ft Tanis he had given Ameni and his followers
to understand that he alone was master in Egypt.

The God Seth, who had been honored by the Semite races since the time of
the Hyksos, and whom they called upon under the name of Baal, had from
the earliest times never been allowed a temple on the Nile, as being the
God of the stranger; but Rameses--in spite of the bold remonstrances of
the priestly party who called themselves the 'true believers'--raised a
magnificent temple to this God in the city of Tanis to supply the
religious needs of the immigrant foreigners. In the same spirit of
toleration he would not allow the worship of strange Gods to be
interfered with, though on the other hand he was jealous in honoring the
Egyptian Gods with unexampled liberality. He caused temples to be erected
in most of the great cities of the kingdom, he added to the temple of
Ptah at Memphis, and erected immense colossi in front of its pylons in
memory of his deliverance from the fire.

[One of these is still in existence. It lies on the ground among
the ruins of ancient Memphis.]

In the Necropolis of Thebes he had a splendid edifice constructed-which
to this day delights the beholder by the symmetry of its proportions in
memory of the hour when he escaped death as by a miracle; on its pylon he
caused the battle of Kadesh to be represented in beautiful pictures in
relief, and there, as well as on the architrave of the great
banqueting--hall, he had the history inscribed of the danger he had run
when he stood "alone and no man with him!"

By his order Pentaur rewrote the song he had sung at Pelusium; it is
preserved in three temples, and, in fragments, on several papyrus-rolls
which can be made to complete each other. It was destined to become the
national epic--the Iliad of Egypt.

Pentaur was commissioned to transfer the school of the House of Seti to
the new votive temple, which was called the House of Rameses, and arrange
it on a different plan, for the Pharaoh felt that it was requisite to
form a new order of priests, and to accustom the ministers of the Gods to
subordinate their own designs to the laws of the country, and to the
decrees of their guardian and ruler, the king. Pentaur was made the
superior of the new college, and its library, which was called "the
hospital for the soul," was without an equal; in this academy, which was
the prototype of the later-formed museum and library of Alexandria, sages
and poets grew