marriage his sisters Nofritari II.  Mimut and Isitnofrit, who, like Ramses himself, had claims to the throne.  Ramses was allowed to attend the State councils at the age of ten; he commanded armies, and he administered justice under the direction of his father and his viziers.  Seti, however, although making use of his son’s youth and activity, did not in any sense retire in his favour; if he permitted Ramses to adopt the insignia of royalty—­the cartouches, the pschent, the bulbous-shaped helmet, and the various sceptres—­he still remained to the day of his death the principal State official, and he reckoned all the years of this dual sovereignty as those of his sole reign.*

* Brugsoh is wrong in reckoning the reign of Ramses II. from the time of his association in the crown; the great inscription of Abydos, which has been translated by Brugsch himself, dates events which immediately followed the death of Seti I. as belonging to the first year of Ramses II.

Ramses repulsed the incursions of the Tihonu, and put to the sword such of their hordes as had ventured to invade Egyptian territory.  He exercised the functions of viceroy of Ethiopia, and had on several occasions to chastise the pillaging negroes.  We see him at Beit-Wally and at Abu Simbel charging them in his chariot:  in vain they flee in confusion before him; their flight, however swift, cannot save them from captivity and destruction.

[Illustration:  187.jpg RAMSES II.  PUTS THE NEGROES TO FLIGHT]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.

He was engaged in Ethiopia when the death of Seti recalled him to Thebes.*

* We do not know how long Seti I. reigned; the last date is that of his IXth year at Redesieh and at Aswan, and that of the year XXVII. sometimes attributed to him belongs to one of the later Ramessides.  I had at first supposed his reign to have been a long one, merely on the evidence afforded by Manetho’s lists, but the presence of Ramses II. as a stripling, in the campaign of Seti’s 1st year, forces us to limit its duration to fifteen or twenty years at most, possibly to only twelve or fifteen.

He at once returned to the capital, celebrated the king’s funeral obsequies with suitable pomp, and after keeping the festival of Amon, set out for the north in order to make his authority felt in that part of his domains.  He stopped on his way at Abydos to give the necessary orders for completing the decoration of the principal chambers of the resting-place built by his father, and chose a site some 320 feet to the north-west of it for a similar Memnonium for himself.  He granted cultivated fields and meadows in the Thinite name for the maintenance of these two mausolea, founded a college of priests and soothsayers in connexion with them, for which he provided endowments, and also assigned them considerable fiefs in all parts of the valley of the Nile.  The Delta next occupied