* He is mentioned in the Sehel inscriptions as “the royal son Sura.”  Nahi, who had been regarded as the first holder of the office, and who was still in office under Thutmosis III., had been appointed by Thutmosis I., but after Sura.

** Under Thutmosis III., the viceroy Nahi restored the temple at Semneh; under Tutankhamon, the viceroy Hui received tribute from the Ethiopian princes, and presented them to the sovereign.

[Illustration:  336.jpg A CITY OF MODERN NUBIA—­THE ANCIENT DONGOLA]

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

This district was in a perpetual state of war—­a war without danger, but full of trickery and surprises:  here he prepared himself for the larger arena of the Syrian campaigns, learning the arts of generalship more perfectly than was possible in the manouvres of the parade-ground.  Moreover, the appointment was dictated by religious as well as by political considerations.  The presumptive heir to the throne was to his father what Horus had been to Osiris—­his lawful successor, or, if need be, his avenger, should some act of treason impose on him the duty of vengeance:  and was it not in Ethiopia that Horus had gained his first victories over Typhon?  To begin like Horus, and flesh his maiden steel on the descendants of the accomplices of Sit, was, in the case of the future sovereign, equivalent to affirming from the outset the reality of his divine extraction.*

     * In the Orbiney Papyrus the title of “Prince of Kush” was
     assigned to the heir-presumptive to the throne.

As at the commencement of the Theban dynasties, it was the river valley only in these regions of the Upper Nile which belonged to the Pharaohs.  From this time onward it gave support to an Egyptian population as far as the juncture of the two Niles:  it was a second Egypt, but a poorer one, whose cities presented the same impoverished appearance as that which we find to-day in the towns of Nubia.  The tribes scattered right and left in the desert, or distributed beyond the confluence of the two Niles among the plains of Sennar, were descended from the old indigenous races, and paid valuable tribute every year in precious metals, ivory, timber, or the natural products of their districts, under penalty of armed invasion.*

     * The tribute of the Ganbatiu, or people of the south, and
          that of Kush and of the Uauaiu, is mentioned repeatedly
          in the Annales de Thutmosis III. for the year XXXI.,
          for the year XXXIII., and for the year XXXIV.  The
          regularity with which this item recurs, unaccompanied by
          any mention of war, following after each Syrian campaign,
          shows that it was an habitual operation which was
          registered as an understood thing.  True, the inscription
          does not give the item for every year, but then it only
          dealt with Ethiopian affairs in so far as they were
          subsidiary to events in Asia; the payment was none the
          less an annual one, the amount varying in accordance with
          local agreement.