rise as if by magic from one end
of the valley to the other.*

* For this use of prisoners of war, cf. the picture from the
tomb of Rakhmiri on p. 58 of the present work, in which most
of the earlier Egyptologists believed they recognised the
Hebrews, condemned by Pharaoh to build the cities of Ramses
and Pithom in the Delta.

Nubia, divided into provinces, formed merely an extension of the
ancient feudal Egypt--at any rate as far as the neighbourhood of the
Tacazzeh--though the Egyptian religion had here assumed a peculiar
character.

[Illustration: 058.jpg A GANG Of SYRIAN PRISONERS MAKING BRICK FOR THE
TEMPLE OF AMON]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the chromolithograph in Lepsius.

The conquest of Nubia having been almost entirely the work of the Theban
dynasties, the Theban triad, Amon, Maut, and Montu, and their immediate
followers were paramount in this region, while in the north, in witness
of the ancient Elephantinite colonisation, we find Khnumu of the
cataract being worshipped, in connexion with Didun, father of
the indigenous Nubians. The worship of Amon had been the means of
introducing that of Ea and of Horus, and Osiris as lord of the dead,
while Phtah, Sokhit, Atumu, and the Memphite and Heliopolitan gods were
worshipped only in isolated parts of the province. A being, however,
of less exalted rank shared with the lords of heaven the favour of the
people. This was the Pharaoh, who as the son of Amon was foreordained to
receive divine honours, sometimes figuring, as at Bohani, as the third
member of a triad, at other times as head of the Ennead. Usirtasen
III. had had his chapels at Semneh and at Kummeh, they were restored by
Thutmosis III., who claimed a share of the worship offered in them,
and whose son, Amenothes II., also assumed the symbols and functions of
divinity.

[Illustration: 059.jpg ONE OF THE RAMS OF AMENOTHES III]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Mons. de Mertens.

Amenothes I. was venerated in the province of Kari, and Amenothes III.,
when founding the fortress Hait-Khammait* in the neighbourhood of a
Nubian village, on a spot now known as Soleb, built a temple there, of
which he himself was the protecting genius.**

* The name signifies literally "the Citadel of Khammait,"
and it is formed, as Lepsius recognised from the first, from
the name of the Sparrow-hawk Khammait, "Mait rising as
Goddess," which Amenoth