* These details are taken from the battle-scenes at Medinet-
     Habu.

** The Pulasati have been connected with the Philistines by Champollion, and subsequently by the early English Egyptologists, who thought they recognised in them the inhabitants of the Shephelah.  Chabas was the first to identify them with the Pelasgi; Unger and Brugsch prefer to attribute to them a Libyan origin, but the latter finally returns to the Pelasgic and Philistine hypothesis.  They were without doubt the Philistines, but in their migratory state, before they settled on the coast of Palestine.

[Illustration:  301.jpg PULASATI]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.

Crete was at this time the seat of a maritime empire, whose chiefs were perpetually cruising the seas and harassing the civilized states of the Eastern Mediterranean.  These sea-rovers had grown wealthy through piracy, and contact with the merchants of Syria and Egypt had awakened in them a taste for a certain luxury and refinement, of which we find no traces in the remains of their civilization anterior to this period.  Some of the symbols in the inscriptions found on their monuments recall certain of the Egyptian characters, while others present an original aspect and seem to be of AEgean origin.  We find in them, arranged in juxtaposition, signs representing flowers, birds, fish, quadrupeds of various kinds, members of the human body, and boats and household implements.  From the little which is known of this script we are inclined to derive it from a similar source to that which has furnished those we meet with in several parts of Asia Minor and Northern Syria.  It would appear that in ancient times, somewhere in the centre of the Peninsula—­but under what influence or during what period we know not—­a syllabary was developed, of which varieties were handed on from tribe to tribe, spreading on the one side to the Hittites, Cilicians, and the peoples on the borders of Syria and Egypt, and on the other to the Trojans, to the people of the Cyclades, and into Crete and Greece.  It is easy to distinguish the Pulasati by the felt helmet which they wore fastened under the chin by two straps and surmounted by a crest of feathers.  The upper part of their bodies was covered by bands of leather or some thick material, below which hung a simple loin-cloth, while their feet were bare or shod with short sandals.  They carried each a round buckler with two handles, and the stout bronze sword common to the northern races, suspended by a cross belt passing over the left shoulder, and were further armed with two daggers and two javelins.  They hurled the latter from a short distance while attacking, and then drawing their sword or daggers, fell upon the enemy; we find among them a few chariots of the Hittite type, each manned by a driver and two fighting men.  The Tyrseni appear to have been the most numerous after the Pulasati, next to whom