longer but a beaten man, and has become a proverb among the Labu, and his chiefs repeat to themselves:  ’Nothing of the kind has occurred since the time of Ra.’  The old men say each one to his children:  ’Misfortune to the Labu! it is all over with them!  No one can any longer pass peacefully across the country; but the power of going out of our land has been taken from us in a single day, and the Tihonu have been withered up in a single year; Sutkhu has ceased to be their chief, and he devastates their “duars;” there is nothing left but to conceal one’s self, and one feels nowhere secure except in a fortress.’” The news of the victory was carried throughout Asia, and served to discourage the tendencies to revolt which were beginning to make themselves manifest there.  “The chiefs gave there their salutations of peace, and none among the nomads raised his head after the crushing defeat of the Libyans; Khati is at peace, Canaan is a prisoner as far as the disaffected are concerned, the inhabitant of Ascalon is led away, Gezer is carried into captivity, Ianuamim is brought to nothing, the Israilu are destroyed and have no longer seed, Kharu is like a widow of the land of Egypt."*

* This passage is taken from a stele discovered by Petrie in 1896, on the site of the Amenophium at Thebes.  The mention of the Israilu immediately calls to mind the place-names Yushaph-ilu, Yakob-ilu, on lists of Thutmosis III. which have been compared with the names Jacob and Joseph.

Minephtah ought to have followed up his opportunity to the end, but he had no such intention, and his inaction gave Maraiu time to breathe.  Perhaps the effort which he had made had exhausted his resources, perhaps old age prevented him from prosecuting his success; he was content, in any case, to station bodies of pickets on the frontier, and to fortify a few new positions to the east of the Delta.  The Libyan kingdom was now in the same position as that in which the Hittite had been after the campaign of Seti I.:  its power had been checked for the moment, but it remained intact on the Egyptian frontier, awaiting its opportunity.

Minephtah lived for some time after this memorable year* and the number of monuments which belong to this period show that he reigned in peace.  We can see that he carried out works in the same places as his father before him; at Tanis as well as Thebes, in Nubia as well as in the Delta.  He worked the sandstone quarries for his building materials, and continued the custom of celebrating the feasts of the inundation at Silsileh.  One at least of the stelae which he set up on the occasion of these feasts is really a chapel, with its architraves and columns, and still, excites the admiration of the traveller on account both of its form and of its picturesque appearance.