ed upon stone
columns set up to record his successes. Later on, in his nineteenth year
he made a last expedition, to complete the conquest of "the miserable
Kashi," and recorded his victory at Abydos.

The effect of these inroads was to advance the Egyptian frontier one
hundred and fifty miles to the south, to carry it, in fact, from the
First to above the Second Cataract. Usurtasen drew the line between
Egypt and Ethiopia at this period, very much where the British
Government drew it between Egypt and the Soudan in 1885. The boundary is
a somewhat artificial one, as any boundary must be on the course of a
great river; but it is probably as convenient a point as can be found
between Assouan (Syene) and Khartoum. The conquest was regarded as
redounding greatly to Usurtasen's glory, and made him the hero of the
Old Empire. Myths gathered about his name, which, softened into
Sesostris, became a favourite One in the mouths of Egyptian minstrels
and minnesingers. Usurtasen grew to be a giant more than seven feet
high, who conquered, not only all Ethiopia, but also Europe and Asia;
his columns were said to be found in Palestine, Asia Minor, Scythia, and
Thrace; he left a colony at Colchis, the city of the golden fleece; he
dug all the canals by which Egypt was intersected; he invented geometry;
he set up colossi above fifty feet high; he was the greatest monarch
that had ruled Egypt since the days of Osiris!

No doubt these tales were, in the main, imaginary; but they marked the
fact that in Usurtasen III. the military glories of the Old Empire
culminated.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] So Mr. A.D. Bartlett, F.Z.S., in the "Transactions of the Society of
Biblical Archaeology," vol. iv. p. 195.

[10] R. Stuart Poole, "Cities of Egypt," p. 52.

VI.

THE GOOD AMENEMHAT AND HIS WORKS.

The great river to which Egypt owes her being, is at once the source of
all her blessings and her chiefest danger. Swelling with a uniformity,
well calculated to call forth man's gratitude and admiration, almost
from a fixed day in each year, and continuing to rise steadily for
months, it gradually spreads over the lands, covering the entire soil
with a fresh coating of the richest possible alluvium, and thus securing
to the country a perpetual and inexhaustible fertility. Nature's
mechanism is so perfect, that the rise year after year scarcely varies a
foot, and is almost exactly the same now as it was when the first
Pharaoh poured his li