Khati had failed to take from Egypt.  The Phoenicians of Tyre and Sidon had too many commercial interests on the banks of the Nile to dream of breaking the slender tie which held them to the Pharaoh, since independence, or submission to another sovereign, might have ruined their trade.  The Kharu and the Bedawin, vanquished wherever they had ventured to oppose the Pharaoh’s troops, were less than ever capable of throwing off the Egyptian yoke.  Syria fell back into its former state.  The local princes once more resumed their intrigues and quarrels, varied at intervals by appeals to their suzerain for justice or succour.  The “Royal Messengers” appeared from time to time with their escorts of archers and chariots to claim tribute, levy taxes, to make peace between quarrelsome vassals, or, if the case required it, to supersede some insubordinate chief by a governor of undoubted loyalty; in fine, the entire administration of the empire was a continuation of that of the preceding century.  The peoples of Kush meanwhile had remained quiet during the campaign in Syria, and on the western frontier the Tihonu had suffered so severe a defeat that they were not likely to recover from it for some time.* The bands of pirates, Shardana and others, who infested the Delta, were hunted down, and the prisoners taken from among them were incorporated into the royal guard.**

     * This war is represented at Karnak, and Ramses II. figures
     there among the children of Seti I.

** We gather this from passages in the inscriptions from the year V. onwards, in which Ramses II. boasts that he has a number of Shardana prisoners in his guard; Rouge was, perhaps, mistaken in magnifying these piratical raids into a war of invasion.

[Illustration:  166.jpg REPRESENTATION OF SETI I. VANQUISHING THE LIBYANS AND ASIATICS ON THE WALLS, KARNAK]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Ernil Brugsch-Bey.

Seti, however, does not appear to have had a confirmed taste for war.  He showed energy when occasion required it, and he knew how to lead his soldiers, as the expedition of his first year amply proved; but when the necessity was over, he remained on the defensive, and made no further attempt at conquest.  By his own choice he was “the jackal who prowls about the country to protect it,” rather than “the wizard lion marauding abroad by hidden paths,"* and Egypt enjoyed a profound peace in consequence of his ceaseless vigilance.

     * These phrases are taken direct from the inscriptions of
     Seti I.

A peaceful policy of this kind did not, of course, produce the amount of spoil and the endless relays of captives which had enabled his predecessors to raise temples and live in great luxury without overburdening their subjects with taxes.  Seti was, therefore, the more anxious to do all in his power to develop the internal wealth of the country.  The mining colonies of the Sinaitic Peninsula had never ceased