Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.
They also employed horses and chariots. Their bravery made them a foe not to be despised, in spite of their ignorance of tactics and their want of discipline. When they were afterwards formed into regiments and conducted by experienced generals, they became the best auxiliary troops which Egypt could boast of. The Labû from this time forward were the most energetic of the tribes, and their chiefs prided themselves upon possessing the leadership over all the other clans in this region of the world.
* This was the case in the wars of Mînephtah and Ramses III., in which the Labû and their kings took the command of the confederate armies assembled against Egypt.
The Labû might very well have gained the mastery over the other inhabitants of the desert at this period, who had become enfeebled by the frequent defeats which they had sustained at the hands of the Egyptians. At the moment when Mînephtah ascended the throne, their king, Mâraîû, son of Didi, ruled over the immense territory lying between the Fayûm and the two Syrtes: the Timihu, the Kahaka, and the Mashaûasha rendered him the same obedience as his own people. A revolution had thus occurred in Africa similar to that which had taken place a century previously in Naharaim, when Sapalulu founded the Hittite empire. A great kingdom rose into being where no state capable of disturbing Egyptian control had existed before. The danger was serious. The Hittites, separated from the Nile by the whole breadth of Kharu, could not directly threaten any of the Egyptian cities; but the Libyans, lords of the desert, were in contact with the Delta, and could in a few days fall upon any point in the valley they chose. Mînephtah, therefore, hastened to resist the assault of the westerns, as his father had formerly done that of the easterns, and, strange as it may seem, he found among the troops of his new enemies some of the adversaries with whom the Egyptians had fought under the walls of Qodshû sixty years before. The Shardana, Lycians, and others, having left the coasts of the Delta and the Phoenician seaports owing to the vigilant watch kept by the Egyptians over their waters, had betaken themselves to the Libyan littoral, where they met with a favourable reception. Whether they had settled in some places, and formed there those colonies of which a Greek tradition of a recent age speaks, we cannot say. They certainly followed the occupation of mercenary soldiers, and many of them hired out their services to the native princes, while others were enrolled among the troops of the King of the Khâti or of the Pharaoh himself. Mâraîû brought with him Achæans, Shardana, Tûrsha, Shagalasha,* and Lycians in considerable numbers when he resolved to begin the strife.** This was not one of those conventional little wars which aimed at nothing further than the imposition of the payment of a tribute upon the conquered, or the conquest of one of their provinces. Mâraîû had nothing less in view than the transport of his whole people into the Nile valley, to settle permanently there as the Hyksôs had done before him.