army was less numerous, and I estimate it with great hesitation at about 15,000 or 18,000 men:  it was considered a powerful army, while that of the Hittites was regarded as an innumerable host.  A passage in the Anastasi Papyrus, No. 1, tells us the composition of a corps led by Ramses II. against the tribes in the vicinity of Qocoir and the Rahanu valley; it consisted of 5000 men, of whom 620 were Shardana, 1600 Qahak, 70 Mashauasha, and 880 Negroes.

The infantry was, as we should expect, composed of troops of the line and light troops.  The former wore either short wigs arranged in rows of curls, or a kind of padded cap by way of a helmet, thick enough to deaden blows; the breast and shoulders were undefended, but a short loin-cloth was wrapped round the hips, and the stomach and upper part of the thighs were protected by a sort of triangular apron, sometimes scalloped at the sides, and composed of leather thongs attached to a belt.  A buckler of moderate dimensions had been substituted for the gigantic shield of the earlier Theban period; it was rounded at the top and often furnished with a solid metal boss, which the experienced soldiers always endeavoured to present to the enemy’s lances and javelins.  Their weapons consisted of pikes about five feet long, with broad bronze or copper points, occasionally of flails, axes, daggers, short curved swords, and spears; the trumpeters were armed with daggers only, and the officers did not as a rule encumber themselves with either buckler or pike, but bore and axe and dagger, an occasionally a bow.

[Illustration:  311.jpg A PLATOON (TROOP) OF EGYPTIAN SPEARMEN AT DEIR EL-BAHARI]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph taken by Naville.

The light infantry was composed chiefly of bowmen—­pidatu—­the celebrated archers of Egypt, whose long bows and arrows, used with deadly skill, speedily became renowned throughout the East; the quiver, of the use of which their ancestors were ignorant, had been borrowed from the Asiatics, probably from the Hyksos, and was carried hanging at the side or slung over the shoulder.  Both spearmen and archers were for the most part pure-bred Egyptians, and were divided into regiments of unequal strength, each of which usually bore the name of some god—­as, for example, the regiment of Ra or of Phtah, of Arnon or of Sutkhu*—­in which the feudal contingents, each commanded by its lord or his lieutenants, fought side by side with the king’s soldiers furnished from the royal domains.  The effective force of the army was made up by auxiliaries taken from the tribes of the Sahara and from the negroes of the Upper Nile.**