* This fact is nowhere explicitly stated on the monuments:  we may infer it, however, from the way in which Thutmosis III. tells how he reached Gaza without opposition at the beginning of his first campaign, and celebrated the anniversary of his coronation there.  On the other hand, we learn from details in the lists that the mountains and plains beyond Gaza were in a state of open rebellion.

The river and desert tribes of this region soon forgot the severe lesson which he had given them:  as soon as the last Egyptian soldier had left their territory they rebelled once more, and began a fresh series of inroads which had to be repressed anew year after year.  Thutmosis I. had several times to drive them back in the years II. and III., but was able to make short work of their rebellions.  An inscription at Tombos on the Nile, in the very midst of the disturbed districts, told them in brave words what he was, and what he had done since he had come to the throne.  Wherever he had gone, weapon in hand, “seeking a warrior, he had found none to withstand him; he had penetrated to valleys which were unknown to his ancestors, the inhabitants of which had never beheld the wearers of the double diadem.”  All this would have produced but little effect had he not backed up his words by deeds, and taken decisive measures to restrain the insolence of the barbarians.  Tombos lies opposite to Hannek, at the entrance to that series of rapids known as the Third Cataract.  The course of the Nile is here barred by a formidable dyke of granite, through which it has hollowed out six winding channels of varying widths, dotted here and there with huge polished boulders and verdant islets.  When the inundation is at its height, the rocks are covered and the rapids disappear, with the exception of the lowest, which is named Lokoli, where faint eddies mark the place of the more dangerous reefs; and were it not that the fall here is rather more pronounced and the current somewhat stronger, few would suspect the existence of a cataract at the spot.  As the waters go down, however, the channels gradually reappear.  When the river is at its lowest, the three westernmost channels dry up almost completely, leaving nothing but a series of shallow pools; those on the east still maintain their flow, but only one of them, that between the islands of Tombos and Abadin, remains navigable.  Here Thutmosis built, under invocation of the gods of Heliopolis, one of those brickwork citadels, with its rectangular keep, which set at nought all the efforts and all the military science of the Ethiopians:  attached to it was a harbour, where each vessel on its way downstream put in for the purpose of hiring a pilot.*

The monarchs of the XIIth and XIIIth dynasties had raised fortifications at the approaches to Wady Haifa, and their engineers skilfully chose the sites so as completely to protect from the ravages of the Nubian pirates that part of the Nile which lay between Wady Haifa and Philse.*