age on a stele of Ramses IV. formally attributes to
him a reign of sixty-seven years. I procured at Koptos a
stele of his year LXVI.

[Illustration: 245.jpg THE CHAPEL OF THE APIS OF AMEKOTHES III.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Mariette.

He had obtained brilliant successes during his life, and the scenes
describing them were depicted in scores of places. Popular fancy
believed everything which he had related of himself, and added to
this all that it knew of other kings, thus making him the Pharaoh of
Pharaohs--the embodiment of all preceding monarchs. Legend preferred to
recall him by the name Sesusu, Sesusturi--a designation which had been
applied to him by his contemporaries, and he thus became better known to
moderns as Sesostris than by his proper name Ramses Miamun.*

* This designation, which is met with at Medinet-Habu and in
the Anmtasi Papyrus I., was shown by E. de Rouge to refer to
Ramses II.; the various readings Sesu, Sesusu, Sesusturi,
explain the different forms Sesosis, Sesoosis, Sesostris.
Wiedemann saw in this name the mention of a king of the
XVIIIth dynasty not yet classified.

According to tradition, he was at first sent to Ethiopia with a fleet
of four hundred ships, by which he succeeded in conquering the coasts
of the Red Sea as far as the Indus. In later times several stelae in the
cinnamon country were ascribed to him. He is credited after this with
having led into the east a great army, with which he conquered Syria,
Media, Persia, Bactriana, and India as far as the ocean; and with having
on his return journey through the deserts of Scythia reached the Don
[Tanais], where, on the shore of the Masotic Sea, he left a number of
his soldiers, whose descendants afterwards peopled Colchis. It was
even alleged that he had ventured into Europe, but that the lack of
provisions and the inclemency of the climate had prevented him from
advancing further than Thrace.

[Illustration: 246.jpg STATUE OF KHAMOISIT]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a statue in the British Museum.

He returned to Egypt after an absence of nine years, and after
having set up on his homeward journey statues and stelae everywhere in
commemoration of his victories. Herodotus asserts that he himself had
seen several of these monuments in his travels in Syria and Ionia. Some
of these are of genuine Egyptian manufacture, and are to be attributed
to our Ramses; they a