It has been proved by the philosophic Heeren, that Meroë was the grand emporium of the trade between the richest and most productive portions of the earth; the gold countries of eastern Africa, the spice lands of India, and the region of frankincense and precious stones in southern Arabia. He has shown that the communication between these countries was established in the most ancient periods, and continued without interruption through successive ages of time; that the ruins of Adulé, Azab, and Axum, yet mark the caravan routes between Meroë and Arabia Felix; and that Yemen, though separated from India by an open sea, is yet connected with it by nature in an extraordinary manner. “One half of the year,” he adds, “from spring to autumn, the wind regularly sets in and wafts the vessels from Arabia to India; the other half, from autumn to spring, it as regularly carries them back from India to Arabia.”[86] In truth, what Diodorus says, in general, of early Egyptian commerce and conquest by sea, need be no longer regarded as fabulous, although the details, like much that we glean from the remote history of all heathen nations, are to be received with circumspection. He tells us that Sesostris (Rameses III.) fitted out a fleet of four hundred ships in the Arabian gulf, with which he conquered all the countries bordering on the Erythrean sea, as far as India, whence he led an army beyond the Ganges until he again reached the ocean. This account is not likely to be _all_ fable, especially since it comes from a Greek historian; and we may safely regard it as an indication of that extensive maritime enterprise in which the Egyptians engaged with the southern nations of Asia. When the Romans under the guidance of Hippalus, eighty years after their conquest of Egypt, began to trade with India by way of the Red Sea and Malabar, they only re-established the ancient route, which had been long forgotten amidst the chaos of political revolutions. In fine, if the Egyptians had been their own historians, we should probably learn that they were as familiar with India in ancient as the English are in modern times.[87] While we conclude, therefore, that the Egyptians were a distinct people from either the Arabs or Hindoos, we cannot deny those resemblances which are too obvious to be mistaken, yet not to be accounted for without difficulty; nor can there be a reasonable doubt that the people of both these nations formed an important part of the once multitudinous population of Egypt.[88] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5. THE HYKSHOS.