not content with his real conquests, which reached from the Hellespont to the Euphrates, he added, like Ramsesr that he had conquered Thrace, Persia, Media, and Bactria. He thus teaches us that monumental inscriptions, though read with difficulty, do not always tell the truth. This was the most southerly spot to which the kings of Egypt ever sent an army. But they kept no hold on the country. Distance had placed it not only beyond their power, but almost beyond their knowledge; and two hundred years afterwards, when the geographer Strabo was making inquiries about that part of Arabia, as it was called, he was told of this monument as set up by the hero Sesostris, to whom it was usual to give the credit of so many wonderful works. These inscriptions, it is worthy of remark, are still preserved, and constitute the only historical account that has reached these times of the Ethiopian warfare of this Egyptian monarch. About seven hundred years after the reign of Euergetes, they were first published in the _Topography_ of Cosmas Indicopleustes, a Grecian monk, by whom they were copied on the spot. The traveller Bruce, moreover, informs us that the stone containing the name of Ptolemy Euergetes serves as a footstool to the throne on which the kings of Abyssinia are crowned to this day. [Illustration: 160b.jpg SIGNS, ARMS AND INSTRUMENTS FROM THE FIFTH TOMB] Amid the ruins of Ascum, also, the ancient capital of that country, various fragments of marble have been found bearing the name and title of the same Egyptian sovereign. This empty fame, however, is the only return that ever recompensed the toils of Euergetes among the fierce barbarians of the south. Euergetes, as part of his general policy of conciliating the Egyptians, enlarged the great temple at Thebes, which is now called the temple of Karnak, on the walls of which we see him handing an offering to his father and mother, the brother-gods. In one place he is in a Greek dress, which is not common on the Ptolemaic buildings, as most of the Greek kings are carved upon the walls in the dress of the country. The early kings had often shown their piety to a temple by enlarging the sacred area and adding a new wall and gateway in front of the former; and this custom Euergetes followed at Karnak. As these grand stone sculptured gateways belonged to a wall of unbaked bricks which has long since crumbled to pieces, they now stand apart like so many triumphal arches. He also added to the temple at Hibe in the Great Oasis, and began a small temple at Esne, or Latopolis, where he is drawn upon the walls in the act of striking down the chiefs of the conquered nations, and is followed by a tame lion. [Illustration: 161.jpg GATE AT KARNAK]