ds, and spears; the trumpeters were armed with daggers
only, and the officers did not as a rule encumber themselves with either
buckler or pike, but bore and axe and dagger, an occasionally a bow.

[Illustration: 311.jpg A PLATOON (TROOP) OF EGYPTIAN SPEARMEN AT DEIR
EL-BAHARI]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph taken by Naville.

The light infantry was composed chiefly of bowmen--_pidatu_--the
celebrated archers of Egypt, whose long bows and arrows, used with
deadly skill, speedily became renowned throughout the East; the quiver,
of the use of which their ancestors were ignorant, had been borrowed
from the Asiatics, probably from the Hyksos, and was carried hanging at
the side or slung over the shoulder. Both spearmen and archers were for
the most part pure-bred Egyptians, and were divided into regiments of
unequal strength, each of which usually bore the name of some god--as,
for example, the regiment of Ra or of Phtah, of Arnon or of Sutkhu*--in
which the feudal contingents, each commanded by its lord or his
lieutenants, fought side by side with the king's soldiers furnished
from the royal domains. The effective force of the army was made up by
auxiliaries taken from the tribes of the Sahara and from the negroes of
the Upper Nile.**

* The army of Ramses II. at the battle of Qodshu comprised
four corps, which bore the names of Amon, Ra, Phtah, and
Sutkhu. Other lesser corps were named the _Tribe of
Pharaoh,_ the _Tribe of the Beauty of the Solar dish._
These, as far as I can judge, must have been troops raised
on the royal domains by a system of local recruiting, who
were united by certain common privileges and duties which
constituted them an hereditary militia, whence they were
called _tribes_.

** These Ethiopian recruits are occasionally represented in
the Theban tombs of the XVIIIth dynasty, among others in the
tomb of Pahsukhir.

These auxiliaries were but sparingly employed in early times, but their
numbers were increased as wars became more frequent and necessitated
more troops to carry them on. The tribes from which they were drawn
supplied the Pharaohs with an inexhaustible reserve; they were
courageous, active, indefatigable, and inured to hardships, and if it
had not been for their turbulent nature, which incited them to continual
internal dissensions, they might readily have shaken off the yoke of
the Egyptians. Incorporated