he shall be sent in exile to Tharu.  Furthermore, concerning the tax of timber, my majesty commands that if any officer find a poor man without a boat, then he shall bring him a craft belonging to another man in which to carry the timber; and in return for this let the former man do the loading of the timber for the latter.”

The tax-collectors were wont to commandeer the services of all the slaves in the town, and to detain them for six or seven days, “so that it was an excessive detention indeed.”  Often, too, they used to appropriate a portion of the tax for themselves.  The new law, therefore, was as follows:—­

“If there be any place where the officials are tax-collecting, and any one shall hear the report saying that they are tax-collecting to take the produce for themselves, and another shall come to report saying, ’My man slave or my female slave has been taken away and detained many days at work by the officials,’ the offender’s nose shall be cut off, and he shall be sent to Tharu.”

One more law may here be quoted.  The police used often to steal the hides which the peasants had collected to hand over to the Government as their tax.  Horemheb, having satisfied himself that a tale of this kind was not merely an excuse for not paying the tax, made this law:—­

“As for any policeman concerning whom one shall hear it said that he goes about stealing hides, beginning with this day the law shall be executed against him, by beating him a hundred blows, opening five wounds, and taking from him by force the hides which he took.”

To carry out these laws he appointed two chief judges of very high standing, who are said to have been “perfect in speech, excellent in good qualities, knowing how to judge the heart.”  Of these men the King writes:  “I have directed them to the way of life, I have led them to the truth, I have taught them, saying, ’Do not receive the reward of another.  How, then, shall those like you judge others, while there is one among you committing a crime against justice?’” Under these two officials Horemheb appointed many judges, who went on circuit around the country; and the King took the wise step of arranging, on the one hand, that their pay should be so good that they would not be tempted to take bribes, and, on the other hand, that the penalty for this crime should be most severe.

So many were the King’s reforms that one is inclined to forget that he was primarily a soldier.  He appears to have made some successful expeditions against the Syrians, but the fighting was probably near his own frontiers, for the empire lost by Akhnaton was not recovered for many years, and Horemheb seems to have felt that Egypt needed to learn to rule herself before she attempted to rule other nations.  An expedition against some tribes in the Sudan was successfully carried through, and it is said that “his name was mighty in the land of Kush, his battle-cry was in their dwelling-places.”  Except for a semi-military expedition which was dispatched to the land of Punt, these are the only recorded foreign activities of the King; but that he had spent much time in the organisation and improvement of the army is shown by the fact that three years after his death the Egyptian soldiers were swarming over the Lebanon and hammering at the doors of the cities of Jezreel.