* The Castle of Usirmari-Miamon was "on the mountain of the
horn of the world," which induces me to believe that we must
seek its site on the borders of the Libyan desert. The royal
title entering into its name being liable to change with
every reign, it is possible that we have an earlier
reference to this stronghold in a mutilated passage of the
Athribis Stele, which relates to the campaigns of Minephtah;
it must have commanded one of the most frequented routes
leading to the oasis of Amon.

[Illustration: 314.jpg RAMSES III. BINDS THE CHIEFS OF THE LIBYANS]

From a photograph by Beato.

Two thousand and seventy-five Libyans were left upon the ground that
day, two thousand and fifty-two perished in other engagements, while
two thousand and thirty-two, both male and female, were made prisoners.
These were almost irreparable losses for a people of necessarily small
numbers, and if we add the number of those who had succumbed in the
disaster of six years before, we can readily realise how discouraged
the invaders must have been, and how little likely they were to try the
fortune of war once more. Their power dwindled and vanished almost as
quickly as it had arisen; the provisional cohesion given to their forces
by a few ambitious chiefs broke up after their repeated defeats, and
the rudiments of an empire which had struck terror into the Pharaohs,
resolved itself into its primitive elements, a number of tribes
scattered over the desert. They were driven back beyond the Libyan
mountains; fortresses* guarded the routes they had previously followed,
and they were obliged henceforward to renounce any hope of an invasion
_en masse_, and to content themselves with a few raiding expeditions
into the fertile plain of the Delta, where they had formerly found a
transitory halting-place. Counter-raids organised by the local troops
or by the mercenaries who garrisoned the principal towns in the
neighbourhood of Memphis--Hermopolis and Thinisl--inflicted punishment
upon them when they became too audacious. Their tribes, henceforward,
as far as Egypt was concerned, formed a kind of reserve from which the
Pharaoh could raise soldiers every year, and draw sufficient materials
to bring his army up to fighting strength when internal revolt or an
invasion from without called for military activity.

* _The Great Harris Papyrus_ speaks of fortifications
erected in the towns of An