reigns of the
Orontes and the Euphrates. But it was the mercenaries who constituted
the most active and effective section of the Pharaonic armies. These
troops formed the backbone on which all the other elements--chariots,
spearmen, and native archers--were dependent. Their spirited attack
carried the other troops with them, and by a tremendous onslaught on the
enemy at a decisive moment gave the commanding general some chance of
success against the better-equipped and better-organised battalions that
he would be sure to meet with on the plains of Asia. The Tanite kings
enrolled these mercenaries in large numbers: they entrusted them with
the garrisoning of the principal towns, and confirmed the privileges
which their chiefs had received from the Ramessides, but the results of
such a policy were not long in manifesting themselves, and this state
of affairs had been barely a century in existence before Egypt became a
prey to the barbarians.

It would perhaps be more correct to say that it had fallen a prey to the
Libyans only. The Asiatics and Europeans whom the Theban Pharaohs had
called in to fight for them had become merged in the bulk of the nation,
or had died out for lack of renewal. Semites abounded, it is true, in
the eastern nomes of the Delta, but their presence had no effect on
the military strength of the country. Some had settled in the towns
and villages, and were engaged in commerce or industry; these included
Phoenician, Canaanite, Edomite, and even Hebrew merchants and artisans,
who had been forced to flee from their own countries owing to political
disturbances.*

* Jeroboam (1 Kings xi. 40, xii. 2, 3) and Hadad (1 Kings
xi. 17-22) took refuge in this way at the court of Pharaoh.

A certain proportion were descendants of the Hidjsos, who had been
reinforced from time to time by settlements of prisoners captured in
battle; they had taken refuge in the marshes as in the times of Abmosis,
and there lived in a kind of semi-civilized independence, refusing to
pay taxes, boasting of having kept themselves from any alliances with
the inhabitants of the Nile valley, while their kinsmen of the older
stock betrayed the knowledge of their origin by such disparaging
nicknames as Pa-shmuri, "the stranger," or Pi-atnu, "the Asiatic." The
Shardana, who had constituted the body-guard of Ramses II., and whose
commanders had, under Ramses III., ranked with the great officers of the
crown, had all but disappe