And, as a matter of fact, fortune did change. When he began to despair, “the desert burned like summer, the mountain was on fire, and the vein exhausted; one morning the overseer who was there questioned the miners, the skilled workers who were used to the mine, and they said: ‘There is turquoise for eternity in the mountain.’ At that very moment the vein appeared.” And, indeed, the wealth of the deposit which he found so completely indemnified Haroëris for his first disappointments, that in the month Pachons, three months after the opening of these workings, he had finished his task and prepared to leave the country, carrying his spoils with him. From time to time Pharaoh sent convoys of cattle and provisions—corn, sixteen oxen, thirty geese, fresh vegetables, live poultry—to his vassals at the mines.

The mining population increased so fast that two chapels were built, dedicated to Hâthor, and served by volunteer priests. One of these chapels, presumably the oldest, consists of a single rock-cut chamber, upheld by one large square pillar, walls and pillar having been covered with finely sculptured scenes and inscriptions which are now almost effaced. The second chapel included a beautifully proportioned rectangular court, once entered by a portico supported on pillars with Hâthor-head capitals, and beyond the court a narrow building divided into many small irregular chambers. The edifice was altered and rebuilt, and half destroyed; it is now nothing by a confused heap of ruins, of which the original plan cannot be traced. Votive stehe of all shapes and sizes, in granite, sandstone, or limestone, were erected here and there at random in the two chambers and in the courts between the columns, and flush with the walls. Some are still in situ, others lie scattered in the midst of the ruins. Towards the middle of the reign of Amenemhâît III., the industrial demand for turquoise and for copper ore became so great that the mines of Sarbût-el-Khâdîm could no longer meet it, and those in the Wady Maghara were re-opened. The workings of both sets of mines were carried on with unabated vigour under Amenemhâîfc IV., and were still in full activity when the XIIIth dynasty succeeded the XIIth on the Egyptian throne. Tranquillity prevailed in the recesses of the mountains of Sinai as well as in the valley of the Nile, and a small garrison sufficed to keep watch over the Bedouin of the neighbourhood. Sometimes the latter ventured to attack the miners, and then fled in haste, carrying off their meagre booty; but they were vigorously pursued under the command of one of the officers on the spot, and generally caught and compelled to disgorge their plunder before they had reached the shelter of their “douars.” The old Memphite kings prided themselves on these armed pursuits as though they were real victories, and had them recorded in triumphal bas-reliefs; but under the XIIth dynasty they were treated as unimportant frontier incidents, almost beneath the notice of the Pharaoh, and the glory of them—such as it was—he left to his captains then in command of those districts.

Egypt had always kept up extensive commercial relations with certain northern countries lying beyond the Mediterranean. The reputation for wealth enjoyed by the Delta sometimes attracted bands of the Haiû-nîbû to come prowling in piratical excursions along its shores; but their expeditions seldom turned out successfully, and even if the adventurers escaped summary execution, they generally ended their days as slaves in the Fayûm, or in some village of the Said. At first their descendants preserved the customs, religion, manners, and industries of their distant home, and went on making rough pottery for daily use, which was decorated in a style recalling that of vases found in the most ancient tombs of the Ægean archipelago; but they were gradually assimilated to their surroundings, and their grandchildren became fellahîn like the rest, brought up from infancy in the customs and language of Egypt.

The relations with the tribes of the Libyan desert, the Tihûnû and the Timihû, were almost invariably peaceful; although occasional raids of one of their bands into Egyptian territory would provoke counter raids into the valleys in which they took refuge with their flocks and herds. Thus, in addition to the captive Haiû-nîbû, another heterogeneous element, soon to be lost in the mass of the Egyptian population, was supplied by detachments of Berber women and children.

The relations Egypt with her northern neighbours during the hundred years of the XIIth dynasty were chiefly commercial, but occasionally this peaceful intercourse was broken by sudden incursions or piratical expeditions which called for active measures of repression, and were the occasion of certain romantic episodes. The foreign policy of the Pharaohs in this connexion was to remain strictly on the defensive. Ethiopia attracted all their attention, and demanded all their strength. The same instinct which had impelled their predecessors to pass successively beyond Gebel-Silsileh and Elephantine now drove the XIIth dynasty beyond the second cataract, and even further. The nature of the valley compelled them to this course. From the Tacazze, or rather from the confluence of the two Niles down to the sea, the whole valley forms as it were a Greater Egypt; for although separated by the cataracts into different divisions, it is everywhere subject to the same physical conditions. In the course of centuries it has more than once been forcibly dismembered by the chances of war, but its various parts have always tended to reunite, and have coalesced at the first opportunity. The Amami, the Irittt, and the Sitiu, all those nations which wandered west of the river, and whom the Pharaohs of the VIth and subsequently of the XIth dynasty either enlisted into their service or else conquered, do not seem to have given much trouble to the successors of Amenemhâît I. The Ûaûaiû and the Mâzaiû were more turbulent, and it was necessary to subdue them in order to assure the tranquillity of the colonists scattered along the banks of the river from Philo to Korosko. They were worsted by Amenemhâît I. in several encounters.

Ûsirtasen I. made repeated campaigns against them, the earlier ones being undertaken in his father’s lifetime. Afterwards he pressed on, and straightway “raised his frontiers” at the rapids of Wady Haifa; and the country was henceforth the undisputed property of his successors. It was divided into nomes like Egypt itself; the Egyptian language succeeded in driving out the native dialects, and the local deities, including Didûn, the principal god, were associated or assimilated with the gods of Egypt. Khnûmû was the favourite deity of the northern nomes, doubtless because the first colonists were natives of Elephantine, and subjects of its princes. In the southern nomes, which had been annexed under the Theban kings and were peopled with Theban immigrants, the worship of Khnûmû was carried on side by side with the worship of Amon, or Amon-Ra, god of Thebes. In accordance with local affinities, now no longer intelligible, the other gods also were assigned smaller areas in the new territory—Thot at Pselcis and Pnûbsît, where a gigantic nabk tree was worshipped, Râ near Derr, and Horus at Miama and Baûka. The Pharaohs who had civilized the country here received divine honours while still alive. Ûsirtasen III. was placed in triads along with Didûn, Amon, and Khnûmû; temples were raised to him at Semneh, Shotaûi, and Doshkeh; and the anniversary of a decisive victory which he had gained over the barbarians was still celebrated on the 21st of Pachons, a thousand years afterwards, under Thutmosis III. The feudal system spread over the land lying between the two cataracts, where hereditary barons held their courts, trained their armies, built their castles, and excavated their superbly decorated tombs in the mountain-sides. The only difference between Nubian Egypt and Egypt proper lay in the greater heat and smaller wealth of the former, where the narrower, less fertile, and less well-watered land supported a smaller population and yielded less abundant revenues.

The Pharaoh kept the charge of the more important strategical points in his own hands. Strongholds placed at bends of the river and at the mouths of ravines leading into the desert, secured freedom of navigation, and kept off the pillaging nomads. The fortress of Derr [Kubbân?—Ed.], which was often rebuilt, dates in part at least from the early days of the conquest of Nubia. Its rectangular boundary—a dry brick wall—is only broken by easily filled up gaps, and with some repairs it would still resist an Ababdeh attack.*

The most considerable Nubian works of the XIIth dynasty were in the three places from which the country can even now be most effectively commanded, namely, at the two cataracts, and in the districts extending from Derr to Dakkeh. Elephantine already possessed an entrenched camp which commanded the rapids and the land route from Syene to Philo. Usirtasen III. restored its great wall; he also cleared and widened the passage to Sériel, as did Papi I. to such good effect that easy and rapid communication between Thebes and the new towns was at all times practicable. Some little distance from Phihe he established a station for boats, and an emporium which he called Hirû Khâkerî—“the Ways of Khâkerî”—after his own throne name—Khâkerî.*

Its exact site is unknown, but it appears to have completed on the south side the system of walls and redoubts which protected the cataract provinces against either surprise or regular attacks of the barbarians. Although of no appreciable use for the purposes of general security, the fortifications of Middle Nubia were of great importance in the eyes of the Pharaohs. They commanded the desert roads leading to the Eed Sea, and to Berber and Gebel Barkel on the Upper Nile. The most important fort occupied the site of the present village of Kuban, opposite Dakkeh, and commanded the entrance to the Wady Olaki, which leads to the richest gold deposits known to Ancient Egypt. The valleys which furrow the mountains of Etbai, the Wady Shauanîb, the Waddy Umm Teyur, Gebel Iswud, Gebel Umm Kabriteh, all have gold deposits of their own. The gold is found in nuggets and in pockets in white quartz, mixed with iron oxides and titanium, for which the ancients had no use. The method of mining practised from immemorial antiquity by the Uaûaiû of the neighbourhood was of the simplest, and traces of the workings may be seen all over the sides of the ravines. Tunnels followed the direction of the lodes to a depth of fifty-five to sixty-five yards; the masses of quartz procured from them were broken up in granite mortars, pounded small and afterwards reduced to a powder in querns, similar to those used for crushing grain; the residue was sifted on stone tables, and the finely ground parts afterwards washed in bowls of sycamore wood, until the gold dust had settled to the bottom.*

This was the Nubian gold which was brought into Egypt by nomad tribes, and for which the Egyptians themselves, from the time of the XIIth dynasty onwards, went to seek in the land which produced it. They made no attempt to establish permanent colonies for working the mines, as at Sinai; but a detachment of troops was despatched nearly every year to the spot to receive the amount of precious metal collected since their previous visit. The king Usirtasen would send at one time the prince of the nome of the Gazelle on such an expedition, with a contingent of four hundred men belonging to his fief; at another time, it would be the faithful Sihâthor who would triumphantly scour the country, obliging young and old to work with redoubled efforts for his master Amenemhâît II. On his return the envoy would boast of having brought back more gold than any of his predecessors, and of having crossed the desert without losing either a soldier or a baggage animal, not even a donkey.

Sometimes a son of the reigning Pharaoh, even the heir-presumptive, would condescend to accompany the caravan. Amenemhâît III. repaired or rebuilt the fortress of Kubbân, the starting-place of the little army, and the spot to which it returned. It is a square enclosure measuring 328 feet on each side; the ramparts of crude brick are sloped slightly inwards, and are strengthened at intervals by bastions projecting from the external face of the wall. The river protected one side; the other three were defended by ditches communicating with the Nile. There were four entrances, one in the centre of each façade: that on the east, which faced the desert, and was exposed to the severest attacks, was flanked by a tower.

The cataract of Wady Haifa offered a natural barrier to invasion from the south. Even without fortification, the chain of granite rocks which crosses the valley at this spot would have been a sufficient obstacle to prevent any fleet which might attempt the passage from gaining access to northern Nubia.

The Nile here has not the wild and imposing aspect which it assumes lower down, between Aswan and Philae. It is bordered by low and receding hills, devoid of any definite outline. Masses of bare black rock, here and there covered by scanty herbage, block the course of the river in some places in such profusion, that its entire bed seems to be taken up by them. For a distance of seventeen miles the main body of water is broken up into an infinitude of small channels in its width of two miles; several of the streams thus formed present, apparently, a tempting course to the navigator, so calm and safe do they appear, but they conceal ledges of hidden reefs, and are unexpectedly forced into narrow passages obstructed by granite boulders. The strongest built and best piloted boat must be dashed to pieces in such circumstances, and no effort or skilfulness on the part of the crew would save the vessel should the owner venture to attempt the descent. The only channel at all available for transit runs from the village of Aesha on the Arabian side, winds capriciously from one bank to another, and emerges into calm water a little above Nakhiet Wady Haifa. During certain days in August and September the natives trust themselves to this stream, but only with boats lightly laden; even then their escape is problematical, for they are in hourly danger of foundering. As soon as the inundation begins to fall, the passage becomes more difficult: by the middle of October it is given up, and communication by water between Egypt and the countries above Wady Haifa is suspended until the return of the inundation. By degrees, as the level of the water becomes lower, remains of wrecks jammed between the rocks, or embedded in sandbanks, emerge into view, as if to warn sailors and discourage them from an undertaking so fraught with perils. Usirtasen I. realized the importance of the position, and fortified its approaches.

He selected the little Nubian town of Bohani, which lay exactly opposite to the present village of Wady Haifa, and transformed it into a strong frontier fortress. Besides the usual citadel, he built there a temple dedicated to the Theban god Amon and to the local Horus; he then set up a stele commemorating his victories over the peoples beyond the cataract.

Ten of their principal chiefs had passed before Amon as prisoners, their arms tied behind their backs, and had been sacrificed at the foot of the altar by the sovereign himself: he represented them on the stele by enclosing their names in battlemented cartouches, each surmounted by the bust of a man bound by a long cord which is held by the conqueror.

Nearly a century later Ûsirtasen III. enlarged the fortress, and finding doubtless that it was not sufficiently strong to protect the passage of the cataract, he stationed outposts at various points, at Matûga, Fakus, and Kassa. They served as mooring-places where the vessels which went up and down stream with merchandise might be made fast to the bank at sunset. The bands of Bedouin, lurking in the neighbourhood, would have rejoiced to surprise them, and by their depredations to stop the commerce between the Said and the Upper Nile, during the few weeks in which it could be carried on with a minimum of danger. A narrow gorge crossed by a bed of granite, through which the Nile passes at Semneh, afforded another most favourable site for the completion of this system of defence. On cliffs rising sheer above the current, the king constructed two fortresses, one on each bank of the river, which completely commanded the approaches by land and water. On the right bank at Kummeh, where the position was naturally a strong one, the engineers described an irregular square, measuring about two hundred feet each side; two projecting bastions flanked the entrance, the one to the north covering the approaching pathways, the southern one commanding the river-bank. A road with a ditch runs at about thirteen feet from the walls round the building, closely following its contour, except at the north-west and south-east angles, where there are two projections which formed bastions. The town on the other bank, Samninû-Kharp-Khâkerî, occupied a less favourable position: its eastern flank was protected by a zone of rocks and by the river, but the three other sides were of easy approach. They were provided with ramparts which rose to the height of eighty-two feet above the plain, and were strengthened at unequal distances by enormous buttresses. These resembled towers without parapets, overlooking every part of the encircling road, and from them the defenders could take the attacking sappers in flank.

The intervals between them had been so calculated as to enable the archers to sweep the intervening space with their arrows. The main building is of crude brick, with beams laid horizontally between; the base of the external rampart is nearly vertical, while the upper part forms an angle of some seventy degrees with the horizon, making the scaling of it, if not impossible, at least very difficult. Each of the enclosing walls of the two fortresses surrounded a town complete in itself, with temples dedicated to their founders and to the Nubian deities, as well as numerous habitations, now in ruins. The sudden widening of the river immediately to the south of the rapids made a kind of natural roadstead, where the Egyptian squadron could lie without danger on the eve of a campaign against Ethiopia; the galiots of the negroes there awaited permission to sail below the rapids, and to enter Egypt with their cargoes. At once a military station and a river custom-house, Semneh was the necessary bulwark of the new Egypt, and Usirtasen III. emphatically proclaimed the fact, in two decrees, which he set up there for the edification of posterity. “Here is,” so runs the first, “the southern boundary fixed in the year VIII. under his Holiness of Khâkerî, Usirtasen, who gives life always and for ever, in order that none of the black peoples may cross it from above, except only for the transport of animals, oxen, goats, and sheep belonging to them.” The edict of the year XVI. reiterates the prohibition of the year VIII., and adds that “His Majesty caused his own statue to be erected at the landmarks which he himself had set up.” The beds of the first and second cataracts were then less worn away than they are now; they are therefore more efficacious in keeping back the water and forcing it to rise to a higher level above. The cataracts acted as indicators of the inundation, and if their daily rise and fall were studied, it was possible to announce to the dwellers on the banks lower down the river the progress and probable results of the flood.

As long as the dominion of the Pharaohs reached no further than Philæ, observations of the Nile were always taken at the first cataract; and it was from Elephantine that Egypt received the news of the first appearance and progress of the inundation. Amenemhâît III. set up a new nilometer at the new frontier, and gave orders to his officers to observe the course of the flood. They obeyed him scrupulously, and every time that the inundation appeared to them to differ from the average of ordinary years, they marked its height on the rocks of Semneh and Kummeh, engraving side by side with the figure the name of the king and the date of the year. The custom was continued there under the XIIIth dynasty; afterwards, when the frontier was pushed further south, the nilometer accompanied it.

The country beyond Semneh was virgin territory, almost untouched and quite uninjured by previous wars. Its name now appears for the first time upon the monuments, in the form of Kaûshû—the humbled Kûsh. It comprised the districts situated to the south within the immense loop described by the river between Dongola and Khartoum, those vast plains intersected by the windings of the White and Blue Niles, known as the regions of Kordofan and Darfur; it was bounded by the mountains of Abyssinia, the marshes of Lake Nû, and all those semi-fabulous countries to which were relegated the “Isles of the Manes” and the “Lands of Spirits.” It was separated from the Red Sea by the land of Pûanît; and to the west, between it and the confines of the world, lay the Timihû. Scores of tribes, white, copper-coloured, and black, bearing strange names, wrangled over the possession of this vaguely defined territory; some of them were still savage or emerging from barbarism, while others had attained to a pitch of material civilization almost comparable with that of Egypt. The same diversity of types, the same instability and the same want of intelligence which characterized the tribes of those days, still distinguish the medley of peoples who now frequent the upper valley of the Nile. They led the same sort of animal life, guided by impulse, and disturbed, owing to the caprices of their petty chiefs, by bloody wars which often issued in slavery or in emigration to distant regions.

With such shifting and unstable conditions, it would be difficult to build up a permanent State. From time to time some kinglet, more daring, cunning, tenacious, or better fitted to govern than the rest, extended his dominion over his neighbours, and advanced step by step, till he united immense tracts under his single rule. As by degrees his kingdom enlarged, he made no efforts to organize it on any regular system, to introduce any uniformity in the administration of its affairs, or to gain the adherence of its incongruous elements by just laws which would be equally for the good of all: when the massacres which accompanied his first victories were over, when he had incorporated into his own army what was left of the vanquished troops, when their children were led into servitude and he had filled his treasury with their spoil and his harem with their women, it never occurred to him that there was anything more to be done. If he had acted otherwise, it would not probably have been to his advantage. Both his former and present subjects were too divergent in language and origin, too widely separated by manners and customs, and too long in a state of hostility to each other, to draw together and to become easily welded into a single nation. As soon as the hand which held them together relaxed its hold for a moment, discord crept in everywhere, among individuals as well as among the tribes, and the empire of yesterday resolved itself into its original elements even more rapidly than it had been formed. The clash of arms which had inaugurated its brief existence died quickly away, the remembrance of its short-lived glory was lost after two or three generations in the horrors of a fresh invasion: its name vanished without leaving a trace behind. The occupation of Nubia brought Egypt into contact with this horde of incongruous peoples, and the contact soon entailed a struggle. It is futile for a civilized state to think of dwelling peacefully with any barbarous nation with which it is in close proximity. Should it decide to check its own advances, and impose limits upon itself which it shall not pass over, its moderation is mistaken for feebleness and impotence; the vanquished again take up the offensive, and either force the civilized power to retire, or compel it to cross its former boundary. The Pharaohs did not escape this inevitable consequence of conquest: their southern frontier advanced continually higher and higher up the Nile, without ever becoming fixed in a position sufficiently strong to defy the attacks of the Barbarians. Usirtasen I. had subdued the countries of Hahû, of Khonthanunofir, and Shaad, and had beaten in battle the Shemîk, the Khasa, the Sus, the Aqîn, the Anu, the Sabiri, and the people of Akîti and Makisa. Amenemhâît II., Usirtasen II., and Usirtasen III. never hesitated to “strike the humbled Kush” whenever the opportunity presented itself. The last-mentioned king in particular chastised them severely in his VIIIth, XIIth, XVIth, and XIXth years, and his victories made him so popular, that the Egyptians of the Greek period, identifying him with the Sesostris of Herodotus, attributed to him the possession of the universe. On the base of a colossal statue of rose granite which he erected in the temple of Tanis, we find preserved a list of the tribes which he conquered: the names of them appear to us most outlandish—Alaka, Matakaraû, Tûrasû, Pamaîka, Uarakî, Paramakâ—and we have no clue as to their position on the map. We know merely that they lived in the desert, on both sides of the Nile, in the latitude of Berber or thereabouts. Similar expeditions were sent after Ûsirtasen’s time, and Amenem-hâît III. regarded both banks of the Nile, between Semneh and Dongola, as forming part of the territory of Egypt proper. Little by little, and by the force of circumstances, the making of Greater Egypt was realized; she approached nearer and nearer towards the limit which had been prescribed for her by nature, to that point where the Nile receives its last tributaries, and where its peerless valley takes its origin in the convergence of many others.

The conquest of Nubia was on the whole an easy one, and so much personal advantage accrued from these wars, that the troops and generals entered on them without the least repugnance. A single fragment has come down to us which contains a detailed account of one of these campaigns, probably that conducted by Usirtasen III. in the XVIth year of his reign. The Pharaoh had received information that the tribes of the district of Hûâ, on the Tacazze, were harassing his vassals, and possibly also those Egyptians who were attracted by commerce to that neighbourhood. He resolved to set out and chastise them severely, and embarked with his fleet. It was an expedition almost entirely devoid of danger: the invaders landed only at favourable spots, carried off any of the inhabitants who came in their way, and seized on their cattle—on one occasion as many as a hundred and twenty-three oxen and eleven asses, on others less. Two small parties marched along the banks, and foraging to the right and left, drove the booty down to the river. The tactics of invasion have scarcely undergone any change in these countries; the account given by Cailliaud of the first conquest of Fazogl by Ismail-Pasha, in 1822, might well serve to complete the fragments of the inscription of Usirtasen III., and restore for us, almost in every detail, a faithful picture of the campaigns carried on in these regions by the kings of the XIIth dynasty. The people are hunted down in the same fashion; the country is similarly ravaged by a handful of well-armed, fairly disciplined men attacking naked and disconnected hordes, the young men are massacred after a short resistance or forced to escape into the woods, the women are carried off as slaves, the huts pillaged, villages burnt, whole tribes exterminated in a few hours. Sometimes a detachment, having imprudently ventured into some thorny thicket to attack a village perched on a rocky summit, would experience a reverse, and would with great difficulty regain the main body of troops, after having lost three-fourths of its men. In most cases there was no prolonged resistance, and the attacking party carried the place with the loss of merely two or three men killed or wounded. The spoil was never very considerable in any one locality, but its total amount increased as the raid was carried afield, and it soon became so bulky that the party had to stop and retrace their steps, in order to place it for safety in the nearest fortress. The booty consisted for the most part of herds of oxen and of cumbrous heaps of grain, as well as wood for building purposes. But it also comprised objects of small size but of great value, such as ivory, precious stones, and particularly gold. The natives collected the latter in the alluvial tracts watered by the Tacazze, the Blue Nile and its tributaries. The women were employed in searching for nuggets, which were often of considerable size; they enclosed them in little leather cases, and offered them to the merchants in exchange for products of Egyptian industry, or they handed them over to the goldsmiths to be made into bracelets, ear, nose, or finger rings, of fairly fine workmanship. Gold was found in combination with several other metals, from which they did not know how to separate it: the purest gold had a pale yellow tint, which was valued above all others, but electrum, that is to say, gold alloyed with silver in the proportion of eighty per cent., was also much in demand, while greyish-coloured gold, mixed with platinum, served for making common jewellery.*

None of these expeditions produced any lasting results, and the Pharaohs established no colonies in any of these countries. Their Egyptian subjects could not have lived there for any length of time without deteriorating by intermarriage with the natives or from the effects of the climate; they would have degenerated into a half-bred race, having all the vices and none of the good qualities of the aborigines. The Pharaohs, therefore, continued their hostilities without further scruples, and only sought to gain as much as possible from their victories. They cared little if nothing remained after they had passed through some district, or if the passage of their armies was marked only by ruins. They seized upon everything which came across their path—men, chattels, or animals—and carried them back to Egypt; they recklessly destroyed everything for which they had no use, and made a desert of fertile districts which but yesterday had been covered with crops and studded with populous villages. The neighbouring inhabitants, realizing their incapacity to resist regular troops, endeavoured to buy off the invaders by yielding up all they possessed in the way of slaves, flocks, wood, or precious metals. The generals in command, however, had to reckon with the approaching low Nile, which forced them to beat a retreat; they were obliged to halt at the first appearance of it, and they turned homewards “in peace,” their only anxiety being to lose the smallest possible number of men or captured animals on their return journey.

As in earlier times, adventurous merchants penetrated into districts not reached by the troops, and prepared the way for conquest. The princes of Elephantine still sent caravans to distant parts, and one of them, Siranpîtû, who lived under Ûsirtasen I. and Amenemhâit II., recorded his explorations on his tomb, after the fashion of his ancestors: the king at several different times had sent him on expeditions to the Soudan, but the inscription in which he gives an account of them is so mutilated, that we cannot be sure which tribes he visited. We learn merely that he collected from them skins, ivory, ostrich feathers—everything, in fact, which Central Africa has furnished as articles of commerce from time immemorial. It was not, however, by land only that Egyptian merchants travelled to seek fortune in foreign countries: the Red Sea attracted them, and served as a quick route for reaching the land of Pûanît, whose treasures in perfumes and rarities of all kinds had formed the theme of ancient traditions and navigators’ tales. Relations with it had been infrequent, or had ceased altogether, during the wars of the Heracleo-politan period: on their renewal it was necessary to open up afresh routes which had been forgotten for centuries.

Traffic was confined almost entirely to two or three out of the many,—one which ran from Elephantine or from Nekhabît to the “Head of Nekhabît,” the Berenice of the Greeks; others which started from Thebes or Koptos, and struck the coast at the same place or at Saû, the present Kosseir. The latter, which was the shortest as well as the favourite route, passed through Wady Hammamât, from whence the Pharaohs drew the blocks of granite for their sarcophagi. The officers who were sent to quarry the stone often took advantage of the opportunity to visit the coast, and to penetrate as far as the Spice Regions. As early as the year VIII. of Sônkherî, the predecessor of Amenemhâît I., the “sole friend” Hûnû had been sent by this road, “in order to take the command of a squadron to Pûanît, and to collect a tribute of fresh incense from the princes of the desert.” He got together three thousand men, distributed to each one a goatskin bottle, a crook for carrying it, and ten loaves, and set out from Koptos with this little army. No water was met with on the way: Hûnû bored several wells and cisterns in the rock, one at a halting-place called Bait, two in the district of Adahaît, and finally one in the valleys of Adabehaît. Having reached the seaboard, he quickly constructed a great barge, freighted it with merchandise for barter, as well as with provisions, oxen, cows, and goats, and set sail for a cruise along the coast: it is not known how far he went, but he came back with a large cargo of all the products of the “Divine Land,” especially of incense. On his return, he struck off into the Uagai valley, and thence reached that of Rohanû, where he chose out splendid blocks of stone for a temple which the king was building: “Never had ‘Royal Cousin’ sent on an expedition done as much since the time of the god Râ!” Numbers of royal officers and adventurers followed in his footsteps, but no record of them has been preserved for us. Two or three names only have escaped oblivion—that of Khnûmhotpû, who in the first year of Ûsirtasen I. erected a stele in the Wady Gasûs in the very heart of the “Divine Land;” and that of Khentkhîtioîrû, who in the XXVIIIth year of Amenemhâît II. entered the haven of Saû after a fortunate cruise to Pûanît, without having lost a vessel or even a single man. Navigation is difficult in the Red Sea. The coast as a rule is precipitous, bristling with reefs and islets, and almost entirely without strand or haven. No river or stream runs into it; it is bordered by no fertile or wooded tract, but by high cliffs, half disintegrated by the burning sun, or by steep mountains, which appear sometimes a dull red, sometimes a dingy grey colour, according to the material—granite or sandstone—which predominates in their composition. The few tribes who inhabit this desolate region maintain a miserable existence by fishing and hunting: they were considered, during the Greek period, to be the most unfortunate of mortals, and if they appeared to be so to the mariners of the Ptolemies, doubtless they enjoyed the same reputation in the more remote time of the Pharaohs. A few fishing villages, however, are mentioned as scattered along the littoral; watering-places, at some distance apart, frequented on account of their wells of brackish water by the desert tribes: such were Nahasît, Tap-Nekhabît, Saû, and Tâû: these the Egyptian merchant-vessels used as victualling stations, and took away as cargo the products of the country—mother-of-pearl, amethysts, emeralds, a little lapis-lazuli, a little gold, gums, and sweet-smelling resins. If the weather was favourable, and the intake of merchandise had been scanty, the vessel, braving numerous risks of shipwreck, continued its course as far as the latitude of Sûakîn and Massowah, which was the beginning of Pûanît properly so called. Here riches poured down to the coast from the interior, and selection became a difficulty: it was hard to decide which would make the best cargo, ivory or ebony, panthers’ skins or rings of gold, myrrh, incense, or a score of other sweet-smelling gums. So many of these odoriferous resins were used for religious purposes, that it was always to the advantage of the merchant to procure as much of them as possible: incense, fresh or dried, was the staple and characteristic merchandise of the Red Sea, and the good people of Egypt pictured Pûanît as a land of perfumes, which attracted the sailor from afar by the delicious odours which were wafted from it.

These voyages were dangerous and trying: popular imagination seized upon them and made material out of them for marvellous tales. The hero chosen was always a daring adventurer sent by his master to collect gold from the mines of Nubia; by sailing further and further up the river, he reached the mysterious sea which forms the southern boundary of the world. “I set sail in a vessel one hundred and fifty cubits long, forty wide, with one hundred and fifty of the best sailors in the land of Egypt, who had seen heaven and earth, and whose hearts were more resolute than those of lions. They had foretold that the wind would not be contrary, or that there would be even none at all; but a squall came upon us unexpectedly while we were in the open, and as we approached the land, the wind freshened and raised the waves to the height of eight cubits. As for me, I clung to a beam, but those who were on the vessel perished without one escaping. A wave of the sea cast me on to an island, after having spent three days alone with no other companion than my own heart. I slept there in the shade of a thicket; then I set my legs in motion in quest of something for my mouth.” The island produced a quantity of delicious fruit: he satisfied his hunger with it, lighted a fire to offer a sacrifice to the gods, and immediately, by the magical power of the sacred rites, the inhabitants, who up to this time had been invisible, were revealed to his eyes. “I heard a sound like that of thunder, which I at first took to be the noise of the flood-tide in the open sea; but the trees quivered, the earth trembled. I uncovered my face, and I perceived that it was a serpent which was approaching. He was thirty cubits in length, and his wattles exceeded two cubits; his body was incrusted with gold, and his colour appeared like that of real lapis. He raised himself before me and opened his mouth; while I prostrated myself before him, he said to me: ‘Who hath brought thee, who hath brought thee, little one, who hath brought thee? If thou dost not tell me immediately who brought thee to this island, I will cause thee to know thy littleness: either thou shalt faint like a woman, or thou shalt tell me something which I have not yet heard, and which I knew not before thee.’ Then he took me into his mouth and carried me to his dwelling-place, and put me down without hurting me; I was safe and sound, and nothing had been taken from me.” Our hero tells the serpent the story of his shipwreck, which moves him to pity and induces him to reciprocate his confidence. “Fear nothing, fear nothing, little one, let not thy countenance be sad! If thou hast come to me, it is the god who has spared thy life; it is he who has brought thee into this ‘Isle of the Double,’ where nothing is lacking, and which is filled with all good things. Here thou shalt pass one month after another till thou hast remained four months in this island, then shall come a vessel from thy country with mariners; thou canst depart with them to thy country, and thou shalt die in thy city. To converse rejoices the heart, he who enjoys conversation bears misfortune better; I will therefore relate to thee the history of this island.” The population consisted of seventy-five serpents, all of one family: it formerly comprised also a young girl, whom a succession of misfortunes had cast on the island, and who was killed by lightning. The hero, charmed with such good nature, overwhelmed the hospitable dragon with thanks, and promised to send him numerous presents on his return home. “I will slay asses for thee in sacrifice, I will pluck birds for thee, I will send to thee vessels filled with all the riches of Egypt, meet for a god, the friend of man in a distant country unknown to men.” The monster smiled, and replied that it was needless to think of sending presents to one who was the ruler of Pûanît; besides, “as soon as thou hast quitted this place, thou wilt never again see this island, for it will be changed into waves.”—“And then, when the vessel appeared, according as he had predicted to me, I went and perched upon a high tree and sought to distinguish those who manned it. I next ran to tell him the news, but I found that he was already informed of its arrival, and he said to me: ‘A pleasant journey home, little one; mayst thou behold thy children again, and may thy name be well spoken of in thy town; such are my wishes for thee!’ He added gifts to these obliging words. I placed all these on board the vessel which had come, and prostrating myself, I adored him. He said to me: ‘After two months thou shalt reach thy country, thou wilt press thy children to thy bosom, and thou shalt rest in thy sepulchre.’ After that I descended the shore to the vessel, and I hailed the sailors who were in it. I gave thanks on the shore to the master of the island, as well as to those who dwelt in it.” This might almost be an episode in the voyages of Sindbad the Sailor; except that the monsters which Sindbad met with in the course of his travels were not of such a kindly disposition as the Egyptian serpent: it did not occur to them to console the shipwrecked with the charm of a lengthy gossip, but they swallowed them with a healthy appetite. Putting aside entirely the marvellous element in the story, what strikes us is the frequency of the relations which it points to between Egypt and Pûanît. The appearance of an Egyptian vessel excites no astonishment on its coasts: the inhabitants have already seen many such, and at such regular intervals, that they are able to predict the exact date of their arrival. The distance between the two countries, it is true, was not considerable, and a voyage of two months was sufficient to accomplish it. While the new Egypt was expanding outwards in all directions, the old country did not cease to add to its riches. The two centuries during which the XIIth dynasty continued to rule were a period of profound peace; the monuments show us the country in full possession of all its resources and its arts, and its inhabitants both cheerful and contented. More than ever do the great lords and royal officers expatiate in their epitaphs upon the strict justice which they have rendered to their vassals and subordinates, upon the kindness which they have shown to the fellahîn, on the paternal solicitude with which, in the years of insufficient inundations or of bad harvests, they have striven to come forward and assist them, and upon the unheard-of disinterestedness which kept them from raising the taxes during the times of average Niles, or of unusual plenty. Gifts to the gods poured in from one end of the country to the other, and the great building works, which had been at a standstill since the end of the VIth dynasty, were recommenced simultaneously on all sides. There was much to be done in the way of repairing the ruins, of which the number had accumulated during the two preceding centuries. Not that the most audacious kings had ventured to lay their hands on the sanctuaries: they emptied the sacred treasuries, and partially confiscated their revenues, but when once their cupidity was satisfied, they respected the fabrics, and even went so far as to restore a few inscriptions, or, when needed, to replace a few stones. These magnificent buildings required careful supervision: in spite of their being constructed of the most durable materials—sand-stone, granite, limestone,—in spite of their enormous size, or of the strengthening of their foundations by a bed of sand and by three or four courses of carefully adjusted blocks to form a substructure, the Nile was ever threatening them, and secretly working at their destruction. Its waters, filtering through the soil, were perpetually in contact with the lower courses of these buildings, and kept the foundations of the walls and the bases of the columns constantly damp: the saltpetre which the waters had dissolved in their passage, crystallising on the limestone, would corrode and undermine everything, if precautions were not taken. When the inundation was over, the subsidence of the water which impregnated the subsoil caused in course of time settlements in the most solid foundations: the walls, disturbed by the unequal sinking of the ground, got out of the perpendicular and cracked; this shifting displaced the architraves which held the columns together, and the stone slabs which formed the roof. These disturbances, aggravated from year to year, were sufficient, if not at once remedied, to entail the fall of the portions attacked; in addition to this, the Nile, having threatened the part below with destruction, often hastened by direct attacks the work of ruin, which otherwise proceeded slowly. A breach in the embankments protecting the town or the temple allowed its waters to rush violently through, and thus to effect large gaps in the decaying walls, completing the overthrow of the columns and wrecking the entrance halls and secret chambers by the fall of the roofs. At the time when Egypt came under the rule of the XIIth dynasty there were but few cities which did not contain some ruined or dilapidated sanctuary. Amenemhâît I., although fully occupied in reducing the power of the feudal lords, restored; the temples as far as he was able, and his successors pushed forward the work vigorously for nearly two centuries.

The Delta profited greatly by this activity in building. The monuments there had suffered more than anywhere else: fated to bear the first shock of foreign invasion, and transformed into fortresses while the towns in which they were situated were besieged, they have been captured again and again by assault, broken down by attacking engines, and dismantled by all the conquerors of Egypt, from the Assyrians to the Arabs and the Turks. The fellahîn in their neighbourhood have for centuries come to them to obtain limestone to burn in their kilns, or to use them as a quarry for sandstone or granite for the doorways of their houses, or for the thresholds of their mosques. Not only have they been ruined, but the remains of their ruins have, as it were, melted away and almost entirely disappeared in the course of ages. And yet, wherever excavations have been made among these remains which have suffered such deplorable ill-treatment, colossi and inscriptions commemorating the Pharaohs of the XIIth dynasty have been brought to light. Amenemhâît I. founded a great temple at Tanis in honour of the gods of Memphis: the vestiges of the columns still scattered on all sides show that the main body of the building was of rose granite, and a statue of the same material has preserved for us a portrait of the king. He is seated, and wears the tall head-dress of Osiris. He has a large smiling face, thick lips, a short nose, and big staring eyes: the expression is one of benevolence and gentleness, rather than of the energy and firmness which one would expect in the founder of a dynasty. The kings who were his successors all considered it a privilege to embellish the temple and to place in it some memorial of their veneration for the god. Ûsirtasen I., following the example of his father, set up a statue of himself in the form of Osiris: he is sitting on his throne of grey granite, and his placid face unmistakably recalls that of Amenemhâît I. Amenemhâît II., Usirtasen II., and his wife Nofrît have also dedicated their images within the sanctuary.

Nofrît’s is of black granite: her head is almost eclipsed by the heavy Hâthor wig, consisting of two enormous tresses of hair which surround the cheeks, and lie with an outward curve upon the breast; her eyes, which were formerly inlaid, have fallen out, the bronze eyelids are lost, her arms have almost disappeared. What remains of her, however, gives us none the less the impression of a young and graceful woman, with a lithe and well-proportioned body, whose outlines are delicately modelled under the tight-fitting smock worn by Egyptian women; the small and rounded breasts curve outward between the extremities of her curls and the embroidered hem of her garment; and a pectoral bearing the name of her husband lies flat upon her chest, just below the column of her throat.