PHARAOH TRIUMPHANT. 25 



masses of the foe ; we see their remarkable engines 

 for besieging" fortified towns ; their scaling ladders, 

 their moveable towers, and their shield-covered rams. 

 "We see the Pharaoh returning in triumph, his car 

 drawn by captive kings, and a long procession of 

 prisoners bearing the productions of their respective 

 lands. The nature and variety of those trophies suffi- 

 ciently prove how wide and distant the Egyptian con- 

 quests must have been ; for among the animals that 

 figure in the triumph are the brown bear, the baboon, 

 the Indian elephant, and the giraffe. Among the 

 prisoners are negroes of Soudan in aprons of bull's 

 hides, or in wild beast skins with the tails hanging 

 down behind. They carry ebony, ivory, and gold ; 

 their chiefs are adorned with leopard robes and ostrich 

 feathers, as they are at the present day. We see also 

 men from some cold country of the north with blue 

 eyes and yellow hair, wearing light dresses and long- 

 fingered gloves ; while others clothed like Indians are 

 bearing beautiful vases, rich stuffs, and strings of pre- 

 cious stones. 



When the kings came back from their campaigns, 

 they built temples of the yellow and rose-tinted sand- 

 stone, with obelisks of green granite, and long avenues 

 of sphinxes, to commemorate their victories and im- 

 mortalise their names. They employed prisoners of 

 war to erect these memorials of war ; it became the 

 fashion to boast that a great structure had been raised 

 without a single Egyptian being doomed to work. By 

 means of these victories the servitude of the lower 

 classes was mitigated for a time, and the wealth of the 

 upper classes was enormously increased. The con- 

 quests, it is true, were not permanent ; they were 

 merely raids on a large scale. But in very ancient 



