r hand, the Prince of Qodshu,
trusting to the strength of his walled city, refused to do homage to the
Pharaoh, and a deadly struggle took place under the ramparts, in which
each side availed themselves of all the artifices which the strategic
warfare of the times allowed. On a day when the assailants and besieged
were about to come to close quarters, the Amorites let loose a mare
among the chariotry of Thutmosis. The Egyptian horses threatened to
become unmanageable, and had begun to break through the ranks, when
Amenemhabi, an officer of the guard, leaped to the ground, and, running
up to the creature, disembowelled it with a thrust of his sword; this
done, he cut off its tail and presented it to the king. The besieged
were eventually obliged to shut themselves within their newly
built walls, hoping by this means to tire out the patience of their
assailants; but a picked body of men, led by the same brave Amenemhabi
who had killed the mare, succeeded in making a breach and forcing an
entrance into the town. Even the numerous successful campaigns we have
mentioned, form but a part, though indeed an important part, of the wars
undertaken by Thutmosis to "fix his frontiers in the ends of the
earth." Scarcely a year elapsed without the viceroy of Ethiopia having a
conflict with one or other of the tribes of the Upper Nile; little merit
as he might gain in triumphing over such foes, the spoil taken from them
formed a considerable adjunct to the treasure collected in Syria, while
the tributes from the people of Kush and the Uauaiu were paid with as
great regularity as the taxes levied on the Egyptians themselves. It
comprised gold both from the mines and from the rivers, feathers, oxen
with curiously trained horns, giraffes, lions, leopards, and slaves of
all ages. The distant regions explored by Hatshopsitu continued to pay
a tribute at intervals. A fleet went to Puanit to fetch large cargoes
of incense, and from time to time some Ilim chief would feel himself
honoured by having one of his daughters accepted as an inmate of the
harem of the great king. After the year XLII. we have no further records
of the reign, but there is no reason to suppose that its closing years
were less eventful or less prosperous than the earlier. Thutmosis III.,
when conscious of failing powers, may have delegated the direction of
his armies to his sons or to his generals, but it is also quite possible
that he kept the supreme command in his own h