a prince should go to such
personal inconvenience in order to marry his daughter to an ally. The
Pharaoh, therefore, despatched his nobles and an army to receive them,
but he was careful to conceal the anxiety which he felt all the while,
and, according to custom, took counsel of his patron god Sutkhu: "Who
are these people who come with a message at this time to the country of
Zahi?" The oracle, however, reassured him as to their intentions, and
he thereupon hastened to prepare for their proper reception. The embassy
made a triumphal entry into the city, the princess at its head, escorted
by the Egyptian troops told off for the purpose, together with the
foot-soldiers and charioteers of the Khati, comprising the flower of
their army and militia. A solemn festival was held in their honour, in
which food and drink were served without stint, and was concluded by the
celebration of the marriage in the presence of the Egyptian lords and of
the princes of the whole earth.*

* The fact of the marriage is known to us by the decree of
Phtah Totunen at Abu Simbel in the XXXVth year of the king's
reign. The account of it in the text is taken from the stele
at Abu Simbel. The last lines are so mutilated that I have
been obliged to paraphrase them. The stele of the Princess
of Bakhtan has preserved the romantic version of this
marriage, such as was current about the Saite period. The
King of the Khati must have taken advantage of the
expedition which the Pharaoh made into Asia to send him
presents by an embassy, at the head of which he placed his
eldest daughter: the princess found favour with Ramses, who
married her.

Ramses, unwilling to relegate a princess of such noble birth to the
companionship of his ordinary concubines, granted her the title of
queen, as if she were of solar blood, and with the cartouche gave her
the new name of Uirimaunofiruri--"She who sees the beauties of the Sun."
She figures henceforth in the ceremonies and on the monuments in the
place usually occupied by women of Egyptian race only, and these unusual
honours may have compensated, in the eyes of the young princess, for the
disproportion in age between herself and a veteran more than sixty years
old. The friendly relations between the two courts became so intimate
that the Pharaoh invited his father-in-law to visit him in his own
country. "The great Prince of Khati informed the Prince of Qodi