=148.= His grandson, Thothmes IV, caused the carving of the great Sphinx near the Pyramids. Amunoph III, his successor, was a great and powerful monarch. He adorned the country by magnificent buildings, and improved its agriculture by the construction of tanks or reservoirs to regulate irrigation. The two _Colossi_ near Thebes, one of which is known as the vocal Memnon, date from his reign; but the Amenophe´um, of which they were ornaments, is now in ruins. Amunoph maintained the warlike fame of his ancestors by expeditions into all the countries invaded by Thothmes III. He is styled upon his monuments, “Pacificator of Egypt and Tamer of the Libyan Shepherds.” He built the gorgeous palace of Luxor, which he connected with the temple at Karnac by an avenue of a thousand sphinxes. He made a similar avenue also at Thebes, lined with colossal sitting statues of the cat-headed goddess Pasht (Bubastis).
=149.= B. C. 1364-1327. In the reign of Horus, his son, the nation was distracted by many claimants for the crown, most of whom were princes or princesses of the blood royal. Horus outlived his rivals and destroyed their monuments. He had successful foreign wars in Africa, and made additions to the palaces at Karnac and Luxor. With the next king, Rathotis (or Resitot), the Eighteenth Dynasty ended.
=150.= B. C. 1324-1322. Rameses I, founder of the Nineteenth Dynasty, was descended from the first two kings of the eighteenth. His son, Seti, inherited all the national hatred toward the Syrian invaders, and “avenged the shame of Egypt on Asia.” He reconquered Syria, which had revolted some forty years earlier, and carried his victorious arms as far as the borders of Cilicia and the banks of the Euphrates. He built the great Hall at Karnac—in which the whole Cathedral of Notre Dame, at Paris, could stand without touching either walls or ceiling—and his tomb is the most beautiful of all the sepulchers of the kings.
=151.= B. C. 1311-1245. Rameses II, the Great, reigned sixty-six years; and his achievements in war and peace fill a large space in the records of his time, in which fact and fiction are often intermingled by his flatterers. During his father’s life-time, he began his military career by subduing both Libya and Arabia. His ambition being thus inflamed, he had no sooner succeeded to the throne than he resolved upon the conquest of the world. He provided for the security of his kingdom during his absence, by re-dividing the country into thirty-six nomes and appointing a governor for each. He then equipped an immense army, which is said to have included 600,000 foot, 24,000 horse, and 27,000 war chariots. Having conquered Ethiopia, Rameses made a fleet of four hundred vessels, the first which any Egyptian king had possessed, and sailing down the Red Sea to the Arabian, continued his voyage as far as India. He returned only to make fresh preparations, and lead another great army eastward beyond the Ganges, and onward till he reached a new ocean. Columns were every-where erected recording the victories of the monarch, and lauding the courage or shaming the cowardice of those who had encountered him.