Origen de la fase acuosa con deuterio y oxígeno-18

was the name of the previous king's successor. His name had a good sound in those days of the prosperity of the Egyptian empire, since he distinguished himself above all other kings by his power and wisdom. His fame long outlived him. The memory of this powerful and warlike king has also been preserved through the course of ages down to our own time, thanks to the sentiments of gratitude which made the Egyptians perpetuate the memory of the great king Usurtasen III., whom they honoured with divine worship, building him temples, and offering sacrifices to him. During the whole of his reign this Pharaoh was particularly engaged in military expeditions, which were directed against the unfortunate negroes inhabiting the land of Kush, with the view of regulating the frontiers and constructing fortresses to stop once for all the robber inroads into Egypt on the side of the south. His predecessors had extended their campaigns tolerably far to the south, some even to the second cataract; but the complete subjection of the inhabitants of these countries had not nearly been completed.

The inscription on a stone which was discovered on the island of Elephantina by an English traveller, beginning with, 'In the year 8, month Epiphi,' of our Usurtasen III., 'the friend of the goddess Sati, of Elephantina,' names especially this as the time when the king moved forward 'to beat the miserable land of Kush.' In another inscription coming [160] from Abydos

mention is made of a similar campaign of the king against 'the miserable Kush,' under the date of the nineteenth year of the reign of the king. Of these two campaigns, the first finds its confirmation from the inscription of a memorial stone, which was found in the neighbourhood of Wady Haifa.

Here, close below the second cataract of the Nile, King Usurtasen built sanctuaries and

fortresses on the heights which commanded both banks of the river. Their remains still exist in our day, and are now known under the name of Semne and Koomme. The origin of this

denomination must be very ardent, since the words Samina and Koummou, traced in Greek characters before the Christian era, are found on an inscription of the walls of the temple of Semne. Two large stone columns, covered with long inscriptions, served anciently as

boundary stones to fix the frontier between the negroland called Heh and the Egyptian empire. Both were placed here, on the territory of the above-named fortresses, under the reign and by the order of Usurtasen III., as a visible warning to the dusky-coloured races of the so-called Nubia. The inscription of the older stone begins with the short but eloquent words: 'This is the frontier of the South, which was fixed in the year 8, in the reign of his majesty King

Usurtasen III., who gives life eternally. Let it not be permitted to any negro to cross it on his journey, except barks loaded with all kinds of cattle, oxen, goats, and asses belonging to the negroes, and except the negro who comes to barter in the land of Aken. To these, on the contrary, every- [161] thing good shall be given. But otherwise let it not be permitted to a vessel belonging to negroes to enter on its road the country of Heh.'

Without doubt Aken is the old name of the country of Nubia, which Pliny (vi. 184), in his enumeration of the towns of Ethiopia, described by the explorers of Nero, calls by the designation of Acina, since he mentions it directly after the well-known hill fortress, Primi (now Qasr Ibrim), and gives it a distance of 310,000 Roman paces from Syene. The situation

of the place agrees sufficiently with the conditions which necessarily connect it with the Aken or Akin of the times of the third Usurtasen, near the Second Cataract.

The war against, and final subjection of, the lower negroland, Kush or Kash—since it is thus that the inscriptions of the twelfth dynasty expressly name the theatre of the warlike deeds of the Egyptians of this period—was carried on not without cruelty ; and the pictures—which on the stone columns of victory of the sixteenth year of Usurtasen III. give an idea of the way in which the war was carried on against the negroes—remind one of the most infamous razzias in the recent history of African warfare. The king, who penetrated into the interior of the country between the Nile and the Red Sea, took possession of the women, caught the men (who had gone to their wells), drove away the cattle, and set fire to the standing crops. Such a merciless, continued persecution of the inhabitants of Nubia, who had been already oppressed by the Pharaohs, in the end intimidated them, and they were induced to submit to Egyptian supremacy and [162] protection, and to endure the unavoidable loss of their freedom and independence. Usurtasen gained his object, and from Syene to beyond the second

cataract, the Nile valley and the country on both sides of the river became part of the Egyptian empire, and the gods of the Pharaohs took up their abode in their temples newly-founded on the territory which had been won.

As its conqueror, Usurtasen necessarily stood in especial honour with his contemporaries as well as with later generations—and we can quite understand that posterity should accord him the honours of a god-protector of Nubia. More than fifteen centuries after the events which had taken place on Nubian territory under Usurtasen III., the great Thutmes III.—the real Alexander of Egyptian history—caused to be built to his ancestor on the spot where he had raised the fortress of Semne, a temple which was consecrated for ever to the memory of the god-king Usurtasen III., beside the newly-created divinity of the country, Totun, a particular form of the ram-headed Khnum of Elephantina. Thus, for example, we can read at Semne the following inscription: 'you princes who approach this memorial stone, who love and invoke the gods of your country, who intend to reach again your native towns, say here your prayers before the Nubian god Totun .... and before the defunct king Usurtasen III., that they may graciously permit the usual funeral offering in memory of such a one.' The same King

Thutmes III. had not omitted to consecrate standing altars to the before-named gods Totun and Usurtasen, and the god Khnum, and to found sacrifices, to [163] be offered on the

anniversaries, and at the times of the principal feasts of the Egyptian calendar, by the priests of the temple of Semne. Thus it was, to use an expression of the Egyptians, that Thutmes III. caused to live again monumentally the memory of Ins glorious ancestor.

This is the text which contains the great dedicatory inscription put up by the Alexander of old Egypt in memory of these deeds.

'In the year 2, in the 7th day of the month Paoni, in the reign of his holiness King Thutmes III., friend of the god Totun, residing in Nubia, the holiness of the king spoke thus to Nahi, the prince-governor of the regions of the South: "Thou shalt cause to be engraved on a stone the sacrifices to be consecrated to the King Usurtasen III in the temple of his father Totun. A grateful son has (thus) paid his homage to his ancestors who engendered him."'

After several groups, the mutilated state of which does not permit a continuous translation, the text continues:

'At the feast of the beginning of the (first) season, 50 bushels of dourra to his father Totun, and 645 bushels 20 pecks of dourra .... (to his father) Khnum.

At the feast of the commencement of the (second) season, 50 bushels of dourra (to Totun), and 425 bushels 20 pecks of dourra yearly to lus father Khnum.

A bull at the new year to his father Totun. A bull.

[164] 'A bull at the anniversary defeat of the Annu (mountaineers of Nubia), which happened the 21st Pharmuthi, to Totun.

At the feast of the commencement of the (third) year, 50 bushels of dourra to Totun, 204 bushels 15 pecks of dourra yearly to Khnuni for the defeat of the "Nubian mountaineers." Eight vestments of byssus stuff.

At the feast which happens in the month Pachons, a bull to his father Khnum, and 26 bushels of dourra yearly to the queen .... 26 bushels yearly to the queen Mersecher for the punishment of the nations, and 134 bushels and 10 pecks yearly to the King Usurtasen III.'

There are a great number of memorials and inscriptions which are dedicated to the memory of the third Usurtasen, or the officials, who in his reign devoted their knowledge and industry to the service of the king in the execution of public works or holy buildings. The inexhaustible quarries of Hanmiamat furnished, as usual, the materials for building, to which the master quarrymen, accompanied by thousands, proceeded to cut the stone. Active life then reigned in the so-called valley of Rohan, where inscriptions have faithfully preserved down to the present day the remembrance of these ancient writers and their worship of the great mountain god, Khem-Pan of Coptos.

We will quote a tablet on the rock of the fourteenth year of the reign of the king to lay before the reader an example of this kind of memorial inscription drawn [165] from these distant ages of Egyptian antiquity: 'In the year 14, the 18th day of the month Khoiakh, in the reign of King Usurtasen III., living for ever, who loves the god Khem-Hor, of the town of Coptos, behold that his holiness ordered the departure for the country of Rohan, for the execution of a monument consecrated by his holiness to the god Harshef, master of the town of

Heracleopolis-Magna.' As on all such occasions, the official to whom the work was confided does not fail to let his remarkable services be known, and to recommend himself to posterity by the highest self-praise.