VIII.--I am come, to grant thee that thou mayest crush the ends of the earth, so that the circle which surrounds the ocean may be grasped in thy fist,--I grant that they may see Thy Majesty as the sparrow-hawk, lord of the wing, who sees at a glance all that he desires.
IX.--I am come, to grant thee that thou mayest crush the peoples who are in their duars, so that thou mayest bring the Hirû-shâîtû into captivity,--I grant that they may see Thy Majesty like the jackal of the south, lord of swiftness, the runner who prowls through the two lands.
X.--I am come, to grant thee that thou mayest crush the nomads, so that the Nubians as far as the land of Pidît are in thy grasp,--I grant that they may see Thy Majesty like unto thy two brothers Horus and Sit, whose arms I have joined in order to establish thy power.
* The name of the people associated with the Tihonu was read at first Tanau, and identified with the Danai of the Greeks. Chabas was inclined to read Ûtena, and Brugsch, Ûthent, more correctly Utanâtiû, utanâti, the people of Uatanit. The juxtaposition of this name with that of the Libyans compels us to look towards the west for the site of this people: may we assign to them the Ionian Islands, or even those in the western Mediterranean.
The poem became celebrated. When Seti I., two centuries later, commanded the Poet Laureates of his court to celebrate his victories in verse, the latter, despairing of producing anything better, borrowed the finest strophes from this hymn to Thûtmosis IIL, merely changing the name of the hero. The composition, unlike so many other triumphal inscriptions, is not a mere piece of official rhetoric, in which the poverty of the subject is concealed by a multitude of common-places whether historical or mythological. Egypt indeed ruled the world, either directly or through her vassals, and from the mountains of Abyssinia to those of Cilicia her armies held the nations in awe with the threat of the Pharaoh.
The conqueror, as a rule, did not retain any part of their territory. He confined himself to the appropriation of the revenue of certain domains for the benefit of his gods.* Amon of Karnak thus became possessor of seven Syrian towns which he owed to the generosity of the victorious Pharaohs.
**