The barge shown in Fig. 5 was strengthened, apparently, with three tiers of beams; it was steered by two pairs of huge steering-oars, and was towed by three parallel groups, each consisting of ten large boats. There were 32 oarsmen to each boat in the two wing groups, and 36 in each of the central groups: there were, therefore, exactly one thousand oars used in all. The towing-cable started from the masthead of the foremost boat of each group, and thence passed to the bow of the second one, and so on, the stern of each boat being left perfectly free, for the purpose, no doubt, of facilitating the steering. The flotilla was accompanied by five smaller boats, some of which were used by the priests, while the others were despatch vessels, probably used to keep up communications with the groups of tugs. There are no other inscriptions, or carvings, that have as yet been discovered in Egypt which give us so much information regarding Egyptian ships as those on the Temple at Der-el-Bahari. From time to time we read of naval and mercantile expeditions, but illustrations of the ships and details of the voyages are, as a rule, wanting. We know that Seti I., of the nineteenth dynasty, whose reign commenced about 1366 B.C., was a great encourager of commerce. He felled timber in Lebanon for building ships, and is said to have excavated a canal between the Nile and the Red Sea. His successor, the famous Ramses II., carried on wars by sea, as is proved by the inscriptions in the Temple at Abu Simbel in Nubia, 762 miles above Cairo. In the records of the reign of Ramses III., 1200 B.C., we again come upon illustrations of ships in the Temple of Victory at Medinet Habu, West Thebes. The inscriptions describe a great naval victory which this king won at Migdol, near the Pelusiac mouth of the Nile, over northern invaders, probably Colchians and Carians. Fig. 6 shows one of the battleships. It is probably more a symbolical than an exact representation, nevertheless it gives us some valuable information. For instance, we see that the rowers were protected against the missiles of their adversaries by strong bulwarks, and the captain occupied a crow's nest at the masthead. Ramses III. did a great deal to develop Egyptian commerce. His naval activities were by no means confined to the Mediterranean, for we read that he built a fleet at Suez, and traded with the land of Punt and the shores of the Indian Ocean. Herodotus states that, in his day, the docks still existed at the head of the Arabian Gulf where this Red Sea fleet was built.