bennytic and Pelusiac branches of the Nile was gradually being filled
by them. Their period of severe oppression had not yet begun; there had
as yet arisen no sufficient reason for any measures of repression, such
as were pursued by the new king who "knew not Joseph." The name and
renown of the great minister seems still to have protected his kinsmen
in the peaceful enjoyment of their privileges in the land that must by
this time have lost for them most of its strangeness.

Thothmes III. was succeeded by his son, Amenhotep, whom historians
commonly term Amenophis the Second. This king was a warrior like his
father, and succeeded in reducing, without much difficulty, the various
nations that had thrown off the authority of Egypt on receiving the news
of his father's death. He even carried his arms, according to some, as
far as Nineveh, which he claims to have besieged and taken; he does not,
however, mention the Assyrians as his opponents. His contests were with
the Nairi, the Rutennu, and the Shasu (Arabs) in Asia, with the Tahennu
(Libyans) and Nubians in Africa. On all sides victory crowned his arms;
but he stained the fair fame that his victories would have otherwise
secured him by barbarous practices, and cruel and unnecessary bloodshed.
He tells us that at Takhisa in northern Syria he killed seven kings with
his own hand, and he represents himself in the act of destroying them
with his war-club, not in the heat of battle, but after they have been
taken prisoners. He further adds that, after killing them, he suspended
their bodies from the prow of the vessel In which he returned to Egypt,
and brought them, as trophies of victory, to Thebes, where he hung six
of the seven outside the walls of the city, as the Philistines hung the
bodies of Saul and Jonathan on the wall of Beth-shan (i Sam. xxxi. 10,
12); while he had the seventh conveyed to Napata in Nubia, and there
similarly exposed, to terrify his enemies in that quarter. It has been
said of the Russians--not perhaps without some justice--"Grattez le
Russe et vous trouverez le Tartare;" with far greater reason may we say
of the ancient Egyptians, that, notwithstanding the veneer of
civilization which they for the most part present to our observation,
there was In their nature, even at the best of times, an underlying
ingrained barbarism which could not be concealed, but was continually
showing itself.

Amenophis II. appears to have had a short reign; his seventh y