Records Of The Past.

at an interval of 12 dynasties—for Egyptian history counts by dynasties and not years—are not less interesting . Thothmes was the greatest warrior King that Egypt possessed . From his earliest youth the battle-field was his home , and war his pastime . No sooner had he abjected the Hykshos from the borders of Pelusium than he marched

amid the blazing suns of Asia to the conquest of the alluvial lands of the Euphrates and the Tigris . Tablets as the landmarks of his empire he placed on the banks of these rivers . The

Princes of Palestine and the Kings of Assyria paid an annual tribute or revenue into the Egyptian Exchequer . His great exploit was the battle of Megiddo , which was fought in the 23 rd year of his reign , between Thothmes and

the Kita , then the most powerful people of Central Asia . Thothmes fought in his war chariot in full Egyptian armour , and defeated the enemy with immense slaughter . It w as in vain they fled to a neighbouring fortress . It was

taken and assured to Thothmes the supremacy of Asia . At this time the tombs of the heroic dead at Thebes have on their brilliant walls the scenes of conquest and the lively description of the deeds of the illustrious mummies . They address the visitor as if living , in

the first person , not in the wail of the departed , but with the pride of the living . One of the most remarkable of the staff of Thothmes was a General Amenemheb . He had marched at the side of his sovereign from the Nile to

the Tigris . At the the siege of Khadesh he had led the forlorn hope , many prisoners he had taken with his own hands , and killed a wild horse driven against his division . When Thothmes hunted elephants in the plains of

Mesopotamia , Amenemheb had cut off the trunk , and captured the leader of the herd which rushed at Thothmes . Next to the annals of Thothmes , the often-repeated campaign of Ramses II . against the Khita appears in the series translated by Professor Liishiiigton . As a literary composition it is of the

highest order ; it rises to the dignity of an epic poem , and the scribe Pentaur , the author raises the mortal Ramses to the skies . Alone in his war chariot , surrounded by 2 , 500 of the enemy , Banises—another

Achilleswithstands then- entire force , revives the drooping courage of his charioteer , and , dashing through the ranks , regains Ms host , to lead it , inspired by his example , to the total defeat of Asia confederated in arms against him . The

most important and extensive of the Ethiopian inscriptions record the conquest of Egypt , by the monarch Biankhi , whose seat of government was Napata , or Mount Barkal . The Ethiopian conqueror descended the Nile , and expelled a number of petty Princes in the 8 th

century B . C . These were probably the vassals of Assyria , for while by professions of piety to the Egpytian gods he so conciliated the priesthood that Thebes threw open her hundred gates to welcome his arrival , it required the

arguments of mounds , and battering rams to enter the walls of Memphis . That city , defended byTiiepliachthus , the father of Bokchoris , evidently an able commander of foreign troops , succumbed only to a bloody assault , as Hermopolis

had already done to investment and catapults . Its Monarch , Nimrod , 'who bore a Babylonian name , submitted reluctantly to Piankhi , and delivered up his family and his horses to the victor . The Ethiopian despised the women , and reviled the horses . If Nimrod found

any favour m his sight , it was owing to the abstinence from a fish diet , which entitled him for some occult reason , to more consideration than the other princes . This historical piece is one of the most interesting of the series , and

is well translated by Canon Cook , of Exeter . An imaginary tour of an Egyptian adventurer or hero , translated by M . Chabas , gives a vivid idea of the state of Palestine about the time of the Exodus , its Arabs and its camels ,

and the griefs to which a wandering warrior might come on the road . Passing by the Lamentations of Isis , by M .