THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN is to say, in that part of the Nile Valley from which he drew the greater portion of his revenues. The country south of Wadi Haifa yielded a comparatively small quantity of gold in his day, and it was therefore unnecessary for him to build forts and temples beyond the best gold-producing districts. The Stele of Kubban tells us that the king meditated upon the fact that no gold came from the land of Akaita because there were no wells on the roads, and its existence proves that he tried to remedy this state of things. It would be wrong to assume that the well which he dug in the third year of his reign was the only one which he' made in Nubia during the long period of his rule over Egypt ; on the contrary, there is every reason to believe that he sank many wells, and thus made the whole of the Wadi 'Ulaki, which extends from the Nile nearly to the Red Sea, accessible to his workmen. The fact that he built temples at Kalabsha, Garf Husen, Wadi Sabu'a, Derr, Abu Simbel, and Aksha, and repaired the fort at Kubban, proves that people congregated near these places, and that they did so for purposes of trade goes without saying. There must have been other temples on the road between Elephantine and Abu Simbel, where caravans could halt and find rest and security for the night, for clearly Rameses II. spared no pains to make the road on the western bank of the Nile safe for the transport of his gold, and we see that there was a temple or government building at intervals of from twelve to twenty miles the whole way from Kalabsha to Aksha. If the gold was sent north by river the boats could tie up for the night at the nearest temple or fort, where, no doubt, a guard sufficient for all purposes of protection of the royal property was stationed.

Rameses II. was succeeded by his thirteenth son, Mer-en-Ptah (I.) hetep-lier-Maat, and in the fifth year of his reign the Libyans, to whom a large number of Mediterranean peoples joined themselves, revolted and began to invade the frontiers of Egypt. The king collected his forces, and defeated the rebels in a pitched battle, and their leader, king Mareiui, fled ; the king of Egypt captured large quantities of spoil, which he had packed on the backs of asses and sent to Egypt. The Libyan king left behind his wife and children, and six of his brothers and sons, and 6,359 officers and soldiers were slain and mutilated, according to the 638