The events of Seti’s campaigns are sculptured on the north wall of his Hall of Columns at Karnak. He is spoken of there as taking an intense and ferocious delight in battle. ‘Dear to him is the fray! his delight is to dash therein; his heart is satisfied when he beholds streams of blood gush forth, and strikes off the heads of his enemies. One moment of the strife of men is more precious to him than a whole day of pleasure. With one stroke he smiteth down the foe and spareth none, and whosoever is left alive he carrieth down into Egypt alive as a prisoner.’ So keen and savage a delight in bloodshed has confirmed some writers in the idea that Seti came of some alien race, as it is out of harmony with the mildness and humanity that characterised the Egyptian character. His name is considered as probably showing a close connection with the Delta, where Set was worshipped, chiefly by the foreign settlers; whilst the name of that god was so hateful in Egyptian eyes that it was chiselled away from the monuments, both during Seti’s life and after his death, even though it occurred as part of the royal name, and the king himself appears frequently to have changed his own objectionable name for that of Osiris. It may also be noted that the type of face of the sovereigns of the nineteenth dynasty is different from that of the preceding kings, and is decidedly of a more Semitic cast. Although Seti had reconquered Syria, and possibly the adjacent lands, it does not seem that the stream of tribute flowed in such abundance as during the reign of Thothmes the Great. Treasure, however, was required, and the king resolved to have the valley of Hammamat thoroughly explored and worked. He went there himself in the ninth year of his reign, for, as the inscription says, ‘his heart wished to see the mines whence the gold is brought.’ Water was, of course, the first necessity as of old in the days of the eleventh dynasty, and Seti visited the hills in company with those who knew most about the water-courses. The desolation of the hot waterless valleys struck the king. After a journey of some miles he is said to have halted to meditate quietly, and he ‘said within himself, “If the road be without water the wayfarers must perish; they die of parching thirst. Where shall I find a place where the burning thirst may be quenched? Vast is this region, and far does it extend. He who is here overtaken by thirst will cry out, ‘O this land of perdition!’ Those who come hither will come to perform their obligations towards me; I must do that which will enable them to live. Thus shall my name be venerated throughout future generations.”’ When the king had said thus within himself he went up into the hills to found there a sanctuary wherein prayer might be offered to the god. After that it pleased him to assemble workmen to quarry the stone, and to form a reservoir there amongst the hills for the purpose of sustaining the fainting by giving him fresh water