Should it decide to check its own advances, and impose limits upon itself which it shall not pass over, its moderation is mistaken for feebleness and impotence; the vanquished again take up the offensive, and either force the civilized power to retire, or compel it to cross its former boundary.  The Pharaohs did not escape this inevitable consequence of conquest:  their southern frontier advanced continually higher and higher up the Nile, without ever becoming fixed in a position sufficiently strong to defy the attacks of the Barbarians.  Usirtasen I. had subdued the countries of Hahu, of Khonthanunofir, and Shaad, and had beaten in battle the Shemik, the Khasa, the Sus, the Aqin, the Anu, the Sabiri, and the people of Akiti and Makisa.  Amenemhait II., Usirtasen II., and Usirtasen III. never hesitated to “strike the humbled Kush” whenever the opportunity presented itself.  The last-mentioned king in particular chastised them severely in his VIIIth, XIIth, XVIth, and XIXth years, and his victories made him so popular, that the Egyptians of the Greek period, identifying him with the Sesostris of Herodotus, attributed to him the possession of the universe.  On the base of a colossal statue of rose granite which he erected in the temple of Tanis, we find preserved a list of the tribes which he conquered:  the names of them appear to us most outlandish—­Alaka, Matakarau, Turasu, Pamaika, Uaraki, Paramaka—­and we have no clue as to their position on the map.  We know merely that they lived in the desert, on both sides of the Nile, in the latitude of Berber or thereabouts.  Similar expeditions were sent after Usirtasen’s time, and Amenem-hait III. regarded both banks of the Nile, between Semneh and Dongola, as forming part of the territory of Egypt proper.  Little by little, and by the force of circumstances, the making of Greater Egypt was realized; she approached nearer and nearer towards the limit which had been prescribed for her by nature, to that point where the Nile receives its last tributaries, and where its peerless valley takes its origin in the convergence of many others.

The conquest of Nubia was on the whole an easy one, and so much personal advantage accrued from these wars, that the troops and generals entered on them without the least repugnance.  A single fragment has come down to us which contains a detailed account of one of these campaigns, probably that conducted by Usirtasen III. in the XVIth year of his reign.  The Pharaoh had received information that the tribes of the district of Hua, on the Tacazze, were harassing his vassals, and possibly also those Egyptians who were attracted by commerce to that neighbourhood.  He resolved to set out and chastise them severely, and embarked with his fleet.  It was an expedition almost entirely devoid of danger:  the invaders landed only at favourable spots, carried off any of the inhabitants who came in their way, and seized on their cattle—­on one occasion as many as a hundred and twenty-three oxen and eleven asses,