he seizes his buckler, he leaps forward and kills without
a second blow. None may escape his arrow; before he bends his bow the
barbarians flee from his arms like dogs, for the great goddess has
charged him to fight against all who know not her name, and whom
he strikes he spares not; he leaves nothing alive." The old Pharaoh
"remained in the palace," waiting until his son returned to announce
the success of his enterprises, and contributing by his counsel to the
prosperity of their common empire. Such was the reputation for wisdom
which he thus acquired, that a writer who was almost his contemporary
composed a treatise in his name, and in it the king was supposed to
address posthumous instructions to his son on the art of governing. He
appeared to his son in a dream, and thus admonished him: "Hearken unto
my words!--Thou art king over the two worlds, prince over the three
regions. Act still better than did thy predecessors.--Let there be
harmony between thy subjects and thee,--lest they give themselves up to
fear; keep not thyself apart in the midst of them; make not thy brother
solely from the rich and noble, fill not thy heart with them alone;
yet neither do thou admit to thy intimacy chance-comers whose place is
unknown." The king confirmed his counsels by examples taken from his
own life, and from these we have learned some facts in his history. The
little work was widely disseminated and soon became a classic; in the
time of the XIXth dynasty it was still copied in schools and studied
by young scribes as an exercise in style. Usirfcasen's share in the
sovereignty had so accustomed the Egyptians to consider this prince
as the king _de facto_, that they had gradually come to write his name
alone upon the monuments. When Amenemhait died, after a reign of thirty
years, Usirtasen was engaged in a war against the Libyans. Dreading an
outbreak of popular feeling, or perhaps an attempted usurpation by
one of the princes of the blood, the high officers of the crown kept
Amenemhait's death secret, and despatched a messenger to the camp to
recall the young king. He left his tent by night, unknown to the troops,
returned to the capital before anything had transpired among the
people, and thus the transition from the founder to his immediate
successor--always a delicate crisis for a new dynasty--seemed to
come about quite naturally. The precedent of co-regnancy having been
established, it was scrupulously followed by most of th