to pro-mulgate a very severe edict against the magistrates and the double-dealing officials:  any of them who was found to have neglected his duty was to have his nose cut off, and was to be sent into perpetual exile to Zalu, on the eastern frontier.  His commands, faithfully carried out, soon produced a salutary effect, and as he would on no account relax the severity of the sentence, exactions were no longer heard of, to the advantage of the revenue of the State.  On the last day of each month the gates of his palace were open to every one.

[Illustration:  127.jpg AMENOTHES IV.  FROM A FRAGMENT USED AGAIN BY HARMHABI]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Prisse d’Avennes.

Any one on giving his name to the guard could enter the court of honour, where he would find food in abundance to satisfy his hunger while he was awaiting an audience.  The king all the while was seated in the sight of all at the tribune, whence he would throw among his faithful friends necklaces and bracelets of gold:  he inquired into complaints one after another, heard every case, announced his judgments in brief words, and dismissed his subjects, who went away proud and happy at having had their affairs dealt with by the sovereign himself.*

* All these details are taken from a stele discovered in 1882.  The text is so mutilated that it is impossible to give a literal rendering of it in all its parts, but the sense is sufficiently clear to warrant our rilling up the whole with considerable certainty.

The portraits of Harmhabi which have come down to us give us the impression of a character at once energetic and agreeable.  The most beautiful of these is little more than a fragment broken off a black granite statue.  Its mournful expression is not pleasing to the spectator, and at the first view alienates his sympathy.  The face, which is still youthful, breathes an air of melancholy, an expression which is somewhat rare among the Pharaohs of the best period:  the thin and straight nose is well set on the face, the elongated eyes have somewhat heavy lids; the large, fleshy lips, slightly contracted at the corners of the mouth, are cut with a sharpness that gives them singular vigour, and the firm and finely modelled chin loses little of its form from the false beard depending from it.  Every detail is treated with such freedom that one would think the sculptor must have had some soft material to work upon, rather than a rock almost hard enough to defy the chisel; the command over it is so complete that the difficulty of the work is forgotten in the perfection of the result.  The dreamy expression of his face, however, did not prevent Harmhabi from displaying beyond Egypt, as within it, singular activity.

[Illustration:  128.jpg HARMHABI]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Autograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.