rely that they lived in the desert, on both sides of the Nile, in the
latitude of Berber or thereabouts. Similar expeditions were sent after
Usirtasen's time, and Amenem-hait 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
Hua, 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 i