ave also worked on the temple of Phtah at Memphis. His
cartouche is met with on a statue originally dedicated by a
Pharaoh of the XIIth dynasty, discovered at Tell-Nebesheh.

He was soon forgotten, and but few traces of his services survived him;
his name was subsequently removed from the official list of the kings,
while others not so deserving as he--as, for instance, Siphtah-Minephtah
and Amenmesis--were honourably inscribed in it. The memory of his son
overshadowed his own, and the series of the legitimate kings who formed
the XXth dynasty did not include him. Ramses III. took for his hero his
namesake, Ramses the Great, and endeavoured to rival him in everything.
This spirit of imitation was at times the means of leading him to commit
somewhat puerile acts, as, for example, when he copied certain
triumphal inscriptions word for word, merely changing the dates and
the cartouches,* or when he assumed the prenomen of Usirmari, and
distributed among his male children the names and dignities of the sons
of Sesostris. We see, moreover, at his court another high priest of
Phtah at Memphis bearing the name of Khamoisit, and Maritumu, another
supreme pontiff of Ra in Heliopolis. However, this ambition to resemble
his ancestor at once instigated him to noble deeds, and gave him the
necessary determination to accomplish them.

* Thus the great decree of Phtah-Totunen, carved by Ramses
II. in the year XXXV. on the rocks of Abu Simbel, was copied
by Ramses III. at Medinet-Habu in the year XII.

He began by restoring order in the administration of affairs; "he
established truth, crushed error, purified the temple from all crime,"
and made his authority felt not only in the length and breadth of the
Nile valley, but in what was still left of the Asiatic provinces.
The disturbances of the preceding years had weakened the prestige of
Amon-Ra, and the king's supremacy would have been seriously endangered,
had any one arisen in Syria of sufficient energy to take advantage of
the existing state of affairs. But since the death of Khatusaru, the
power of the Khati had considerably declined, and they retained their
position merely through their former prestige; they were in as much need
of peace, or even more so, than the Egyptians, for the same discords
which had harassed the reigns of Seti II. and his successors had
doubtless brought trouble to their own sovereigns. They had made no
serious efforts to extend