endeavoured to perfect the military
organisation which had rendered the conquest of the East so easy a
matter.

A census, undertaken by his minister Amenothes, the son of Hapi,
ensured a more correct assessment of the taxes, and a regular scheme of
recruiting for the army.

[Illustration: 056.jpg SCARAB OF THE HUNT]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the photograph published in
Mariette.

Whole tribes of slaves were brought into the country by means of the
border raids which were always taking place, and their opportune arrival
helped to fill up the vacancies which repeated wars had caused among
the rural and urban population; such a strong impetus to agriculture
was also given by this importation, that when, towards the middle of the
reign, the minister Khamhaifc presented the tax-gathers at court, he
was able to boast that he had stored in the State granaries a larger
quantity of corn than had been gathered in for thirty years. The traffic
carried on between Asia and the Delta by means of both Egyptian and
foreign ships was controlled by customhouses erected at the mouths of
the Nile, the coast being protected by cruising vessels against the
attacks of pirates. The fortresses of the isthmus and of the Libyan
border, having been restored or rebuilt, constituted a check on the
turbulence of the nomad tribes, while garrisons posted at intervals
at the entrance to the Wadys leading to the desert restrained the
plunderers scattered between the Nile and the Red Sea, and between the
chain of Oases and the unexplored regions of the Sahara.* Egypt was at
once the most powerful as well as the most prosperous kingdom in the
world, being able to command more labour and more precious metals for
the embellishment of her towns and the construction of her monuments
than any other.

All this information is gathered from the inscription on the
statue of Amenothes, the son of Hapi.

Public works had been carried on briskly under Thutmosis III. and his
successors. The taste for building, thwarted at first by the necessity
of financial reforms, and then by that of defraying the heavy expenses
incurred through the expulsion of the Hyksos and the earlier foreign
wars, had free scope as soon as spoil from the Syrian victories began to
pour in year by year. While the treasure seized from the enemy provided
the money, the majority of the prisoners were used as workmen, so that
temples, palaces, and citadels began to