[Illustration:  380.jpg SOME OF THE PLANTS AND ANIMALS BROUGHT BACK FROM PUANIT]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

The three succeeding campaigns consolidated the rule of Egypt in the country of the Negeb, which lay to the south-west of the Dead Sea, in Phoenicia, which prudently resigned itself to its fate, and in that part of Lotanii occupying the northern part of the basin of the Orontes.**

* We know of these three campaigns from the indirect testimony of the Annals, which end in the year XXIX. with the mention of the fifth campaign.  The only dated one is referred to the year XXV., and we know of that of the Negeb only by the Inscription of Amenemhabi, 11. 3-5:  the campaign began in the Negeb of Judah, but the king carried it to Naharaim the same year.

None of these expeditions appear to have been marked by any successes comparable to the victory at Megiddo, for the coalition of the Syrian chiefs did not survive the blow which they then sustained; but Qodshu long remained the centre of resistance, and the successive defeats which its inhabitants suffered never disarmed for more than a short interval the hatred which they felt for the Egyptian.

[Illustration:  381.jpg PART OF THE TRIUMPHAL LISTS OF THUTMOSIS III.]

     On One Of The Pylons Of The Temple At Karnak.  Drawn by
     Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.

During these years of glorious activity considerable tribute poured in to both Memphis and Thebes; not only ingots of gold and silver, bars and blocks of copper and lead, blocks of lapis-lazuli and valuable vases, but horses, oxen, sheep, goats, and useful animals of every kind, in addition to all of which we find, as in Hatshopsitu’s reign, the mention of rare plants and shrubs brought back from countries traversed by the armies in their various expeditions.  The Theban priests and savants exhibited much interest in such curiosities, and their royal pupil gave orders to his generals to collect for their benefit all that appeared either rare or novel.  They endeavoured to acclimatise the species or the varieties likely to be useful, and in order to preserve a record of these experiments, they caused a representation of the strange plants or animals to be drawn on the walls of one of the chapels which they were then building to one of their gods.  These pictures may still be seen there in interminable lines, portraying the specimens brought from the Upper Lotanu in the XXVth year of Thutmosis, and we are able to distinguish, side by side with many plants peculiar to the regions of the Euphrates, others having their habitat in the mountains and valleys of tropical Africa.