and their allies ravaged the open country.  “The like had not been seen,” as the native scribe observes, “even in the times of the kings of Lower Egypt, when the plague (i.e. the Hyksos power) was in the land, and the kings of Upper Egypt were unable to drive it out.”  Egypt was desolated; its people “trembled like geese;” the fertile lands were overrun and wasted; the cities were pillaged; even the harbours were in some cases ruined and destroyed.  Menephthah for a time remained on the defensive, shut up within the walls of Memphis, whose god Phthah he viewed as his special protector.  He made, however, strenuous efforts to gather together a powerful force; his captains collected the native troops from the various provinces of Egypt, while he sent a number of emissaries Into Asia, who were instructed to raise a large body of mercenaries in that quarter.  At last all was ready, and Menephthah appointed the fourteenth day as that on which he would place himself at the head of his army and lead them in person against the enemy; but, before the day came, his courage failed him.  He “saw in a dream”—­at least so he himself declares—­“as it were a figure of the god Phthah, standing so as to prevent his advance;” and the figure said to him, “Stay where thou art, and let thy troops proceed against the enemy.”  So the pious king, in obedience to this convenient vision, remained secure behind the walls of Memphis, and sent his forces, native and mercenary, into the nome of Prosopis against the Libyans.  The two armies joined battle on the 3rd of Epiphi (May 18), and a desperate engagement took place, in which, after six hours of hard fighting, the Egyptians were victorious, and the confederates suffered a severe defeat.  Menephthah charges the Libyan chief with cowardice, but only because, after the battle was lost, he precipitately quitted the field, leaving behind him, not only his camp-equipage, but his throne, the ornaments of his wives, his bow, his quiver, and his sandals.  The reproaches uttered recoil upon himself.  Whose conduct is the more cowardly, that of the man who fights at the head of his troops for six hours against an enemy, probably more numerous, certainly better armed and better disciplined, and only quits the field when his forces are utterly overthrown and put to flight; or that of one who avoids exposing himself to danger, and lurks behind the walls of a fortress while his soldiers are affronting wounds and death in the battlefield?  There is no evidence that Marmaiu, son of Deid, in the battle of Prosopis, conducted himself otherwise than as became a prince and a general; there is abundant evidence that Menephthah, son of Ramesses, who declined to be present at the engagement, showed the white feather.