foam and snow is married in angry nights.

And yet in Medinet-Abu there reigns a splendid calm--a calm that
sometimes seems massive, resistant, as the columns and the walls. Peace
is certainly inclosed by the stones that call up thoughts of war, as if,
perhaps, their purpose had been achieved many centuries ago, and
they were quit of enemies for ever. Rameses III. is connected with
Medinet-Abu. He was one of the greatest of the Egyptian kings, and has
been called the "last of the great sovereigns of Egypt." He ruled for
thirty-one years, and when, after a first visit to Medinet-Abu, I looked
into his records, I was interested to find that his conquests and his
wars had "a character essentially defensive." This defensive spirit is
incarnated in the stones of these ruins. One reads in them something of
the soul of this king who lived twelve hundred years before Christ, and
who desired, "in remembrance of his Syrian victories," to give to his
memorial temple an outward military aspect. I noticed a military aspect
at once inside this temple; but if you circle the buildings outside it
is more unmistakable. For the east front has a battlemented wall, and
the battlements are shield-shaped. This fortress, or migdol, a name
which the ancient Egyptians borrowed from the nomadic tribes of Syria,
is called the "Pavilion of Rameses III.," and his principal battles are
represented upon its walls. The monarch does not hesitate to speak of
himself in terms of praise, suggesting that he was like the God Mentu,
who was the Egyptian war god, and whose cult at Thebes was at one period
more important even than was the cult of Amun, and also plainly hinting
that he was a brave fellow. "I, Rameses the King," he murmurs, "behaved
as a hero who knows his worth." If hieroglyphs are to be trusted,
various Egyptian kings of ancient times seem to have had some vague
suspicion of their own value, and the walls of Medinet-Abu are, to speak
sincerely, one mighty boast. In his later years the king lived in peace