within their principalities were as independent and as inclined to insurrection as in past times. The annual tribute, the heaviest paid by any province with the exception of Cossaea and Assyria, amounted only to 700 talents of silver. To this sum must be added the farming of the fishing in Lake Moeris, which, according to Herodotus,*** brought in one talent a day during the six months of the high Nile, but, according to Diodorus,**** during the whole year, as well as the 120,000 medimni of wheat required for the army of occupation, and the obligation to furnish the court of Susa with Libyan nitre and Nile water; the total of these impositions was far from constituting a burden disproportionate to the wealth of the Nile valley. * The Nubian tribes, who are called Ethiopians by Herodotus and the cuneiform inscriptions, paid no regular tribute, but were obliged to send annually two chaenikes of pure gold, two hundred pieces of ebony, twenty elephants' tusks, and five young slaves, all under the name of a free gift. ** Herodotus states that in his own time the Persians, like the Saite Pharaohs, still had garrisons at Daphnae and at Elephantine. *** Herodotus says that the produce sank to the value of a third of a talent a day during the six other months. **** Diodorus Siculus says that the revenue produced by the fisheries in the Lake had been handed over by Moris to his wife for the expenses of her toilet. [Illustration: 219.jpg DARIUS ON THE STELE OF THE ISTHMUS] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the _Description de l'Egypte_. Commerce brought in to it, in fact, at least as much money as the tribute took out of it. Incorporated with an empire which extended over three continents, Egypt had access to regions whither the products of her industry and her soil had never yet been carried. The produce of Ethiopia and the Sudan passed through her emporia on its way to attract customers in the markets of Tyre, Sidon, Babylon, and Susa, and the isthmus of Suez and Kosseir were the nearest ports through which Arabia and India could reach the Mediterranean. Darius therefore resumed the work of Necho, and beginning simultaneously at both extremities, he cut afresh the canal between the Nile and the Gulf of Suez. Trilingual stelae in Egyptian, Persian, and Medic were placed at intervals along its banks, and set forth to all comers the method of procedure by which the sovereign had brought his work to a successful end. In a similar manner he utilised the Wadys which wind between Koptos and the Red Sea, and by their means placed the cities of the Said in communication with the "Ladders of Incense," Punt and the Sabaeans.*