this office, the highest in the state, on a son of the sovereign, preferably the heir-apparent. Occasionally his appointment was purely formal, and he continued in attendance on his father, while a trusty substitute ruled in his place: often, however, he took the government on himself, and in the regions of the Upper Nile served an apprenticeship 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, but full of trickery and surprises: here he prepared himself for the larger arena of the Syrian campaigns, learning the arts of generalship more perfectly than was possible in the manouvres of the parade-ground. Moreover, the appointment was dictated by religious as well as by political considerations. The presumptive heir to the throne was to his father what Horus had been to Osiris--his lawful successor, or, if need be, his avenger, should some act of treason impose on him the duty of vengeance: and was it not in Ethiopia that Horus had gained his first victories over Typhon? To begin like Horus, and flesh his maiden steel on the descendants of the accomplices of Sit, was, in the case of the future sovereign, equivalent to affirming from the outset the reality of his 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 valley only in these regions of the Upper Nile which belonged to the Pharaohs. From this time onward it gave support to an Egyptian population as far as the juncture of the two Niles: it was a second Egypt, but a poorer one, whose cities presented the same impoverished appearance as that which we find to-day in the towns of Nubia. The tribes scattered right and left in the desert, or distributed beyond the confluence of the two Niles among the plains of Sennar, were descended from the old indigenous races, and paid valuable tribute every year in precious metals, ivory, timber, or the natural products of their districts, under penalty of armed 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 and Ûaûaîû, who in days gone by had opposed the advance of the victorious Egyptians: the name of the Uaûaîû was, indeed, used as a generic term to distinguish all those tribes which frequented the mountains between the Nile and the Red Sea,* but the wave of conquest had passed far beyond the boundaries reached in early campaigns, and had brought the Egyptians into contact with nations with whom they had been in only indirect commercial 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 the modern Abyssinians or Gallas: they had the same haughty and imperious carriage, the same well-developed and powerful frames, and the same love of fighting. Most of the remaining tribes were of black blood, and such of them as we see depicted on the monuments resemble closely the negroes inhabiting Central Africa at the present day.

They have the same elongated skull, the low prominent forehead, hollow temples, short flattened nose, thick lips, broad shoulders, and salient breast, the latter contrasting sharply with the undeveloped appearance of the lower part of the body, which terminates in thin legs almost devoid of calves. Egyptian civilization had already penetrated among these tribes, and, as far as dress and demeanour were concerned, their chiefs differed in no way from the great lords who formed the escort of the Pharaoh. We see these provincial dignitaries represented in the white robe and petticoat of starched, pleated, and gauffered linen; an innate taste for bright colours, even in those early times, being betrayed by the red or yellow scarf in which they wrapped themselves, passing it over one shoulder and round the waist, whence the ends depended and formed a kind of apron. A panthers skin covered the back, and one or two ostrich-feathers waved from the top of the head or were fastened on one side to the fillet confining the hair, which was arranged in short curls and locks, stiffened with gum and matted with grease, so as to form a sort of cap or grotesque aureole round the skull. The men delighted to load themselves with rings, bracelets, earrings, and necklaces, while from their arms, necks, and belts hung long strings of glass beads, which jingled with every movement of the wearer. They seem to have frequently chosen a woman as their ruler, and her dress appears to have closely resembled that of the Egyptian ladies. She appeared before her subjects in a chariot drawn by oxen, and protected from the sun by an umbrella edged with fringe. The common people went about nearly naked, having merely a loin-cloth of some woven stuff or an animals skin thrown round their hips. Their heads were either shaven, or adorned with tufts of hair stiffened with gum. The children of both sexes wore no clothes until the age of puberty; the women 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 on the back, supported by a leather band which passed across the forehead. One characteristic of all these tribes was their love of singing and dancing, and their use of the drum and cymbals; they were active and industrious, 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 shapes of lyres, bows, and spirals, with bifurcations at the ends, or with small human figures as terminations. As in the case of other negro tribes, they plied the blacksmiths and also the goldsmiths trade, working up both gold and silver into rings, chains, and quaintly shaped vases, some specimens of their art being little else than toys, similar in design to those which delighted the Byzantine Caesars of later date.

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

A wall-painting remains of a gold epergne, which represents men and monkeys engaged in gathering the fruit of a group of dôm-palms. Two individuals lead each a tame giraffe by the halter, others kneeling on the rim raise their hands to implore mercy from an unseen enemy, while negro prisoners, grovelling on their stomachs, painfully attempt to raise their head and shoulders from the ground. This, doubtless, represents a scene from the everyday life of the people of the Upper Nile, and gives a faithful picture of what took place among many of its tribes during a rapid inroad of some viceroy of Kush or a raid by his lieutenants.

The resources which Thûtmosis I. was able to draw regularly from these southern regions, in addition to the wealth collected during his Syrian campaign, enabled him to give a great impulse to building work. The tutelary deity of his capital--Amon-Râ--who had ensured him the victory in all his battles, had a prior claim on the bulk of the spoil; he received it as a matter of course, and his temple at Thebes was thereby considerably enlarged; we are not, however, able to estimate exactly what proportion fell to other cities, such as Kummeh, Elephantine,* Abydos,** and Memphis, where a few scattered blocks of stone still bear the name of the king. Troubles broke out in Lower Egypt, but they were speedily subdued by Thûtmosis, and he was able to end his days in the enjoyment of a profound peace, undisturbed by any care save that of ensuring a regular succession to his throne, and of restraining the ambitions 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 in power, his children by Queen Ahmasi took precedence of him, for by her mothers 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 soon as they were old enough to reign. The eldest of them, Uazmosû, died early.* The second, Amenmosu, lived at least to attain adolescence; he was allowed to share the crown with his father from the fourth year of the latters reign, and he also held a military command in the Delta,** but before long he also died, and Thûtmosis I. was left with only one son--a Thûtmosis like himself--to succeed him. The mother of this prince was a certain Mûtnofrit,*** half-sister to the king on his fathers side, who enjoyed such a high rank in the royal family that her husband allowed her to be portrayed in royal dress; her pedigree on the mothers side, however, was not so distinguished, and precluded her son from being recognised as heir-apparent, hence the occupation of the seat of Horus reverted once more to a woman, Hâtshopsîtû, the eldest daughter of 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 fathers 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 IL; 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. Her maternal ancestor, Sonisonbû, had not been a scion of the royal house, and this flaw in her pedigree threatened to mar, in her case, the sanctity of the solar blood. According to Egyptian belief, this defect of 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 case of two other sovereigns, viz. Amenôthes III., whose father, Titmosis IV., was born under conditions analogous to those attending the birth of Thûtmosis I.; and Ptolemy Caesarion, whose father, Julius Cæsar, was not of 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 perfume and light. The queen received him favourably, and the divine spouse on leaving her announced to her the approaching birth of a daughter, in whom his valour and strength should be manifested once more here below. The sequel of the story is displayed in a series of pictures before our eyes.

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

The protecting divinities who preside over the birth of children conduct the queen to her couch, and the sorrowful resignation depicted on her face, together with the languid grace of her whole figure, display in this portrait of her a finished work of art. The child enters the world amid shouts of joy, and the propitious genii who nourish both her and her double constitute themselves her nurses. At the appointed time, her earthly father summons the great nobles to a solemn festival, and presents to them his daughter, who is to reign with him over Egypt and the 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 her real sex. She changes the termination of her name, and calls herself Hâtshopsîû, the chief of the nobles, in lieu of Hâtshopsîtû, the chief of the favourites. She becomes the King Mâkerî, and on the occasion of all public ceremonies she appears in male costume. We see her represented on the Theban monuments with uncovered shoulders, devoid of breasts, wearing the short loin-cloth and the keffieh, while the diadem rests on her closely cut hair, and the false beard depends from her chin.

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, and also an epithet, inserted in her cartouche, which declared her to be the betrothed 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.