As we have seen, this tradition lays especial weight on the achievements of Sesostris in Ethiopia, in the Red Sea, and in Arabia. Herodotus tells us that the priests assured him that the king--at first sailing with ships of war out of the Arabian Gulf--had subjugated the inhabitants of the Red Sea. He was, they said, the only king who had ruled at once over Egypt and Ethiopia. In Diodorus we find that he first reduces the whole of Arabia, which had never before been conquered, and the greater part of Libya, and the Ethiopians in the south of Egypt. Afterwards he--first of the Egyptians--built ships of war, and sent them into the Red Sea, and with these reduced all the coasts and islands as far as India. In Strabo Sesostris first marches against Ethiopia, forces his way as far as the land of Cinnamon, then crosses the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, reduces Arabia, and commences the digging of a canal from the Nile to the Arabian Gulf. The monuments confirm the statement that Sethos fought with the Punt, _i.e._ the Arabs, that he pushed farther than his predecessors into the territory of the negroes, and that Ramses II. (in whose reign the monuments mention governors of Ethiopia)[224] established a lasting supremacy as far as Mount Barkal. Thus it is established that the dominion of Egypt under Ramses II. extended beyond Nubia and Dongola, and reached the territory of the negroes, while at the same time the tribes of the Arabian peninsula may have been to a great extent reduced to pay tribute; and from this we may draw the conclusion that the attention of Sethos and Ramses was mainly directed to these regions. The products which they could obtain by tribute or by trade with these tribes--slaves, gold, ebony, ivory, frankincense, spices, gum--were of great value for Egypt, and ships of war were needed both to keep in submission the tribes which may have been subjugated on the coasts of Arabia, and to maintain the trading stations settled on the east coast of Africa. For the fleet of Ramses Herodotus refers to the evidence of the priests. Such a fleet is, as a fact, exhibited on the monuments of Ramses III., and the tradition of the Hebrews tells us of trading ships which, about the year 1000 B.C., sailed from Elath out of the Arabian Sea, and reached the mouth of the Indus, no doubt on routes the Egyptian trade had already laid down to the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb and the southern coast of Arabia. In connection with these efforts, directed towards the establishment of trade and authority on the Arabian Sea, it seems intelligible that Sethos and his son Ramses should have entertained the idea of establishing a water communication between the Nile and this sea, and should have actually commenced the work. Remains of a canal, beginning on the Nile at Bubastis, above the city, ran through the valley of Tumilat, a depression of the Arabian hills towards the east, in the direction of the Lake of Crocodiles and the Bitter Lakes. On these