Red Sea by the land of Puanit; and to the west, between it and the confines of the world, lay the Timihu.  Scores of tribes, white, copper-coloured, and black, bearing strange names, wrangled over the possession of this vaguely defined territory; some of them were still savage or emerging from barbarism, while others had attained to a pitch of material civilization almost comparable with that of Egypt.  The same diversity of types, the same instability and the same want of intelligence which characterized the tribes of those days, still distinguish the medley of peoples who now frequent the upper valley of the Nile.  They led the same sort of animal life, guided by impulse, and disturbed, owing to the caprices of their petty chiefs, by bloody wars which often issued in slavery or in emigration to distant regions.

[Illustration:  355.jpg KUSHITE PRISONERS BROUGHT TO EGYPT]

     Drawn by Faucher-Guclin, from the water-colour drawing by
     Mr. Blackden.

With such shifting and unstable conditions, it would be difficult to build up a permanent State.  From time to time some kinglet, more daring, cunning, tenacious, or better fitted to govern than the rest, extended his dominion over his neighbours, and advanced step by step, till he united immense tracts under his single rule.  As by degrees his kingdom enlarged, he made no efforts to organize it on any regular system, to introduce any uniformity in the administration of its affairs, or to gain the adherence of its incongruous elements by just laws which would be equally for the good of all:  when the massacres which accompanied his first victories were over, when he had incorporated into his own army what was left of the vanquished troops, when their children were led into servitude and he had filled his treasury with their spoil and his harem with their women, it never occurred to him that there was anything more to be done.  If he had acted otherwise, it would not probably have been to his advantage.  Both his former and present subjects were too divergent in language and origin, too widely separated by manners and customs, and too long in a state of hostility to each other, to draw together and to become easily welded into a single nation.  As soon as the hand which held them together relaxed its hold for a moment, discord crept in everywhere, among individuals as well as among the tribes, and the empire of yesterday resolved itself into its original elements even more rapidly than it had been formed.  The clash of arms which had inaugurated its brief existence died quickly away, the remembrance of its short-lived glory was lost after two or three generations in the horrors of a fresh invasion:  its name vanished without leaving a trace behind.  The occupation of Nubia brought Egypt into contact with this horde of incongruous peoples, and the contact soon entailed a struggle.  It is futile for a civilized state to think of dwelling peacefully with any barbarous nation with which it is in close proximity.