During the earliest periods there is no record of any large vessels having been in use, for those employed for the conveyance of the huge blocks of stone from the quarries were doubtless rather rafts or barges than boats. In the reign, however, of Rameses II. (the Sesostris of the Greeks) we hear of vessels of large dimensions; these, however, it is most likely were all of Phœnician origin, and simply hired for use during his foreign expeditions. Prodigious sculptured memorials of this king exist all over Egypt, and there is still a curious relief of him at the Nahr el Kelb near Beyrût, which was seen by Herodotus.[153] Tacitus[154] further tells us that others were shown to Germanicus when in Egypt. It is not necessary here to discuss the vexed question of the conquests of Sesostris; it is enough to suggest that, in whatever extensive expeditions by sea he may have been engaged, he was indebted to the Phœnicians for his fleet—and that, by their agency if at all, he was able to destroy “the Khairetans of the sea and the Tokhari” (probably the Cretans and Carians), nautical races, who, from the mythical till the commencement of the historical period, were highly esteemed by the Greeks for their skill as sailors. A figure discovered by the Rev. G. C. Renouard, and engraved in Texier’s “Asie Mineure”[155] is almost certainly the Sesostris of Herodotus. It is on the highway from Sardes to Smyrna, but the inscriptions on it are no longer legible. [Sidenote: Naucratis.] There seems no reason to suppose that the native population of Egypt was at any time of its history accustomed to nautical pursuits. As the Phœnicians supplied the navy of Sesostris, so other foreign shipping were engaged in the later times of Egyptian history. Hence it was that the famous port of Naucratis was founded on the Canopic mouth of the Nile, foreign merchants and sailors being restricted to this and to one or two other places: a practice recalling the custom of the Chinese up to a very recent period. Herodotus says that the abodes of these foreign settlers were generally called “Camps;”[156] and gives some details which show how jealously the Egyptians provided against the advent of strangers to any but the one port of Naucratis. “There was,” he says, “no other in Egypt for them” (the merchants). “If a merchant or a ship-owner entered any other branch of the Nile than that of the Canopic mouth, he was compelled to swear he had come there against his will through stress of weather; and he was required to sail in his own ship to the Canopic mouth, or to have his cargo transported in barges, should the winds prove adverse, round the Delta, to the factory at the port of Naucratis, which had an exclusive privilege.”[157]