Soon after his re-appearance in Egypt, Euergetes was solicited by Cleomenes, the King of Sparta, to grant the assistance of his arms in the struggle which that republic was then supporting with Antigonus, the ruler of Macedon, and with the members of the Achaian league.  But the battle of Sellasia proved that the aid offered was inadequate.  Cleomenes fled to the banks of the Nile, where he found his august ally reposing under the successful banners of a numerous army, which he had just led home from the savage mountains of Ethiopia, whither his love of romantic conquest had conducted them.  He appears to have penetrated into the interior provinces of Abyssinia, and to have subdued the rude tribes which dwelt on the shores of the Red Sea, levying on the unfortunate natives the most oppressive contributions in cattle, gold, perfumes, and other articles belonging to that valuable merchandise which the Ethiopians and Arabs had long carried on with their Egyptian neighbours.  At Adule, the principal seaport of Abyssinia, he collected his victorious troops, and made them a speech on the wonderful exploits which they had achieved under his auspices, and on the numerous benefits which they had thereby secured to their native country.  The throne on which he sat, composed of white marble and supported by a slab of porphyry, was consecrated to the god of war, whom he chose to claim for his father and patron, and that the descendants of the vanquished Ethiopians might not be ignorant of their obligations to Ptolemy Euergetes, King of Egypt, he gave orders that his name and principal triumphs should be inscribed on the votive chair.  But not content with his real conquests, which reached from the Hellespont to the Euphrates, he added, like Ramsesr that he had conquered Thrace, Persia, Media, and Bactria.  He thus teaches us that monumental inscriptions, though read with difficulty, do not always tell the truth.  This was the most southerly spot to which the kings of Egypt ever sent an army.  But they kept no hold on the country.  Distance had placed it not only beyond their power, but almost beyond their knowledge; and two hundred years afterwards, when the geographer Strabo was making inquiries about that part of Arabia, as it was called, he was told of this monument as set up by the hero Sesostris, to whom it was usual to give the credit of so many wonderful works.  These inscriptions, it is worthy of remark, are still preserved, and constitute the only historical account that has reached these times of the Ethiopian warfare of this Egyptian monarch.  About seven hundred years after the reign of Euergetes, they were first published in the Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes, a Grecian monk, by whom they were copied on the spot.  The traveller Bruce, moreover, informs us that the stone containing the name of Ptolemy Euergetes serves as a footstool to the throne on which the kings of Abyssinia are crowned to this day.

[Illustration:  160b.jpg SIGNS, ARMS AND INSTRUMENTS FROM THE FIFTH TOMB]