the XVIIIth dynasty, and that he killed three of these animals in the long grass on one occasion on the banks of some river.  He rejoined his ships, probably at Jaffa, and made straight for the enemy.  The latter were encamped on the level shore, at the head of a bay wide enough to offer to their ships a commodious space for naval evolutions—­possibly the mouth of the Belos, in the neighbourhood of Magadil.  The king drove their foot-soldiers into the water at the same moment that his admirals attacked the combined fleet of the Pulasati and Zakkala.

[Illustration:  307.jpg THE ARMY OP RAMSES III.  ON THE MARCH, AND THE LION-HUNT]

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

Some of the AEgean galleys were capsized and sank when the Egyptian vessels rammed them with their sharp stems, and the crews, in endeavouring to escape to land by swimming, were picked off by the arrows of the archers of the guard who were commanded by Ramses and his sons; they perished in the waves, or only escaped through the compassion of the victors.  “I had fortified,” said the Pharaoh, “my frontier at Zahi; I had drawn up before these people my generals, my provincial governors, the vassal princes, and the best of my soldiers.  The mouths of the river seemed to be a mighty rampart of galleys, barques, and vessels of all kinds, equipped from the bow to the stern with valiant armed men.  The infantry, the flower of Egypt, were as lions roaring on the mountains; the charioteers, selected from among the most rapid warriors, had for their captains only officers confident in themselves; the horses quivered in all their limbs, and were burning to trample the nations underfoot.  As for me, I was like the warlike Montu:  I stood up before them and they saw the vigour of my arms.  I, King Ramses, I was as a hero who is conscious of his valour, and who stretches his hands over the people in the day of battle.  Those who have violated my frontier will never more garner harvests from this earth:  the period of their soul has been fixed for ever.  My forces were drawn up before them on the ‘Very Green,’ a devouring flame approached them at the river mouth, annihilation embraced them on every side.  Those who were on the strand I laid low on the seashore, slaughtered like victims of the butcher.  I made their vessels to capsize, and their riches fell into the sea.”  Those who had not fallen in the fight were caught, as it were, in the cast of a net.  A rapid cruiser of the fleet carried the Egyptian standard along the coast as far as the regions of the Orontes and Saros.  The land troops, on the other hand, following on the heels of the defeated enemy, pushed through Coele-Syria, and in their first burst of zeal succeeded in reaching the plains of the Euphrates.  A century had elapsed since a Pharaoh had planted his standard in this region, and the country must have seemed as novel to the soldiers of Ramses III. as to those of his predecessor Thutmosis.