As at the commencement of the Theban dynasties, it was the river valley only in these regions of the Upper Nile which belonged to the Pharaohs. From this time onward it gave support to an Egyptian population as far as the juncture of the two Niles: it was a second Egypt, but a poorer one, whose cities presented the same impoverished appearance as that which we find to-day in the towns of Nubia. The tribes scattered right and left in the desert, or distributed beyond the confluence of the two Niles among the plains of Sennar, were descended from the old indigenous races, and paid valuable tribute every year in precious metals, ivory, timber, or the natural products of their districts, under penalty of armed invasion.* * The tribute of the Ganbatiu, or people of the south, and that of Kush and of the Uauaiu, is mentioned repeatedly in the _Annales de Thutmosis III._ for the year XXXI., for the year XXXIII., and for the year XXXIV. The regularity with which this item recurs, unaccompanied by any mention of war, following after each Syrian campaign, shows that it was an habitual operation which was registered as an understood thing. True, the inscription does not give the item for every year, but then it only dealt with Ethiopian affairs in so far as they were subsidiary to events in Asia; the payment was none the less an annual one, the amount varying in accordance with local agreement. Among these races were still to be found descendants of the Mazaiu and Uauaiu, who in days gone by had opposed the advance of the victorious Egyptians: the name of the Uauaiu was, indeed, used as a generic term to distinguish all those tribes which frequented the mountains between the Nile and the Red Sea,* but the wave of conquest had passed far beyond the boundaries reached in early campaigns, and had brought the Egyptians into contact with nations with whom they had been in only indirect commercial relations in former times. * The Annals of Thutmosis III. mention the tribute of Puanit for the peoples of the coast, the tribute of Uauait for the peoples of the mountain between the Nile and the sea, the tribute of Kush for the peoples of the south, or Ganbatiu. [Illustration: 338.jpg ARRIVAL OF AN ETHIOPIAN QUEEN BRINGING TRIBUTE TO THE VICEROY OF KUSII] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger. Some of these were light-coloured men of a type similar to that of the modern Abyssinians or Gallas: they had the same haughty and imperious carriage, the same well-developed and powerful frames, and the same love of fighting. Most of the remaining tribes were of black blood, and such of them as we see depicted on the monuments resemble closely the negroes inhabiting Central Africa at the present day. [Illustration: 339.jpg TYPICAL GALLA WOMAN]