of Phoenicia visited Egypt.  The latter drew so little water that they had no difficulty in coming up the Nile, and the paintings in one of the tombs represent them at the moment of their reaching Thebes.  The hull of these vessels was similar to that of the Nile boats, but the bow and stern were terminated by structures which rose at right angles, and respectively gave support to a sort of small platform.  Upon this the pilot maintained his position by one of those wondrous feats of equilibrium of which the Orientals were masters.

[Illustration:  218.jpg PHOENICIAN BOATS LANDING AT THEBES]

     Drawn by Boudier, from the photograph published by Daressy.

An open rail ran round the sides of the vessel, so as to prevent goods stowed upon the deck from falling into the sea when the vessel lurched.  Voyages to Puanit were undertaken more frequently in quest of incense and precious metals.  The working of the mines of Akiti had been the source of considerable outlay at the beginning of the reign.  The measures taken by Seti to render the approaches to them practicable at all seasons had not produced the desired results; as far back as the IIIrd year of Ramses the overseers of the south had been forced to acknowledge that the managers of the convoys could no longer use any of the cisterns which had been hewn and built at such great expense.  “Half of them die of thirst, together with their asses, for they have no means of carrying a sufficient number of skins of water to last during the journey there and back.”  The friends and officers whose advice had been called in, did not doubt for a moment that the king would be willing to complete the work which his father had merely initiated.  “If thou sayest to the water, ‘Come upon the mountain,’ the heavenly waters will spring out at the word of thy mouth, for thou art Ra incarnate, Khopri visibly created, thou art the living image of thy father Tumu, the Heliopolitan.”—­“If thou thyself sayest to thy father the Nile, father of the gods,” added the Viceroy of Ethiopia, “’Raise the water up to the mountain,’ he will do all that thou hast said, for so it has been with all thy projects which have been accomplished in our presence, of which the like has never been heard, even in the songs of the poets.”  The cisterns and wells were thereupon put into such a condition that the transport of gold was rendered easy for years to come.  The war with the Khati had not suspended building and other works of public utility; and now, owing to the establishment of peace, the sovereign was able to devote himself entirely to them.  He deepened the canal at Zalu; he repaired the walls and the fortified places which protected the frontier on the side of the Sinaitic Peninsula, and he built or enlarged the strongholds along the Nile at those points most frequently threatened by the incursions of nomad tribes.  Ramses was the royal builder par excellence, and we may say without fear of contradiction that, from the second