the sands" grew too insolent, the Pharaoh sent a
column of light troops against them, and inflicted on them such a severe
punishment, that the remembrance of it kept them within bounds for
years. Offenders banished from Egypt sought refuge with the turbulent
kinglets, who were in a perpetual state of unrest between Sinai and
the Dead Sea. Egyptian sailors used to set out to traffic along the
seaboard, taking to piracy when hard pressed; Egyptian merchants were
accustomed to penetrate by easy stages into the interior. The accounts
they gave of their journeys were not reassuring. The traveller had first
to face the solitudes which confronted him before reaching the Isthmus,
and then to avoid as best he might the attacks of the pillaging tribes
who inhabited it.

[Illustration: 024.jpg TWO ASIATICS FKOM THE TOMB OF KHNUMHOPTU.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger

Should he escape these initial perils, the Amu--an agricultural and
settled people inhabiting the fertile region--would give the stranger
but a sorry reception: he would have to submit to their demands, and
the most exorbitant levies of toll did not always preserve caravans from
their attacks.* The country seems to have been but thinly populated;
tracts now denuded were then covered by large forests in which herds of
elephants still roamed,** and wild beasts, including lions and leopards,
rendered the route through them dangerous.

* The merchant who sets out for foreign lands "leaves his
possessions to his children--for fear of lions and
Asiatics."

** Thutmosis III. went elephant-hunting near the Syrian town
of Nii.

The notion that Syria was a sort of preserve for both big and small
game was so strongly implanted in the minds of the Egyptians, that their
popular literature was full of it: the hero of their romances betook
himself there for the chase, as a prelude to meeting with the princess
whom he was destined to marry,* or, as in the case of Kazarati, chief
of Assur, that he might encounter there a monstrous hyena with which to
engage in combat.

* As, for instance, the hero in the _Story of the
Predestined Prince_, exiled from Egypt with his dog, pursues
his way hunting till he reaches the confines of Naharaim,
where he is to marry the prince's daughter.

These merchants' adventures and explorations, as they were not followed
by any military expedition, left absolutely no mark o