THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN Syria into Egypt. Rameses III. appears not to have visited Nubia, and there is no mention in the inscriptions of any expedition into that country in his reign. A portion of his fleet sailed at regular intervals to Punt, and in his summary of the principal events of his reign the king himself tells us that his ships returned laden with all the marvellous products of the country or region called Neter-taui, which is situated on the African coast to the south of th§ Red Sea. These ships set out on their journey from the "mountain of Qebti," or Coptos, by which we must understand some port near the modern Kuser, and there they were unloaded when they returned. The goods were taken overland to some spot on the Nile, near the modern town of Kena, probably by way of the Wadi Hammamat. To the same Red Sea port the copper from the mines in the Sinai'tic Peninsula was brought, and the metal, in ingots, was carried across the Eastern Desert into Egypt on the backs of asses. There is no reason to doubt that the gold mines in the Wadi 'Ulaki were worked successfully by the king's agents, and it is quite clear from his own testimony that the natives of the Sudan gave him no trouble.

In summing up the results of his rule he says : " I made the " whole country to be covered with blossom-bearing trees, and " I made all the people to sit under the shade thereof I made it " possible for an Egyptian woman to walk with a bold and " free step whithersoever she pleased, and no man or woman " among the people would molest her. In my time I made the " horsemen and the bowmen of the Shairetana and the Qehaq " to dwell in their towns, and to lie down stretched out at full " length on their backs, and they were not afraid, because there " was no fighting with Kash (Nubia), or with the Syrian foes.

" Their bows and their weapons of war were laid up inside their " guard-houses, and they were filled with meat and drink, of which " they partook with rejoicings, and their wives and their children " were with them, and they looked not behind them, because "their hearts were glad.'" Thus it is clear that there was no war in Nubia in the reign of Rameses III., and that when we see the name of Punt among the names of the peoples and countries ' Brit. Mus. Papyrus, No. 9900, plate 78, lines 9-12 642