The legendary exploits of Sesostris, that creation of Greek fancy and
ignorance, were fastened upon Ramses II., whose long reign, inordinate
vanity, and ceaseless activity as a builder made him one of the most
prominent of the old Pharaohs. It was natural, therefore, at the
beginning of hieroglyphic decipherment that the Greek accounts should be
accepted in full, and that Ramses II. should have been regarded as the
greatest of Egyptian conquerors. But further study soon showed that, in
this respect at least, his reputation had little to support it. Like his
monuments, too many of which are really stolen from his predecessors, or
else sacrifice honesty of work to haste and pretentiousness, a large
part of the conquests and victories that have been claimed for him was
due to the imagination of the scribes. In the reaction which followed on
this discovery, the modern historians of ancient Egypt were disposed to
dispute his claim to be a conqueror at all. But we now know that such a
scepticism was exaggerated, and though Ramses II. was not a conqueror
like Thothmes III., he nevertheless maintained and extended the Asiatic
empire which his father had recovered, and the lists of vanquished
cities which he engraved on the walls of his temples were not mere
repetitions of older catalogues, or the empty fictions of flattering
chroniclers. Egyptian armies really marched once more into Northern
Syria and the confines of Cilicia, and probably made their way to the
banks of the Euphrates. We have no reason for denying that Assyrian
troops may have been defeated by his arms, or that the king of Mitanni
may have sent an embassy to his court. And we now have a good deal more
than the indirect evidence of the treaty with the Hittites to show that
Canaan was again a province of the Egyptian empire. The names of some of
its cities which were captured in the early part of the Pharaoh's reign
may still be read on the walls of the Ramesseum at Thebes. Among them
are Ashkelon, Shalam or Jerusalem, Merom, and Beth-Anath, which were
taken by storm in his eighth year. Dapul, "in the land of the Amorites,"