of his double, or a divine
figure placed upon the top of a pike; this constituted an object of
worship to the group of soldiers to whom it belonged. We are unable
to ascertain how many of these platoons, either of infantry or of
chariotry, went to form a company or a battalion, or by what ensigns the
different grades were distinguished from each other, or what was their
relative order of rank. Bodies of men, to the number of forty or fifty,
are sometimes represented on the monuments, but this may be merely by
chance, or because the draughtsman did not take the trouble to give the
proper number accurately. The inferior officers were equipped very much
like the soldiers, with the exception of the buckler, which they do not
appear to have carried, and certainly did not when on the march: the
superior officers might be known by their umbrella or flabellum, a
distinction which gave them the right of approaching the king's person.

[Illustration: 319.jpg THE WAR-DANCE OF THE TIMIHU AT DEIR EL-BAHARI]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

The military exercises to which all these troops were accustomed
probably differed but little from those which were in vogue with the
armies of the Ancient Empire; they consisted in wrestling, boxing,
jumping, running either singly or in line at regular distances from
each other, manual exercises, fencing, and shooting at a target; the
war-dance had ceased to be in use among the Egyptian regiments as a
military exercise, but it was practised by the Ethiopian and Libyan
auxiliaries. At the beginning of each campaign, the men destined to
serve in it were called out by the military scribes, who supplied them
with arms from the royal arsenals. Then followed the distribution of
rations. The soldiers, each carrying a small linen bag, came up in
squads before the commissariat officers, and each received his own
allowance.*

* We see the distribution of arms made by the scribes and
other officials of the royal arsenals represented in the
pictures at Medinet-Abu. The calling out of the classes was
represented in the Egyptian tombs of the XVIIIth dynasty, as
well as the distribution of supplies.

Once in the enemy's country the army advanced in close order, the
infantry in columns of four, the officers in rear, and the chariots
either on the right or left flank, or in the intervals between
divisions. Skirmishers thrown out to the front cleared the line of
mar