d they often crossed it to
devastate the central provinces.***

* This enumeration is furnished by the summary of the
campaigns of Ramses III. in _The Great Harris Papyrus_. The
Sabati of this text are probably identical with the people
of the Sapudiu or Spudi (Asbytse), mentioned on one of the
pylons of Medinet-Habu.

** The relationship is nowhere stated, but it is thought to
be probable from the names of Didi and Maraiu, repeated in
both series of inscriptions.

*** The town of Qarbina has been identified with the Canopus
of the Greeks, and also with the modern Korbani; and the
district of Gautu, which adjoined it, with the territory of
the modern town of Edko. Spiegel-berg throws doubt on the
identification of Qarbu or Qarbina, with Canopus. Revillout
prefers to connect Qarbina with Heracleopolis Parva in Lower
Egypt.

Nakhtusiti had been unable to drive them out, and Ramses had not
ventured on the task immediately after his accession. The military
institutions of the country had become totally disorganised after the
death of Minephtah, and that part of the community responsible for
furnishing the army with recruits had been so weakened by the late
troubles, that they were in a worse condition than before the first
Libyan invasion. The losses they had suffered since Egypt began its
foreign conquests had not been repaired by the introduction of fresh
elements, and the hope of spoil was now insufficient to induce members
of the upper classes to enter the army. There was no difficulty in
filling the ranks from the fellahin, but the middle class and the
aristocracy, accustomed to ease and wealth, no longer came forward in
large numbers, and disdained the military profession. It was the fashion
in the schools to contrast the calling of a scribe with that of a
foot-soldier or a charioteer, and to make as merry over the discomforts
of a military occupation as it had formerly been the fashion to extol
its glory and profitableness. These scholastic exercises represented the
future officer dragged as a child to the barracks, "the side-lock over
his ear.--He is beaten and his sides are covered with scars,--he is
beaten and his two eyebrows are marked with wounds,--he is beaten and
his head is broken by a badly aimed blow; he is stretched on the ground"
for the slightest fault, "and blows fall on him as on a papyrus,--and
he is broken by the stick.