“remained in the palace,” waiting until his son returned to announce the success of his enterprises, and contributing by his counsel to the prosperity of their common empire. Such was the reputation for wisdom which he thus acquired, that a writer who was almost his contemporary composed a treatise in his name, and in it the king was supposed to address posthumous instructions to his son on the art of governing. He appeared to his son in a dream, and thus admonished him: “Hearken unto my words!--Thou art king over the two worlds, prince over the three regions. Act still better than did thy predecessors.--Let there be harmony between thy subjects and thee,--lest they give themselves up to fear; keep not thyself apart in the midst of them; make not thy brother solely from the rich and noble, fill not thy heart with them alone; yet neither do thou admit to thy intimacy chance-comers whose place is unknown.” The king confirmed his counsels by examples taken from his own life, and from these we have learned some facts in his history. The little work was widely disseminated and soon became a classic; in the time of the XIXth dynasty it was still copied in schools and studied by young scribes as an exercise in style. Usirfcasen’s share in the sovereignty had so accustomed the Egyptians to consider this prince as the king _de facto_, that they had gradually come to write his name alone upon the monuments. When Amenemhâît died, after a reign of thirty years, Ûsirtasen was engaged in a war against the Libyans. Dreading an outbreak of popular feeling, or perhaps an attempted usurpation by one of the princes of the blood, the high officers of the crown kept Amenemhâît’s death secret, and despatched a messenger to the camp to recall the young king. He left his tent by night, unknown to the troops, returned to the capital before anything had transpired among the people, and thus the transition from the founder to his immediate successor--always a delicate crisis for a new dynasty--seemed to come about quite naturally. The precedent of co-regnancy having been established, it was scrupulously followed by most of the succeeding sovereigns. In the XIIIth year of his sovereignty, and after having reigned alone for thirty-two years, Ûsirtasen I. shared his throne with Amenemhâît II.; and thirty-two years later Amenemhâît II. acted in a similar way with regard to Ûsirtasen II. Amenemhâît III. and Amenemhâît IV. were long co-regnant. The only princes of this house in whose cases any evidence of co-regnancy is lacking are Ûsirtasen III., and the queen Sovknofriûrî, with whom the dynasty died out. [Illustration: 325.jpg AN ASIATIC CHIEF IS PRESENTED TO KHNÛMHOTPÛ BY NOFIRHOPTU, AND BY KHITI, THE SUPERINTENDENT OF THE HUNTSMEN] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a chromolithograph in Lepsius, _Denhm._, ii. 133.