Ramesses had been informed of the designs and approach of the enemy, and had had ample time to make all needful preparations.  He had strengthened his frontier, called out all his best-disciplined troops, and placed the mouths of the Nile in a state of defence by means of forts, strong garrisons, and flotillas upon the stream and upon the lakes adjacent.  He had selected an eligible position for encountering the advancing hordes on the coast route from Gaza to Egypt, about half-way between Raphia and Pelusium, where a new fort had been built by his orders.  At this point he took his stand, and calmly awaited his enemies, not having neglected the precaution to set an ambush or two in convenient places.  Here, as he kept his watch, the first enemy to arrive was the land host of the Purusata, encumbered with its long train of slowly moving bullock-carts, heavily laden with women and children.  Ramesses instantly attacked them—­his ambushes rose up out of their places of concealment—­and the enemy was beset on every side.  They made no prolonged resistance.  Assaulted by the disciplined and seasoned troops of the Egyptians, the entire confused mass was easily defeated.  Twelve thousand five hundred men were slain in the fight; the camp was taken; the army shattered to pieces.  Nothing was open to the survivors but an absolute surrender, by which life was saved at the cost of perpetual servitude.

The danger, however, was as yet but half overcome—­the snake was scotched but not killed.  For as yet the fleet remained intact, and might land its thousands on the Egyptian coasts and carry fire and sword over the broad region of the Delta.  The Tanauna and their confederates—­Sheklusha, Shartana, and Tursha—­made rapidly for the nearest mouth of the Nile, which was the Pelusiac, and did their best to effect a landing.  But the precautions taken by Ramesses, before he set forth on his march, proved sufficient to frustrate their efforts.  The Egyptian fleet met the combined squadrons of the enemy in the shallow waters of the Pelusiac lagoon, and contended with them in a fierce battle, which Ramesses caused to be represented in his sculptures—­the earliest representation of a sea-fight that has come down to us.  Both sides have ships propelled at once by sails and oars, but furl their sails before engaging.  Each ship has a single yard, constructed to carry a single large square-sail, and hung across the vessel’s single mast at a short distance below the top.  The mast is crowned by a bell-shaped receptacle, large enough to contain a man, who is generally a slinger or an archer, placed there to gall the enemy with stones or arrows, and so to play the part of our own sharpshooters in the main-tops.  The rowers are from sixteen to twenty-two in number, besides whom each vessel carries a number of fighting men, armed with shields, spears, swords, and bows.  The fight is a promiscuous melee, the two fleets being intermixed, and each ship engaging that next