Egypt was now on the defensive. This was the result of conditions both within and without. As we have seen, the nation had lost its expansive power and the impulse which resulted from the expulsion of the Hyksos three hundred and fifty years before was no longer felt. The exploits of Thutmose III's generals were still narrated, and garnished with legendary wonders they still circulated among the people. But the spirit which had stirred the heroes of the first Asiatic conquests had now vanished. While this was the condition within, without all was turbulence and unrest.

The restless maritime peoples of the northern Mediterranean, creeping along the coasts, sought plunder or places for permanent settlement, and together with the Libyans on the one hand and the peoples of remoter Asia Minor on the other, they broke in wave on wave upon the borders of the Pharaoh's empire. Egypt was inevitably thrown on the defensive, her day of conquest and aggression was passed and for six hundred years no serious effort to extend her borders was made.

For the next sixty years after the death of Ramses II we shall be able to watch the struggle of the Pharaohs merely to preserve the empire, which it had been the ambition of their great ancestors rather to extend. At this crisis in the affairs of the nation, after it had been under the rule of an aged man for twenty years and much needed the vigourous hand of a young and active monarch, the enfeebled Ramses was succeeded by his thirteenth son, Merneptah, now far advanced in years. Thus one old man succeeded another upon the throne.

The result was what might have been expected. Nothing was immediately done to check the bold incursions of the Libyans and their maritime allies on the west. The death of Ramses was not followed by any disturbance in the Asiatic dominions in so far as we can see. The northern border in Syria was as far north as the upper Orontes valley, including at least part of the Amorite country in which Merneptah had a royal city bearing his name, probably inherited from his father and renamed. With the Hittite kingdom he enjoyed undisturbed peace, doubtless under the terms of the old treaty, negotiated by his father forty six years before. Indeed Merneptah sent shiploads of grain to the Hittites to relieve them in time of famine; but he must have been fully paid for the shipment, although one might infer from his reference to it that it was a work of philanthropy.

By the end of his second year, however, he had reason to rue the good will shown his father's ancient enemy. It will be remembered that among the allies of the Hittites at the battle of Kadesh there were already maritime peoples like the Lycians and Dardanians. In some way Merneptah must have discovered that the Hittites were now involved in the incursions of these peoples in the western Delta in alliance with the Libyans. Perhaps for the sake of further conquest in Syria, they had given the Libyans and their allies at least moral support and actively stirred rebellion among the Pharaoh's Asiatic cities.

However this may be, the year three (about 1223 BC) found widespread revolt against him in Asia; Askalon at the very gates of Egypt, the powerful city of Gezer at the lower end of the valley of Ajalon, leading up from the sea-plain to Jerusalem; Yenoam, one of the Lebanon Tripolis given by Thutmose III to Amon two hundred and sixty years before, the tribes of Israel and all western Syria-Palestine as far as it was controlled by the Pharaoh; all these rose against their Egyptian overlord. We have nothing but a song of triumph to tell us of the ensuing war; but it is evident that Merneptah appeared in Asia in his third year, and in spite of his advanced years carried the campaign to a successful issue. It is probable, indeed, that even the Hittites did not escape his wrath, though we cannot suppose that the aged Merneptah could have done more than plunder a border town or two.

The revolting cities were severely punished and all Palestine was again humiliated and brought completely under the yoke. Among the revolters who suffered were some of the tribes of Israel who had now secured a footing in Palestine, as we saw at the close of the Eighteenth and opening of the Nineteenth Dynasty. They were sufficiently amalgamated to be referred to as
"Israel", and they here make their first appearance in history as a people. Gezer must have cost Merneptah some trouble and perhaps withstood a siege; in any case he thereafter styled himself in his titulary "Binder of Gezer", as if its subjugation were a notable achievement. Such a siege would explain why Merneptah was unable to move against the invaders of the western Delta until his fifth year, as the investment of such a stronghold as Gezer might have occupied him another year.

When he returned the Egyptian domains in Asia had been saved, but it is not probable that he had advanced the inherited frontier. Meantime the situation in the west was serious in the extreme; the hordes of Tehenu-Libyans were pushing further into the Delta from their settlements along the northern coast of Africa west of Egypt. It is possible that some of their advance settlers had even reached the canal of Heliopolis.

Little is known of the Libyans at this time. Immediately upon the Egyptian border seems to have been the territory of the Tehenu; further west came the tribes known to the Egyptians as Lebu or Rebu, the Libyans of the Greeks, by which name also the Egyptians designated these western peoples as a whole. On the extreme west, and extending far into then unknown regions, lived the Meshwesh, or Maxyes, of Herodotus. They were all doubtless the ancestors of the Berber tribes of North Africa. They were far from being totally uncivilized barbarians, but were skilled in war, well armed and capable of serious enterprises against the Pharaoh. Just at this time they were rapidly consolidating, and under good leadership gave promise of becoming an aggressive and formidable state, with its frontier not ten days' march from the Pharaoh's residence in the eastern Delta.

The whole western Delta was strongly tinctured with Libyan blood and Libyan families were now constantly crossing the western border of the Delta as far as the "great river" as the western or Canopic mouth of the Nile was called. Others had penetrated to the two northern oases which lie southwest of the Fayum. "They spend their time going about the land fighting to fill their bodies daily'', says Merneptah's record, "they come to the land of Egypt to seek the necessities of their mouths."

Emboldened by their long immunity, the Libyans assumed an organized offensive, and what had been but a scattered immigration now became a compact invasion. Meryey, king of the Libyans, forced the Tehenu to join him and, supported by roving bands of maritime adventurers from the coast, he invaded Egypt. He brought his wife and his children with him, as did also his allies and the movement was clearly an immigration as well as an invasion. The allies were the now familiar Sherden or Sardinians; the Shekelesh, possibly the Sikeli natives of early Sicily; Ekwesh, perhaps Achreans, the Lycians, who had preyed on Egypt since the days of Amenhotep III; and the Teresh, doubtless the Tyrsenians or Etruscans.

It is with these wandering marauders that the peoples of Europe emerge for the first time upon the arena of history, although we have seen them in their material documents since the Middle Kingdom.

This crossing to Africa by the northern Mediterranean peoples is but one of the many such ventures which in prehistoric ages brought over the white race whom we know as Libyans. Judging from the numbers who were afterward slain or captured, the Libyan king must have commanded at least some twenty thousand men or more.

Merneptah, at last aroused to the situation, was fortifying Heliopolis and Memphis, when news of the danger reached him late in March of his fifth year. Instantly summoning his officials, he ordered them to muster the troops and have the army ready to move in fourteen days. The aged king had a reassuring dream, in which Ptah appeared in gigantic stature beside him and extended him a sword, telling him to banish all fear. By the middle of April the Egyptian force was in the western Delta, and on the evening of the same day came within striking distance of the enemy. Near a place called Perire, the location of which, although not exactly certain, is to be placed somewhere on the main road leading westward out of the Delta into the Libyan country a few miles in from the frontier fort and station guarding the road at the point where it entered the Delta.

In the vicinity of Perire, among the opulent vineyards of the region there was a chateau of the Pharaoh and thence eastward extended the broad prospect of nodding grainfields where the rich Delta harvest was now fast ripening for the sickle. Upon such a prospect of smiling plenty the barbarian host looked down as they pushed past the western frontier forts. By the Pharaoh's Perire chateau, on the morning of April fifteenth, battle was joined. The contest lasted six hours when the Egyptian archers drove the allies from the field with immense loss. As is customary in modern times at this point in a battle, Merneptah now immediately threw in his horse in pursuit of the flying enemy, who were harried and decimated till they reached the "Mount of the Horns of the Earth", as the Egyptians called the edge of the plateau on the west of the Delta into which they escaped.

King Meryey had fled from the field as soon as he saw the action going against him. He made good his escape, but all his household furniture and his family fell into the hands of the Egyptians. The energetic pursuit resulted in a great slaughter and many prisoners. No less than nine thousand of the invaders fell, of whom at least one third were among the maritime allies of the Libyans; while probably as many more were taken prisoner. Among the dead were six sons of the Libyan king. The booty was enormous; some nine thousand copper swords and of weapons of all sorts and similar equipment no less than over one hundred and twenty thousand pieces. Besides these there were the fine weapons and vessels in precious metal taken from the camp of the Libyan king's household and chiefs, comprising over three thousand pieces. When the camp had been thoroughly looted its leathern tents were fired and the whole went up in smoke and flame.

The army then returned in triumph to the royal residence in the eastern Delta bearing laden upon asses the hands and other trophies cut from the bodies of the slain. The booty and the trophies were brought beneath the palace balcony, where the king inspected them and showed himself to the rejoicing multitude. He then assembled the nobles in the great hall of the palace where he harangued them. What was more important, there now came to him a letter from the commandant of one of the fortresses on the frontier of the western Delta, stating that the Libyan king had escaped past the Egyptian cordon in the darkness of the night; and adding information to the effect that the Libyans had repudiated and dethroned their discomfited king and chosen another in his place who was hostile to him and would fight
him. It was evident therefore that the aggressive party in Libya had fallen and that no further trouble from that quarter need be apprehended during the reign of Merneptah at least.

In the rejoicing of the people which followed this great deliverance, there is a note not only of exuberant triumph but also of intense relief. The constant plundering at the hands of Libyan hordes, which the people of the western Delta had endured for nearly a generation was now ended. Not only was a great national danger averted, but an intolerable situation was relieved. Little wonder that the people sang: "Great joy has come in Egypt, rejoicing comes forth from the towns of Tomeri [Egypt]. They talk of the victories which Merneptah has achieved among the Tehenu:

'How amiable is he, the victorious ruler!

How magnified is the king among the gods!

How fortunate is he, the commanding lord!

Sit happily down and talk or walk far out upon the way for there is no fear in the heart of the people.

The strongholds are left to themselves, the wells are opened again.

The messengers skirt the battlements of the walls, shaded from the sun, until their watchmen wake.

The soldiers lie sleeping and the border-scouts are in the field [or not] as they desire.

The herds of the field are left as cattle sent forth without herdman, crossing at will the fullness of the stream.

There is no uplifting of a shout in the night:

"Stop! Behold one comes, one comes with the speech of strangers!"

One comes and goes with singing, and there is no lamentation of mourning people. The towns are settled again anew; and as for one that ploweth his harvest, he shall eat of it. Re has turned himself to Egypt; he was born destined to be her protector, even the king Merneptah.

"The kings are overthrown, saying, "Salam"

Not one holds up his head among the nine nations of the bow.

Wasted is Tehenu,

The Hittite Land is pacified,

Plundered is the Canaan, with every evil,

Carried off is Askalon,

Seized upon is Gezer,

Yenoam is made as a thing not existing.

Israel is desolated, her seed is not,

Palestine has become a [defenseless] widow for Egypt.

All lands are united, they are pacified;

Every one that is turbulent is bound by king Merneptah".

It is this concluding song, reverting also to Merneptah's triumphs in Asia, which tells us nearly all that we know of his Asiatic war. It is a kind of summary of all his victories, and forms a fitting conclusion of the rejoicing of the people. Thus the sturdy old Pharaoh, although bowed down with years, had repelled from his empire the first assault, premonitory of the coming storm. He reigned at least five years longer, apparently enjoying profound peace in the north. He strengthened his Asiatic frontier with a fortress bearing his name, and in the south he quelled a rebellion in Nubia. The commonly accepted statement that toward the end of his reign a Syrian at court gained control of Merneptah and became regent is entirely without foundation and due to misunderstanding of the titles of Ben-Ozen, the Syrian marshal of his court, to whom we have already referred.

The long reign of Ramses II, with its prodigality in buildings, left Merneptah little means to gratify his own desires in this respect. Moreover, his days were numbered and there was not time to hew from the quarries and transport the materials for such a temple as it had now become customary for each Pharaoh to erect at Thebes for his own mortuary service. Under these circumstances, Merneptah had no hesitation in resorting to the most brutal destruction of the monuments of his ancestors. To obtain materials for his mortuary temple he made a quarry of the noble sanctuary of Amenhotep III on the western plain, ruthlessly tore down its walls and split up its superb statues to serve as blocks in his own building. Among other things thus appropriated was a magnificent black granite stela over ten feet high containing a record of Amenhotep III's buildings. Merneptah erected it in his new building with face to the wall, and his scribes cut upon the back a hymn of victory over the Libyans, of which we have quoted the conclusion above. It has become notable because it contains the earliest known reference to Israel.

Merneptah's desecration of the great works of the earlier Pharaohs did not even spare those of his own father who, it will be remembered, had set him a notorious example in this respect. Ramses had the audacity, after a life time of such vandalism, to record in his Abydos temple a long appeal to his descendants to respect his foundations and his monuments, but not even his own son showed them the respect which he craved. We find Merneptah's name constantly on the monuments of his father.

After a reign of at least ten years Merneptah passed away (1215 BC) and was buried at Thebes in the valley with his ancestors. His body has recently been found there, quite discomfiting the adherents of the theory that, as the undoubted Pharaoh of the Hebrew Exodus, he must have been drowned in the Red Sea!

However much we may despise him for his desecration and shameful destruction of the greatest works of his ancestors, it must be admitted at the same time that at an advanced age, when such responsibility must have sat heavily, he manfully met a grave crisis in the history of his country, which might have thrown it into the hands of a foreign dynasty. The laxity which had accompanied the long continued rule of two old men gave ample opportunity for intrigue, conspiracy and the machinations of rival factions. The death of Merneptah was the beginning of a conflict for the throne which lasted for many years.

Two pretenders were at first successful : Amenmeses and Merneptah-Siptah. The former was but an ephemeral usurper, who through some collateral line of the royal house perhaps possessed a distant claim to the throne. He was hostile to the memory of Merneptah, while his successor, Merneptah-Siptah, who quickly supplanted him, took possession of his monuments in turn and destroyed his tomb in the western valley of Thebes. We shall now find that Nubia was a fruitful source of hostility to the royal house. As did the Roman provinces in the days of that empire, Nubia offered a field, at a safe distance from the seat of power, where a sentiment against the ruling house and in favour of some pretender might be secretly encouraged without danger of detection.

It was perhaps in Nubia that Siptah gained the ascendancy. However this may be, we find him in his first year installing his viceroy there in person, and sending one of his adherents about distributing rewards there. By such methods and by marrying Tewosret, probably a princess of the old Pharaonic line, he succeeded in maintaining himself for at least six years, during which the tribute from Nubia seems to have been regularly delivered, and the customary intercourse with the Syrian provinces maintained. The viceroy whom he appointed in Nubia was one Seti, who was now also, as we have before observed, "governor of the gold country of Amon." This brought him into intimate relations with the powerful priesthood of Amon at Thebes, and it is not impossible that he improved the opportunity of this intercourse and of his influential position to do what Siptah had himself done in Nubia. In any case, as Siptah now disappears a Seti succeeds him as the second of that name. He was later regarded as the sole legitimate king of the three who followed Merneptah.

He seems to have ruled with some success, for he built a small temple at Karnak and another at Eshmunen-Hermopolis. He took possession of the tomb of Siptah and his queen, Tewosret, although he was afterward able to excavate one of his own. But his lease of power was brief; the long uncurbed nobility, the hosts of mercenaries in the armies, the powerful priesthoods, the numerous foreigners in positions of rank at court, ambitious pretenders and their adherents,— all these aggressive and conflicting influences demanded for their control a strong hand and unusual qualities of statesmanship in the ruler. These qualities Seti II did not possess, and he fell a victim to conditions which would have mastered many a stronger man than he.

With the disappearance of Seti II those who had overthrown him were unable to gain the coveted power of which they had deprived him. Complete anarchy ensued. The whole country fell into the hands of the local nobles, chiefs and rulers of towns, and the condition of the common people under such misrule was such as only the orient ever experiences. "Every man was thrown out of his right; they had no chief [literally, 'chief mouth'] for many years formerly until other times. The land of Egypt was in the hands of nobles and rulers of towns; one slew his neighbour, great and small."

How long the period of "many years" may have been we cannot now determine, but the nation must have been well on toward dissolution into the petty kingdoms and principalities out of which it was consolidated at the dawn of history. Then came famine, with all the misery which the Arab historians later depict in their annals of similar periods under the Mamluke sultans in Egypt. Indeed the record of this period left us by Ramses III in the
great Papyrus Harris, in spite of its brevity, reads like a chapter from the rule of some Mamluke sultan of the fourteenth century. Profiting by the helplessness of the people and the preoccupation of the native rulers, one of those Syrians who had held an official position at the court seized the crown, or at least the power, and ruled in tyranny and violence. "He set the whole land tributary before him together; he united his companions and plundered their possessions. They made the gods like men and no offerings were presented in the temples." Property rights were therefore no longer respected and even the revenues of the temples were diverted.

As might have been expected the Libyans were not long in perceiving the helplessness of Egypt. Immigration across the western frontier of the Delta began again; plundering bands wandered among the towns from the vicinity of Memphis to the Mediterranean, or took possession of the fields and settled on both shores of the Canopic branch. At this juncture, about 1200 BC, there arose one Setnakht, a strong man of uncertain origin, but probably a descendant of the old line of Seti I and Ramses II; and although the land was beset with foes within and without, he possessed the qualities of organization and the statesmanship first to make good his claims against the innumerable local aspirants to the crown; and having subdued these, to restore order and reorganize the almost vanished state of the old Pharaohs. His great task was accomplished with brilliant success, but all that we know of it is contained in the brief words left us by his son, Ramses III, who says of him: "But when the gods inclined themselves to peace, to set the land in its right according to its accustomed manner, they established their son, who came forth from their limbs to be ruler of every land, upon their great throne, even king Setnakht ... He set in order the entire land, which had been rebellious; he slew the rebels who were in the land of Egypt; he cleansed the great throne of Egypt ... Every man knew his brother, who had been walled in [obliged to live behind protecting walls]. He established the temples in possession of the divine offerings to offer to the gods according to their customary stipulations."

It will be seen that the Syrian usurper had alienated the priesthoods by violating their endowments, and that Setnakht took advantage of this fact and made head against him by conciliating these the wealthiest and most powerful communities in Egypt. We shall readily understand that Setnakht's arduous achievement left him little time for monuments which might have perpetuated his memory. Indeed, he could not even find opportunity to excavate for himself a tomb at Thebes; but seized that of Siptah and his queen, Tewosret, which had already been appropriated, but eventually not used by Seti II. His reign must have been brief, for his highest date is his first year, scratched on the back of a leaf of papyrus by a scribe in trying his pen. Before he died (1198 BC) he named as his successor his son, Ramses, the third of the name, who had already been of assistance to him in the government.

With the Ramessid line, now headed by Ramses III, Manetho begins a new dynasty, the Twentieth, although the old line was evidently already interrupted after Merneptah, and as we have said, probably resumed again in the person of Setnakht. Ramses III inherited a situation precisely like that which confronted Merneptah at his accession; but being a young and vigourous man, he was better able successfully to cope with it. He immediately perfected the organization for military service, dividing all the people into classes successively liable for such service. A large proportion of the standing army, not exactly determinable, consisted of Sherden mercenaries, as in Ramses II's day, while a contingent of the Kehek, a Libyan tribe, was also in the ranks. These mercenaries of course served as long as they were eligible. Since the native contingent was constantly shifting, as class after class passed through the army, the Pharaoh came more and more to depend upon the mercenaries as the permanent element in his army.

The affairs of the newly organized government gave Ramses no opportunity to deal with the chronic situation in the western Delta until he was rudely awakened to the necessity for action, as Merneptah had been. But more serious developments had taken place since the latter's Libyan war. The restless and turbulent peoples of the northern Mediterranean, whom the Egyptians designated the "peoples of the sea", were showing themselves in ever increasing numbers in the south. Among these, two in particular whom we have not met before, the Thekel and the Peleset, better known as the Philistines of Hebrew history, were prominently aggressive.

The Peleset were one of the early tribes of Crete, and the Thekel may have been another branch of the pre-Greek Sikeli or Sicilians. Accompanied by contingents of Denyen (Danaoi), Sherden, Weshesh and Shekeiesh, the first two peoples mentioned had begun an eastward and southward movement, doubtless impelled by pressure of other peoples advancing in their rear. Knowing nothing of their language or institutions, and having only a series of Egyptian reliefs, which depict these men, their costumes, weapons, ships and utensils, it is useless for us to speculate as to their racial affinities; but their immigration evidently is one of the earliest instances of that slow but resistless southern shift, which, first observable here, is traceable far down in European history.

Moving gradually southward in Syria, some of these immigrants had now advanced perhaps as far as the upper waters of the Orontes and the kingdom of Amor; while the more venturesome of their ships were coasting along the Delta and stealing into the mouths of the river on plundering expeditions. They readily fell in with the plans of the Libyan leaders to invade and plunder the rich and fertile Delta. Meryey, the Libyan king, deposed after his defeat by Merneptah, had been followed by one, Wermer, who in his turn was succeeded by a king Themer, the leader of the present invasion of Egypt. By land and water they advanced into the western Delta where Ramses III promptly met them and gave them battle near a town called "Usermare-Meriamon [Ramses III is Chastiser of Temeh", Libya]. Their ships were destroyed or captured and their army beaten back with enormous loss. Over twelve thousand five hundred were slain upon the field and at least a thousand captives were taken. Of the killed a large proportion were from the ranks of the sea-rovers.

There was the usual triumph at the royal residence, when the king viewed the captives and the trophies from the balcony of the palace, while his nobles rejoiced below. Amon, who had granted the great victory, did not fail to receive his accustomed sacrifice of living victims, and all Egypt rejoiced in restored security, such that, as Ramses boasted, a woman might walk abroad as far as she wished with her veil raised without fear of molestation.

To strengthen his frontier against the Libyans Ramses now built a town and stronghold named after himself upon the western road where it left the Delta and passed westward into the desert plateau. It was upon an elevated point known as the "Mount of the Horns of the Earth'', already mentioned by Merneptah in his war-records.

Meanwhile the rising tide from the north was threatening gradually to overwhelm the Egyptian Empire; we have seen its outermost waves breaking on the shores of the Delta. The advanced galleys and the land forces of the northern maritime peoples which supported the Libyans against Ramses III in the year five were but the premonitory skirmish line of a far more serious advance, to which we have already adverted. It was now in full motion southward through Syria. Its hosts were approaching both by land, with their families in curious, heavy, two-wheeled ox-carts, and by sea in a numerous fleet that skirted the Syrian coast. Well armed and skilled in warfare as the invaders were, the Syrian city-states were unable to withstand their onset. They overran all the Hittite country of northern Syria as fas as Carchemish on the Euphrates, past Arvad on the Phoenician coast, and up the Orontes valley to the kingdom of Amor, which they devastated. The Syrian dominions of the Hittites must have been lost and the Hittite power in Syria completely broken. The fleet visited Alasa, or Cyprus; and nowhere was an effective resistance offered them.

"They came with fire, prepared before them, forward to Egypt. Their main support was Peleset, Thekel, Shekelesh, Denyen and Weshesh. These lands were united and they laid their hands upon the land as far as the circle of the earth. The countries, which came from their isles in the midst of the sea, they advanced to Egypt, their hearts relying upon their arms". In Amor they established a central camp and apparently halted for a time.

Ramses III threw himself with great energy into the preparations for repelling the attack. He fortified his Syrian frontier and rapidly gathered a fleet, which he distributed in the northern harbours. From his palace balcony he personally superintended the equipment of the infantry, and when all was in readiness he set out for Syria to lead the campaign himself. Where the land-battle took place we are unable to determine, but as the Northerners had advanced to Amor, it was at most not further north than that region. We learn nothing from Ramses III's records concerning it beyond vague and general statements of the defeat of the enemy, although in his reliefs we see his Sherden mercenaries breaking through the scattered lines of the enemy and plundering their ox-carts, bearing the women and children and the belongings of the Northerners. As there were Sherden among the invaders, Ramses III's mercenaries were thus called upon to fight their own countrymen.

Ramses was also able to reach the scene of the naval battle, probably in one of the northern harbours on the coast of Phoenicia, early enough to participate in the action from the neighbouring shore. He had manned his fleet with masses of the dreaded Egyptian archers, whose fire was so effective that the ranks of the heavy armed Northerners were completely decimated before they could approach within boarding distance. This fire was augmented and rendered still more effective by bodies of Egyptian archers whom Ramses stationed along the shore, he himself personally drawing his bow against the hostile fleet. As the Egyptians then advanced to board, the enemy's ships were thrown into confusion.

"Capsized and perishing in their places, their hearts are taken, their souls fly away, and their weapons are cast out upon the sea. His arrows pierce whomsoever he will among them, and he who is hit falls into the water. They were dragged, overturned and laid low upon the beach; slain and made heaps from stern to bow of their galleys, while all their things were cast upon the waters, for a remembrance of Egypt."

Those who escaped the fleet and swam ashore, were captured by the waiting Egyptians on the beach. In these two engagements the Pharaoh struck his formidable enemy so decisive a blow that his suzerainty, at least as far north as Amor, could not be questioned by the invaders. They continued to arrive in Syria, but Ramses III's double victory made these new settlers and their new settlements vassals of Egypt, paying tribute into the treasury of the Pharaoh. The Egyptian Empire in Asia had again been saved and Ramses returned to his Delta residence to enjoy a well earned triumph.

He was now given a short respite, during which he seems not to have relaxed his vigilance in the least. This was well, for another migration of the peoples in the far west caused an overflow which again threatened the Delta. The Meshwesh, a tribe living behind the Libyans, that is, on the west of them, were the cause of the trouble. The Libyans had undoubtedly received a chastisement in the fifth year of Ramses III such that they had no immediate desire to repeat their attempt upon the Delta; but the Meshwesh invaded the Libyan country and laid it waste,thus forcing the unfortunate Libyans into an alliance against Egypt. Other tribes were involved, but the leader of the movement was Meshesher, son of Keper, king of the Meshwesh, whose firm purpose was to migrate and settle in the Delta.

"The hostile foe had taken counsel again to spend their lives in the confines of Egypt, that they might take the hills and plains as their own districts. We will settle in Egypt, so spoke they with one accord, and they continuously entered the boundaries of Egypt.'"

By the twelfth month in Ramses' eleventh year they had begun the invasion, entering along the western road as in the time of Merneptah and investing the fortress of Hatsho, some eleven miles from the edge of the desert plateau, near the canal called "The Water of Re." Ramses attacked them under the walls of Hatsho, from the ramparts of which the Egyptian garrison poured a destructive archery fire into the ranks of the Meshwesh, already discomfited by the Pharaoh's onset. The invaders were thus thrown into a tumultuous rout and received the fire of another neighbouring stronghold as they fled. Ramses pressed the pursuit for eleven miles along the western road to the margin of the plateau, thus fairly driving the invaders out of the country. He halted at the fortified town and station, ''Town [or House] of Usermare-Meriamon [Ramses III]," which, it will be remembered, he had founded upon some high point at the edge of the plateau, the "Mount of the Horns of the Earth."

Meshesher, the chief of the Meshwesh, was slain and his father Keper was captured, two thousand one hundred and seventy five of their followers fell, while two thousand and fifty two, of whom over a fourth were females, were taken captive. Ramses tells of the disposition which he made of these captives: "I settled their leaders in strongholds in my name. I gave to them captains of archers and chief men of the tribes, branded and made into slaves, impressed with my name; their wives and their children likewise." Nearly a thousand of the Meshwesh were assigned to the care of a templeherd called "Ramses III is the Conqueror of the Meshwesh at the Waters of Re." Similarly he established in celebration of his victory an annual feast which he called in his temple calendar, "Slaying of the Meshwesh"; and he assumed in his elaborate titulary after his name the epithets, "Protector of Egypt, Guardian of the Countries, Conqueror of the Meshwesh, Spoiler of the Land of Temeh." The western tribes had thus been hurled back from the borders of the Delta for the third successive time, and Ramses had no occasion to apprehend any further aggressions from that quarter. The expansive power of the Libyan peoples, although by no means exhausted, now no longer appeared in united national action, but as they had done from prehistoric times they continued to sift gradually into the Delta in scattered and desultory migration, not regarded by the Pharaoh as a source of danger.

The commotion among the northern maritime peoples, although checked by Ramses III upon his Syrian frontier, had evidently greatly disturbed the vassals of Egypt there. Whether as of old in the days of Hittite aggression the king of Amor had made common cause with the invader we cannot now discern; but following closely upon the last Libyan campaign, Ramses found it necessary to appear in Amor with his army. The limits and the course of the campaign are but obscurely hinted at in the meagre records now surviving. He stormed at least five strong cities, one of which was in Amor another depicted in Ramses' reliefs as surrounded by water was perhaps Kadesh; a third, rising upon a hill, cannot be identified; and both of the remaining two, one of which was called Ereth, were defended by Hittites.

He probably did not penetrate far into the Hittite territory, although its cities were rapidly falling away from the Hittite king and much weakened by the attacks of the sea peoples. It was the last hostile passage between the Pharaoh and the Hittites; both empires were swiftly declining to their fall, and in the annals of Egypt we never again hear of the Hittites in Syria. Ramses places in his lists of conquered regions the cities of northern Syria to the Euphrates, including all that the Empire had ever ruled in its greatest days. These lists, however, are largely copied from those of his great predecessors, and we can place no confidence in them. He now organized the Asiatic possessions of Egypt as stably as possible, the boundary very evidently not being any further north than that of Merneptah, that is, just including the Amorite kingdom on the upper Orontes. To ensure the stability which he desired he built new fortresses wherever necessary in Syria and Palestine; somewhere in Syria he also erected a temple of Amon, containing a great image of the state god, before which the Asiatic dynasts were obliged to declare their fealty to Ramses by depositing their tribute in its presence every year.

Communication with Syria was facilitated by the excavation of a great well in the desert of Ayan, east of the Delta, supplementing the watering stations established there by Seti I. Only a revolt of the Beduin of Seir interrupted the peaceful government of the Pharaoh in Asia from this time forth. The influence of Egyptian commerce and administration in Syria was evident in one important particular especially, for it was now that the cumbrous and inconvenient clay tablet was gradually supplemented in Syria by the handy papyrus on which the Phoenician rulers began to keep their accounts. To supply the demand the papyrus factories of the Delta were exporting their products in exchange for Phoenician commodities. It was of course impracticable, if not impossible, for the Phoenicians to keep rapid daily records on paper with pen and ink in the cuneiform hand which was totally unsuited to such writing materials. With the papyrus paper, therefore, the hand customarily written upon it in Egypt now made its way into Phoenicia, where before the tenth century BC it developed into an alphabet of consonants, which was quickly transmitted to the Ionian Greeks and thence to Europe.

The chief function of an oriental despotism, the collection of tribute and taxes, now proceeded with the greatest regularity. "I taxed them for their impost every year," says Ramses, "every town by its name gathered together bearing their tribute."The suppression of occasional disorders in Nubia caused no disturbance of the profound peace which now settled down upon the Empire. Ramses himself depicts it thus: "I made the woman of Egypt to go with uncovered ears to the place she desired, for no stranger, nor any one upon the road molested her. I made the infantry and chariotry to dwell at home in my time; the Sherden and the Kehek [mercenaries] were in their towns lying the length of their backs; they had no fear, for there was no enemy from Kush, nor foe from Syria. Their bows and their weapons reposed in their magazines, while they were satisfied and drunk with joy. Their wives were with them, their children at their side; they looked not behind them, but their hearts were confident, for I was with them as the defence and protection of their limbs. I sustained alive the whole land, whether foreigners, common folk, citizens or people male or female. I took a man out of his misfortune and I gave him breath. I rescued him from the oppressor who was of more account that he. I set each man in his security in their towns I sustained alive others in the hall of petition. I settled the land in the place where it was laid waste. The land was well satisfied in my reign."

Intercourse and commerce with the outside world were now fostered by the Pharaoh as in the great days of the Empire. The temples of Amon, Re and Ptah had each its own fleet upon the Mediterranean or the Red Sea, transporting to the god's treasury the products of Phoenicia, Syria and Punt. Ramses exploited the copper mines of Atika, a region somewhere in the Peninsula of Sinai, sending a special expedition thither in galleys from some Red Sea port. They returned with great quantities of the metal which the Pharaoh had displayed under the palace balcony that all the people might see it. To the malachite workings of the Peninsula he likewise sent his messengers, who brought back plentiful returns of the costly mineral for the king's splendid gifts to the gods. A more important expedition consisting of a fleet of large ships was sent on the long voyage to Punt. The canal from the Nile through the Wadi Tumilat to the Red Sea, existent long before this age, was now seemingly stopped up and in disuse, for Ramses' ships, after a successful voyage, returned to some harbour opposite Coptos, where the entire cargo of the fleet was disembarked, loaded on donkeys and brought overland to Coptos. Here it was reembarked upon the river and floated down stream to the royal residence in the eastern Delta. Navigation was now perhaps on a larger and more elaborate scale even than under the great Pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Ramses tells of a sacred barge of Amon at Thebes, which was two hundred and twenty four feet long, built in his yards, of enormous timbers of cedar of Lebanon.

The Pharaoh's wealth now enabled him to undertake works of public utility and improvement. Throughout the kingdom, and especially in Thebes and the royal residence, he planted numerous trees, which under a sky so prevailingly cloudless as that of Egypt, offered the people grateful shade, in a land devoid of natural forests. He also resumed building, which had been at a standstill since the death of Ramses II. On the western plain of Thebes, at the point now called Medinet Habu, he built a large and splendid temple to Amon which he began early in his reign. As the temple was extended and enlarged from rear to front the annals of his campaigns found place on the walls through successive years following the growth of the building until the whole edifice became a vast record of the king's achievements in war which the modern visitor may read, tracing it from year to year as he passes from the earliest halls in the rear to the latest courts and pylon at the front. Here he may see the hordes of the North in battle with Ramses' Sherden mercenaries, who break through and plunder the heavy ox-carts of the invaders, as we have already noticed. The first naval battle on salt water, of which we know anything, is here depicted, and in these reliefs we may study the armour, clothing, weapons, war-ships and equipment of these northern
peoples with whose advent Europe for the first time emerges upon the stage of the early world.

There was a sacred lake before the temple with an elaborate garden, extensive out-buildings and magazines, a palace of the king with massive stone towers in connection with the temple structure, and a wall around the whole forming a great complex which dominated the whole southern end of the western plain of Thebes, whence from the summits of its tall pylons one might look northward along the stately line of mortuary temples, built by the emperors. It thus formed, as it still does, the southern terminus and the last of that imposing array of buildings, and suggests to the thoughtful visitor the end of the long line of imperial Pharaohs, of whom Ramses III was indeed the last. Other buildings of his have for the most part perished; a small temple of Amon at Karnak, which Ramses, quite sensible of the hopelessness of any attempt to rival the vast Karnak halls, placed across the axis of the main temple there, still bears witness to his good sense in this respect. Some
small additions to the Karnak temple, besides that of Mut on the south of the Karnak group, a small sanctuary for Khonsu only begun by Ramses III; sanctuaries of which little or no trace has been discovered at Memphis and Heliopolis, and many chapels to various gods throughout the land have for the most part perished entirely or left but slight traces. In the residence city he laid out a magnificent quarter for Amon; "it was furnished with large gardens and places for walking about, with all sorts of date groves bearing their fruits, and a sacred avenue brightened with the flowers of every land."

The quarter possessed nearly eight thousand slaves for its service. He also erected in the city a temple of Sutekh in the temenos of Ramses II's temple. The art displayed by these buildings, in so far as they have survived, is clearly in a decadent stage. The lines are heavy and indolent, the colonnades have none of the old time soaring vigor, springing from the pavement and carrying the beholder's eye involuntarily aloft; but they visibly labor under the burden imposed upon them and clearly express the sluggish spirit of the decadent architect who designed them. The work also is careless and slovenly in execution. The reliefs which cover the vast surfaces of the Medinet Habu temple are with few exceptions but weak imitations of the fine sculptures of Seti I at Karnak, badly drawn and executed without feeling. Only here and there do we find a flash of the old-time power, as in the representation of Ramses hunting the wild bull on the walls of this same temple, a relief which, in spite of some bad faults in the drawing, is a composition of much strength and feeling, with a notable sense of landscape. A bold and entirely new effort of the time is the representation of the Pharaoh's naval victory on the Syrian coast, a relief requiring some originality and invention, but too involved for strength and effect.

The imitation so evident in the art of Ramses III's reign is characteristic of the time in all respects. The records of the reign are but weak repetitions of the earlier royal encomiums, embellished with figures so extremely far-fetched as to be often unintelligible. It was with a feeling of depression not easily shaken off that the author emerged from months of application to the vast walls of the Medinet Habu temple covered with hundreds on hundreds of lines of arid verbiage ever reiterating the valor of the king on this or that occasion in conventional terms which dropped from the pen of the fawning scribe, as such words had done for centuries. Taking up any given war, one finds that after working through difficult inscriptions covering several thousand square feet of wall surface, the net result is but a meagre and bald account of a great campaign the facts of which are scattered here and there and buried so deeply beneath scores of meaningless conventional phrases that they can be discovered only with the greatest industry. The inspiring figure of a young and active Pharaoh hurrying his armies from frontier to frontier of his empire and repeatedly hurling back the most formidable invasions Egypt had ever suffered, awoke no response in the conventional soul of the priestly scribe, whose lot it was to write the record of these things for the temple wall. He possessed only the worn and long spent currency of the older dynasties from which he drew whole hymns, songs and lists to be furbished up and made to do service again in perpetuating the glory of a really able and heroic ruler. Perhaps we should not complain of the scribe, for the king himself considered it his highest purpose to restore and reproduce the times of Ramses II. His own name was made up of the first half of Ramses II's throne-name, and the second half of his personal name; he named his children and his horses after those of Ramses II, and like him, he was followed on his campaigns by a tame lion who trotted beside his chariot on the march.

The achievements of Ramses III were entirely dictated by the circumstances in which he found himself, rather than by any positive tendencies in his own character. But it must be admitted that he was confronted by a situation against which he could have done little even if he had attempted to make head against it. All immediate danger from without had now apparently disappeared, but the nation was slowly declining as a result of decay from within. While Ramses III had shown himself fully able to cope with the assaults from the outside, he did not possess the qualities of virile independence which in some men would have dictated strenuous opposition to the prevailing tendencies of the time within the state. This was especially evident in his attitude toward the religious conditions inherited from the Nineteenth Dynasty.

We have already pointed out that Setnakht, Ramses III's father, gained the throne by conciliating the priesthoods, as so many of his successful predecessors had done. Ramses III made no effort to shake off the priestly influences with which the crown was thus encumbered. The temples were fast becoming a grave political and economic menace. In the face of this fact Ramses III continued the policy of his ancestors, and with the most lavish liberality poured the wealth of the royal house into the sacred coffers. He himself says: "I did mighty deeds and benefactions, a numerous multitude, for the gods and goddesses of South and North. I wrought upon their images in the gold-houses, I built that which had fallen to ruin in their temples. I made houses and temples in their courts; I planted for them groves; I dug for them lakes; I founded for them divine offerings of barley and wheat, wine, incense, fruit, cattle and fowl; I built the [chapels called] 'Shadows of Re' for
their districts, abiding, with divine offerings for every day." He is here speaking of the smaller temples of the country, while for the three great gods of the land : Amon, Re and Ptah, he did vastly more. The opulent splendor with which the rituals of these gods were daily observed beggars description.

"I made for thee," says Ramses to Amon, "a great sacrificial tablet of silver in hammered work, mounted with fine gold, the inlay figures being of Ketem-gold, bearing statues of the king of gold in hammered work, even an offering tablet bearing thy divine offerings, offered before thee. I made for thee a great vase-stand for thy forecourt, mounted with fine gold, with inlay of stone; its vases were of gold, containing wine and beer in order to present them to thee every morning ...I made for thee great tablets of gold, in beaten work, engraved with the great name of thy majesty, bearing my prayers. I made for thee other tablets of silver, in beaten work, engraved with the great name of thy majesty, with the decrees of thy house."

All that the god used was of the same richness; Ramses says of his sacred barge: "I hewed for thee thy august ship 'Userhet,' of one hundred and thirty cubits [nearly two hundred and twenty four feet length] upon the river, of great cedars of the royal domain, of remarkable size, overlaid with fine gold to the water line, like the barque of the sun, when he comes from the east, and every one lives at the sight of him. A great shrine was in the midst of it, of fine gold, with inlay of every costly stone like a palace ; rams-heads of gold from front to rear, fitted with uraeus-serpents wearing crowns."

In making the great temple balances for weighing the offerings to Re at Heliopolis nearly two hundred and twelve pounds of gold and four hundred and sixty one pounds of silver were consumed. The reader may peruse pages of such descriptions in the great Papyrus Harris, of which we shall later give some account. Such magnificence, while it might frequently be due to incidental gifts of the king, must nevertheless be supported by an enormous income, derived from a vast fortune in lands, slaves and revenues. Thus, to the god Khnum at Elephantine, Ramses III confirmed the possession of both sides of the river from that city to Takompso, a strip over seventy miles in length, known to the Greeks as the Dodekaschoinos or Twelve Schceni.

The records of Ramses III for the first and only time in the course of Egyptian history, enable us to determine the total amount of property owned and controlled by the temples. An inventory in the Papyrus Harris covering almost all the temples of the country shows that they possessed over one hundred and seven thousand slaves; that is, one person in every fifty to eighty of the population was temple property. The first figure is the more probable, so that in all likelihood one person in every fifty was a slave of some temple. The temples thus owned two percent of the population. In lands we find the sacred endowments amounting to nearly three quarters of a million acres, that is, nearly one seventh, or over fourteen and a half percent of the cultivable land of the country; and as some of the smaller temples like that of Khnum just mentioned, are omitted in the inventory it is safe to say that the total holdings of the temples amounted to fifteen percent of the available land of the country. These are the only items in the temple estates which can be safely compared with the total national wealth and resources; but they by no means complete the list of property held by the temples. They owned nearly a half million head of large and small cattle; their combined fleets numbered eighty eight vessels, some fifty three workshops and ship-yards consumed a portion of the raw materials, which they received as income; while in Syria, Kush and Egypt they owned in all one hundred and sixty nine towns. When we remember that all this vast property in a land of less than ten thousand square miles and some five or six million inhabitants was entirely exempt from taxation it will be seen that the economic equilibrium of the state was endangered.

These extreme conditions were aggravated by the fact that no proper proportion had been observed in the distribution of gifts to the gods. By far too large a share of them had fallen to the lot of Amon, whose insatiable priesthood had so gained the ascendancy that their claims on the royal treasury far exceeded those of all other temples put together. Besides the great group of temples at Thebes, the god possessed numerous other sanctuaries, chapels and statues, with their endowments scattered throughout the land. He had a temple in Syria, as we have already noticed, and a new one in Nubia, besides those built there by Ramses II. In his twelfth year after the victorious conclusion of all his wars, the finally completed temple, which he had erected for Amon at Medinet Habu (Thebes), was inaugurated with a new and elaborate calendar of feasts, the record of which filled all one wall of the temple for almost its entire length. The feast of Opet, the greatest of Amon's feasts, which in the days of Thutmose III was eleven days long, is credited in this calendar with twenty four days; and summarizing the calendar as far as preserved, we find that there was an annual feast day of Amon on an average every three days, not counting the monthly feasts.

Yet Ramses III later lengthened even the feasts of this calendar, so that the feast of Opet became twenty seven days long and the feast of his own coronation, which lasted but one day as prescribed by the calendar, finally continued for twenty days each year. Little wonder that the records of a band of workmen in the Theban necropolis under one of Ramses III's successors show almost as many holidays as working days. All these lengthened feasts of course mean increased endowment and revenue for the service of Amon. The treasure rooms of this Medinet Habu temple still stand, and their walls bear testimony to the lavish wealth with which they were filled.

Ramses himself in another record says: ''I filled its treasury with the products of the land of Egypt: gold, silver, every costly stone by the hundred-thousand. Its granary was overflowing with barley and wheat; its lands, its herds, their multitudes were like the sand of the shore. I taxed for it the Southland as well as the Northland; Nubia and Syria came to it, bearing their impost. It was filled with captives, which thou gavest me among the Nine Bows, and with classes [successive enforced levies], which I created by the ten-thousand. ... I multiplied the divine offerings presented before thee, of bread, wine, beer and fat geese; numerous oxen, bullocks, calves, cows, white oryxes and gazelles offered in his slaughter yard."

As in the days of the Eighteenth Dynasty conquerors, the bulk of the spoil from his wars went into the treasury of Amon. The result of this long continued policy was inevitable. Of the nearly three quarters of a million acres of land held by the temples, Amon owned over five hundred and eighty three thousand, over five times as much as his nearest competitor, Re of Heliopolis, who had only one hundred and eight thousand; and over nine times the landed estate of Ptah of Memphis. Of the fifteen percent of the lands of the entire country held by all the temples, Amon thus owned over two thirds. While, as we have stated, the combined temples owned in slaves not more than two percent of the whole population, Amon held probably one and a half percent, in number over eighty six thousand five hundred, which exceeded by seven times the number owned by Re. In other items of wealth the same proportion is observable; Amon owned five great herds, numbering over four hundred and twenty one thousand large and small cattle, of the less than half a million head held by all the temples; of five hundred and thirteen temple gardens and groves, Amon owned four hundred and thirty three; of the fleet of temple ships, numbering eighty eight, all but five were the property of Amon; and forty six work shops of the fifty three owned by the temples were his.

He was the only god possessing towns in Syria and Kush, of which he had nine, but in towns of Egypt he was surpassed by Re, who owned one hundred and three, as against only fifty six held by Amon. As we know nothing of the size and value of these towns, the number is hardly significant in view of the immense superiority of Amon in acreage of temple lands. In income Amon received an annual item of twenty six thousand grains of gold, which none of the other temples received. This doubtless came from the "gold country of Amon", of which he had gained possession toward the end of the Nineteenth Dynasty, as we have seen. In silver his income exceeded by seventeen times, in copper by twenty one times, in cattle by seven times, in wine by nine times, in ships by ten times, the income of all the other temples combined. His estate and his revenues, second only to those of the king, now assumed an important economic role in the state, and the political power wielded by a community of priests who controlled such vast wealth was from now on a force which no Pharaoh could ignore. Without compromising with it and continually conciliating it, no Pharaoh could have ruled long, although the current conclusion that the gradual usurpation of power and final assumption of the throne by the High Priest of Amon was due solely to the wealth of Amon is not supported by our results. Other forces contributed largely to this result, as we shall see.

Among these was the gradual extension of Amon's influence to the other
temples and their fortunes. His High Priest had in the Eighteenth Dynasty become head of all the priesthoods of Egypt; in the Nineteenth Dynasty he had gained hereditary hold upon his office; his Theban temple now became the sacerdotal capital, where the records of the other temples were kept; his priesthood was given more or less supervision over their administration, and the furtive power of Amon was thus gradually extended over all the sacred estates in the land.

It is a mistake to suppose, as is commonly done, that Ramses III was solely or even chiefly responsible for these conditions. However lavish his contributions to the sacerdotal wealth, they never could have raised it to the proportions which we have indicated. This is as true of the fortune of Amon in particular as of the temple wealth in general. The gift of over seventy miles of Nubian Nile shores (the Dodekaschoinos) to Khnum by Ramses III was but the confirmation by him of an old title; and the enormous endowments enumerated in the great Papyrus Harris, long supposed to be the gifts of Ramses III, are but inventories of the old sacerdotal estates, in the possession of which the temples are confirmed by him. These long misunderstood inventories are the source of the above statistics, which reveal to us the situation and they show that it was an inherited situation, created by the prodigal gifts of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties, beginning at least as far back as Thutmose III, who presented three towns in
Syria to Amon. By generations of this policy the vast wealth of the temples had gradually been accumulated, and against the insatiable priesthoods long accustomed to the gratification of unlimited exactions, Ramses III was unable, and indeed did not attempt to make a stand. On the contrary, as we have seen, being evidently in need of sacerdotal support to maintain himself, he deliberately continued the traditional policy. Yet his treasury must have sorely felt the draughts upon it, with its income gradually shrinking, while the demands upon it in nowise relaxed. Although we know that payments from the government treasury were as slow in ancient, as they have been until recently in modern Egypt, yet, making all due allowance for this fact, it can hardly be an accident that under the reign of Ramses III we can follow the painful struggles of a band of necropolis workmen in their endeavours to secure the monthly fifty sacks of grain due them. Month after month they are
obliged to resort to the extremest measures, climbing the necropolis wall and driven by hunger, threatening to storm the very granary itself if food is not given them. Told by the vizier himself that there is nothing in the treasury or deceived by the glib promises of some intermediate scribe they would return to their daily task only to find starvation forcing them to throw down their work and to gather with cries and tumult at the office of their superior, demanding their monthly rations. Thus while the poor in the employ of the state were starving at the door of an empty treasury, the store-houses of the gods were groaning with plenty, and Amon was yearly receiving over two hundred and five thousand bushels of grain for the offerings at his annual feasts alone.

The only forces which Ramses III and his contemporaries could bring into play against the powerful priestly coteries were the numerous foreigners among the slaves owned by the crown. These, branded with the name of the king, were poured into the ranks of the army in large numbers, augmenting
the voluntary service of the mercenaries already there. The armies with which Ramses III beat off the assailants of his empire were, as we have already remarked, largely made up of foreigners, and their numbers constantly increased as the Pharaoh found himself less and less able to maintain the mastery in a situation of ever increasing difficulty and complication. He was soon forced also to surround his person with numbers of these foreign slaves. A class of personal attendants, already known in the Middle Kingdom by a term which we may best translate as "butler," originally rendered service to the table and larder of the nobles or the king. These slaves in Ramses III's service were largely natives of Syria, Asia Minor and Libya, especially Syria, and as the king found them more and more useful, they gradually, although only slaves, gained high office in the state and at the court. It was a situation, as Erman has remarked, precisely like that at the court of the Egyptian sultans of the Middle Ages. Of eleven such "butlers" known to us in the service of Ramses III, five were foreigners in places of power and influence, and we shall soon have occasion to observe the prominent role they played at a fatal crisis in his reign. While all was outwardly splendor and tranquillity and the whole nation was celebrating the king who had saved the Empire, the forces of decay which had for generations been slowly gathering in the state were rapidly reaching the acute stage. An insatiable and insidious priesthood commanding enormous wealth, a foreign army ready to serve the master who paid most liberally, and a personal following of alien slaves whose fidelity likewise depended entirely upon the immediate gain in view,—these were the factors which Ramses III was constantly forced to manipulate and employ, each against the others. Add to these the host of royal relatives and dependents, who were perhaps of all the most dangerous element in the situation, and we shall not wonder at the outcome.

While the whole situation abounded in unhealthy symptoms, the first specific instance of the danger inherent in it, which we are able to discern, is the revolt of Ramses' vizier, who shut himself up in the Delta city of Athribis:
but he had miscalculated the power at his command; the place was taken by Ramses and the revolt suppressed. Peace and outward tranquility were again restored.

As the thirtieth anniversary of the king's appointment as crown prince approached, elaborate preparations were made for its commemoration. He sent his new vizier, Ta, southward in the year twenty nine to collect the processional images of all the gods who participated in a celebration of the usual splendor at Memphis. Something over a year after this stately commemoration, as the old king was beginning to feel his years, a more serious crisis developed. The harem, the source of so many attempts against the throne, was the origin of the trouble.

In the early orient there is always among the many mothers of the king's children a princess or queen who feels that her son has a better claim to the succession than the son of the fortunate rival, who has succeeded in gaining for him the nomination as the king's successor. Such a queen in Ramses III's harem, named Tiy, now began furtive efforts to secure for her son, Pentewere, the crown, which had been promised to another prince. A plot against the old king's life was rapidly formed, and Tiy enlisted as her chief coadjutors the "chief of the chamber", Pebekkamen, and a royal butler named Mesedsure. With oriental superstition, Pebekkamen first procured an outfit of magical waxen figures of gods and men, by which he believed he was empowered to disable or evade the people of the harem guard, who might otherwise have discovered and intercepted one of their numerous messages necessary to the development of the plot. Pebekkamen and Mesedsure then secured the cooperation of ten harem officials of various ranks, four royal butlers, an overseer of the treasury, a general in the army named Peyes, three royal scribes in various offices, Pebekkamen's own assistant, and several subordinate officials. As most of these people were in the personal service of the Pharaoh, the dangerous character of the complot is evident. Six wives of the officers of the harem gate were won to the enterprise, and they proved very useful in securing the transmission of messages from inmates of the harem to their relatives and friends outside. Among these inmates was the sister of the commander of archers in Nubia, who smuggled out a letter to her brother and thus gained his support. All was ripe for a revolt and revolution outside the palace, intended to accompany the murder of the king and enable the conspirators the more easily to seize the government and place their pretender, Pentewere, on the throne. At this juncture the king's party gained full information of the conspiracy, the attempt on the king's life was foiled, the plans for revolt were checkmated, and the people involved in the treason were all seized. The old Pharaoh, sorely shaken by the ordeal, and possibly suffering bodily injury from the attempted assassination, immediately appointed a special court for the trial of the conspirators. The very words of the commission empowering this court indicate his probable consciousness that he would not long survive the shock, while at the same time they lay upon the judges a responsibility for impartial justice on the merits of the case, with a judicial objectivity which is remarkable in one who held the lives of the accused in his unchallenged power and had himself just been the victim of a murderous assault at their hands. The king thus commissioned this special court: "I commission the judges [here follows a list of their names and offices], saying: 'As for the words which the people have spoken, I know them not. Go ye and examine them. When ye go and ye examine them, ye shall cause to die by their own hand those who should die without my knowing it. Ye shall execute punishment upon the others likewise without my knowing it ... Give heed and have a care lest ye execute punishment upon [anyone] unjustly ... Now I say to you in very truth, as for all that has been done, and those who have done it, let all that they have done fall upon their own heads; while I am protected and defended forever, while I am among the just kings, who are before Amon-Re, king of gods, and before Osiris, ruler of eternity".

As Osiris is the god of the dead, the king's closing words possibly indicate that he expected his demise to occur before the conclusion of the trials. The court thus commissioned consisted of fourteen officials, seven of whom were royal "butlers," and among these were a Libyan, a Lycian, a Syrian named Maharbaal ("Baal hastens"), and another foreigner, probably from Asia Minor. We see how largely the Pharaoh depended in his extremity upon the purchased fidelity of these foreign slaves. The flaccid character of the judges and the dangerous persistence of the accused is shown by a remarkable incident which now followed the appointment of the court.

Some of the women conspirators, led by the general, Peyes, gained such influence over the bailiffs in charge of the prisoners that they went with Peyes and the women to the houses of two of the judges, who, with amazing indiscretion, received and caroused with them. The two indiscreet judges, with one of their colleagues, who was really innocent, and the two bailiffs, were immediately put on trial. The innocence of the third judge was made evident and he was acquitted, but the others were found guilty, and were sentenced to have their ears and noses cut off. Immediately following the execution of the sentence, one of the unfortunate judges committed suicide. The trials of the conspirators continued with regularity, and from the records
of three different prosecutions we are able to trace the conviction of thirty two officials of all ranks including the unhappy young pretender himself, who was doubtless only an unfortunate tool, and the audacious Peyes, the general who had compromised the two judges.

The records of the trial of queen Tiy herself are not preserved, so that we cannot determine her fate, but we have no reason to suppose that it was better than that of all the others, who, as ordered by the king, were allowed to take their own lives. Meantime the thirty second anniversary of the Pharaoh's accession was celebrated with the gorgeous twenty days' feast customary since his twenty second year. But the old king survived only twenty days more and before the prosecution of his would-be assassins was ended he passed away (1167 BC) having ruled thirty one years and forty days.