h against
them and with them, know that the "Gippy" is not fond of soldiering in
his heart. He makes a very good, patient, hardworking soldier when he
has good officers; but he is not like the Soudanese, who love fighting
for fighting's sake. He much prefers to live quietly in his own native
village, and cultivate his own bit of ground. And his forefathers, in
these long-past days, were very much of the same mind. Often, of course,
they had to fight, when Pharaoh ordered them out for a campaign in the
Soudan or in Syria, and then they fought wonderfully well; but all the
time their hearts were at home, and they were glad to get back to their
farm-work and their simple pleasures. They were a peaceful, kindly,
pleasant race, with little of the cruelty and fierceness that you find
continually among the Assyrians.

[Illustration: PLATE 4.
RAMSES II. IN HIS WAR CHARIOT: SARDINIAN GUARDSMEN ON FOOT.]

In fact, the old Egyptian rather despised soldiering as a profession. He
thought it was rather a miserable, muddled kind of a job, in which,
unless you were a great officer, you got all the hard knocks and none
of the honours; and I am not sure that he was far wrong. His great
idea of a happy life was to get employment as a scribe, or, as we should
say, a clerk, to some big man or to the Government, to keep accounts and
write reports. Of course the people could not all be scribes; but an
Egyptian who had sons was never so proud as when he could get one of
them into a scribe's position, even though the young man might look down
upon his old father and his brothers, toiling on the land or serving in
the army.

A curious old book has come down to us from these ancient days, in which
the writer, who had been both a soldier and a high officer under
Government in what we should call the diplomatic service, has told a
young friend his opinion of soldiering as a profession. The young man
had evidently been dazzled with the idea of being in the cavalry, or,
rather, the chariotry, for the Egyptian soldiers did not ride on horses
like our cavalry, but drove them in chariots, in each of which there
were two men--the charioteer, to drive the two horses, and the soldier,
who stood beside the driver and fought with the bow, and sometimes with
the lance or sword.

But this wise old friend tells him that even to be in the chariotry is
not by any means a pleasant job. Of course it seems very nice at first.
The young man gets his new equipmen