However this may have been, it is certain that Menephthah, in the fifth year of his reign, had to meet a formidable, and apparently unprovoked, attack from a combination of nations, the like of which we do not again meet with in Egyptian history, either earlier or later. Marmaiu, son of Deid, led against him a confederate army, consisting of three principal tribes of the Tahennu--- the Lubu (Libyans), the Mashuash (Maxyes), and the Kahaka--together with auxiliaries from five other tribes or peoples, the Akausha, the Luku, the Tursha, the Shartana, and the Sheklusha. The entire number of the army, as already stated, was probably not less than forty thousand; they had numerous chariots, and were armed with bows and arrows, cuirasses, and bronze or copper swords. They had skin tents, and brought with them their wives and children, with the intention of settling in Egypt, as the Hyksôs had done five hundred years earlier. They had also with them a considerable number of cattle, as bulls, oxen, and goats. The chiefs came provided with thrones, and both they and their officers had numerous drinking vessels of bronze, of silver, and of gold. The attack was made on the western side of Egypt, towards the apex of the Delta. It was at first completely successful. The small frontier towns were taken by assault, and "turned Into heaps of rubbish;" the Delta was entered upon, and a position taken up In the nome of Paari-sheps, or Prosopis, which lay between the Canobic and Sebennytic branches of the Nile, commencing at the point of their separation. From this position Memphis and Heliopolis were alike menaced. Menephthah hastily fortified these cities, or rather, we must suppose, strengthened their existing defences. Meanwhile the Libyans and their allies ravaged the open country. "The like had not been seen," as the native scribe observes, "even in the times of the kings of Lower Egypt, when the plague (_i.e._ the Hyksôs power) was in the land, and the kings of Upper Egypt were unable to drive it out." Egypt was desolated; its people "trembled like geese;" the fertile lands were overrun and wasted; the cities were pillaged; even the harbours were in some cases ruined and destroyed. Menephthah for a time remained on the defensive, shut up within the walls of Memphis, whose god Phthah he viewed as his special protector. He made, however, strenuous efforts to gather together a powerful force; his captains collected the native troops from the various provinces of Egypt, while he sent a number of emissaries Into Asia, who were instructed to raise a large body of mercenaries in that quarter. At last all was ready, and Menephthah appointed the fourteenth day as that on which he would place himself at the head of his army and lead them in person against the enemy; but, before the day came, his courage failed him. He "saw in a dream"--at least so he himself declares--"as it were a figure of the god Phthah, standing so as to