region.  To the north-west the Libyan tribes, Maxyes, Asbystae, Auseis, and others, were exercising a continuous pressure, to which the Egyptians were forced to yield, and gradually a foreign population was “squatting” on the fertile lands, and driving the former possessors of the soil back upon the more eastern portion-of the Delta.  “The Lubu and Mashuash,” says Ramesses, “were seated in Egypt; they took the cities on the western side from Memphis as far as Karbana, reaching the Great River along its entire course (from Memphis northwards), and capturing the city of Kaukut For many years had they been in Egypt” Ramesses began his warlike operations by a campaign against the Shasu, whose country he invaded and overran, spoiling and destroying their cabins, capturing their cattle, slaying all who resisted him, and carrying back into Egypt a vast number of prisoners, whom he attached to the various temples as “sacred slaves.”  He then turned against the Libyans, and coming upon them unexpectedly in the tract between the Sebennytic branch of the Nile and the Canopic, he defeated in a great battle the seven tribes of the Mashuash, Lubu, Merbasat, Kaikasha, Shai, Hasa, and Bakana, slaughtering them with the utmost fury, and driving them before him across the western branch of the river.  “They trembled before him,” says the native historian, “as the mountain goats tremble before a bull, who stamps with his foot, strikes with his horns, and makes the mountains shake as he rushes on whoever opposes him.”  The Egyptians gave no quarter that memorable day.  Vengeance had free course:  the slain Libyans lay in heaps upon heaps—­the chariot wheels passed over them—­the horses trampled them in the mire.  Hundreds were pushed and forced into the marshes and into the river itself, and, if they escaped the flight of missiles which followed, found for the most part a watery grave in the strong current.  Ramesses portrays this flight and carnage in the most graphic way.  The slain enemy strew the ground, as he advances over them with his prancing steeds and in his rattling war-car, plying them moreover with his arrows as they vainly seek to escape.  His chariot force and his infantry have their share in the pursuit, and with sword, or spear, or javelin, strike down alike the resisting and the unresisting.  No one seeks to take a prisoner.  It is a day of vengeance and of down-treading, of fury allowed to do its worst, of a people drunk with passion that has cast off all self-restraint.

Even passion exhausts itself at last, and the arm grows weary of slaughtering.  Having sufficiently revenged themselves in the great battle, and the pursuit that followed it, the Egyptians relaxed somewhat from their policy of extreme hostility.  They made a large number of the Libyans prisoners, branded them with a hot iron, as the Persians often did their prisoners, and forced them to join the naval service and serve as mariners on board the Egyptian fleet.  The chiefs of greater importance they confined in fortresses.  The women and children became the slaves of the conquerors; the cattle, “too numerous to count,” was presented by Ramesses to the Priest-College of Ammon at Thebes.