great regularity as the taxes levied on the Egyptians themselves. It
comprised gold both from the mines and from the rivers, feathers, oxen
with curiously trained horns, giraffes, lions, leopards, and slaves of
all ages. The distant regions explored by Hâtshopsîtû continued to pay
a tribute at intervals. A fleet went to Pûanît to fetch large cargoes
of incense, and from time to time some Ilîm chief would feel himself
honoured by having one of his daughters accepted as an inmate of the
harem of the great king. After the year XLII. we have no further records
of the reign, but there is no reason to suppose that its closing years
were less eventful or less prosperous than the earlier. Thûtmosis III.,
when conscious of failing powers, may have delegated the direction of
his armies to his sons or to his generals, but it is also quite possible
that he kept the supreme command in his own hands to the end of his
days. Even when old age approached and threatened to abate his vigour,
he was upheld by the belief that his father Amon was ever at hand to
guide him with his counsel and assist him in battle. "I give to thee,
declared the god, the rebels that they may fall beneath thy sandals,
that thou mayest crush the rebellious, for I grant to thee by decree the
earth in its length and breadth. The tribes of the West and those of the
East are under the place of thy countenance, and when thou goest up
into all the strange lands with a joyous heart, there is none who
will withstand Thy Majesty, for I am thy guide when thou treadest them
underfoot. Thou hast crossed the water of the great curve of Naharaim*
in thy strength and in thy power, and I have commanded thee to let them
hear thy roaring which shall enter their dens, I have deprived their
nostrils of the breath of life, I have granted to thee that thy deeds
shall sink into their hearts, that my uraeus which is upon thy head may
burn them, that it may bring prisoners in long files from the peoples of
Qodi, that it may consume with its flame those who are in the marshes,**
that it may cut off the heads of the Asiatics without one of them being