These men devised plots against the new king, and he escaped with difficulty from their conspiracies. “It was after the evening meal, as night came on,--I gave myself up to pleasure for a time,--then I lay down upon the soft coverlets in my palace, I abandoned myself to repose,--and my heart began to be overtaken by slumber; when, lo! they gathered together in arms to revolt against me,--and I became weak as a serpent of the field.--Then I aroused myself to fight with my own hands,--and I found that I had but to strike the unresisting.--When I took a foe, weapon in hand, I make the wretch to turn and flee;--strength forsook him, even in the night; there were none who contended, and nothing vexatious was effected against me.” The conspirators were disconcerted by the promptness with which Amenemhâît had attacked them, and apparently the rebellion was suppressed on the same night in which it broke out. But the king was growing old, his son Usirtasen was very young, and the nobles were bestirring themselves in prospect of a succession which they supposed to be at hand. The best means of putting a stop to their evil devices and of ensuring the future of the dynasty was for the king to appoint the heir-presumptive, and at once associate him with himself in the exercise of his sovereignty. In the XXth year of his reign, Amenemhâît solemnly conferred the titles and prerogatives of royalty upon his son Usirtasen: “I raised thee from the rank of a subject,--I granted thee the free use of thy arm that thou mightest be feared.--As for me, I apparelled myself in the fine stuffs of my palace until I appeared to the eye as the flowers of my garden,--and I perfumed myself with essences as freely as I pour forth the water from my cisterns.” Usirtasen naturally assumed the active duties of royalty as his share. “He is a hero who wrought with the sword, a mighty man of valour without peer: he beholds the barbarians, he rushes forward and falls upon their predatory hordes. He is the hurler of javelins who makes feeble the hands of the foe; those whom he strikes never more lift the lance. Terrible is he, shattering skulls with the blows of his war-mace, and none resisted him in his time. He is a swift runner who smites the fugitive with the sword, but none who run after him can overtake him. He is a heart alert for battle in his time. He is a lion who strikes with his claws, nor ever lets go his weapon. He is a heart girded in armour at the sight of the hosts, and who leaves nothing standing behind him. He is a valiant man rushing forward when he beholds the fight. He is a soldier rejoicing to fall upon the barbarians: he seizes his buckler, he leaps forward and kills without a second blow. None may escape his arrow; before he bends his bow the barbarians flee from his arms like dogs, for the great goddess has charged him to fight against all who know not her name, and whom he strikes he spares not; he leaves nothing alive.” The old Pharaoh