The Historians' History of the World 01

But the attempt did not meet with success. “Death came upon them in Egypt for they had run with their own feet to the furnace, which consumes corruption, to the fire of the bravery of the king which descends like Baal from the heights of the skies! All his members are imbued with victorious strength. With his right hand he seizes multitudes; his left extends like arrows over those before him to destroy them; his sword-blade is as sharp as that of his father, Mentu. Kapur, who had come to demand homage, blinded by fear, cast his arms from him and his troops did likewise: he raised a supplicating cry to Heaven and his son supported his arms. But lo, there stood by him the god, who knew his most secret thoughts.

“His Majesty fell upon their heads like a mountain of granite, he crushed them and watered the earth with their blood, their army and their soldiers were massacred … they were taken, they were struck, their arms were tied, and like birds, imprisoned in the hold of a ship, they were in the power of his Majesty. The king was like Mentu, his victorious feet trampled on the heads of the enemy; the chiefs who opposed him were struck and held by the wrists.”

So the Libyans were careful henceforth not to disturb the peace of Egypt.

The victories of these twelve years healed the wounds of the preceding period. A voyage of the fleet along the coasts made the ancient Syrian provinces return to their allegiance and the allied nations of the Kheta [Hittites], of Carchemish and of the Kati, seeing the subjugation of the maritime people, soon followed suit. A second maritime expedition was directed against Arabia.

“I equipped vessels and galleys, armed with numerous sailors and workmen. The captains of the maritime auxiliary forces were there with overseers and managers to provision the ships with the countless products of Egypt. There were tens of thousands of every kind passing through the great sea of Kati. They arrived at the country of the Punt without any misadventure, and prepared to load the galleys and vessels with the products of Tonutir, with all the mysterious wonders of the country, and with considerable quantities of the perfumes of Punt. Their sons, the chiefs of the Tonutir came themselves to Egypt bringing tribute; they came safe and sound to the country of Coptos and landed in the country with their riches. They brought them in caravans of asses and men, and embarked them on the river at the port of Coptos.”

Other expeditions to the peninsula of Sinai restored the mining districts to the possession of Pharaoh. So the Egyptian empire was reconstituted as it was in the preceding century in the time of Ramses II. The Shardana, Tyrians, Lycians, and Trojans no longer landed en masse on the coasts of Africa.

The tide of Asiatic emigration now turned from the valley of the Nile, which had been its direction for the last one hundred and fifty years, towards the west, and inundated Italy, at the same time that the Phœnician colonists arrived there. The Tyrians took the land at the north of the mouth of the Tiber, the Shardana occupied the large island, which later was called Sardinia, and soon nothing remained of them in Egypt but the recollection of their raids and the legendary recital of their migrations from the shores of the Archipelago to the coasts of the western Mediterranean.

The Philistines were the only people of the confederation allowed to settle in Syria, and they took root along the southern coast between Joppa and the river of Egypt, in the districts hitherto peopled by the Canaanites, and there they primarily lived under the yoke of Pharaoh. On the other frontier of the Delta, a Libyan tribe, called Mashauasha, likewise obtained a concession of territory, and the Mashauasha soldiers raised in Libya, from that portion of the tribe encamped on the bank of the Nile, formed a picked corps, the Ma, the leaders of which played a great part in the internal history of Egypt.

Herodotus relates that on the return of Sesostris (the name given by that historian to Ramses II) he was nearly killed by treachery. His brother, to whom he had intrusted the government during his absence, invited him and his children to a great feast; then he surrounded the house with wood and gave orders for it to be set alight. The king, learning this, immediately consulted with his wife, who was with him, and she advised him to take two of their six children and lay them on the burning wood, so that they could use their bodies as a bridge by which to pass over. Sesostris did this, and thus burned two of his children, and the others were saved with the parents.