The long list of names of kings, belonging to more than twenty dynasties of the ancient Pharaohs, furnishes indeed matter of little interest or importance to the philosophic enquirer in his researches on universal history. It is, however, worthy of remark that many and vast expeditions appear to have been undertaken in the early ages of Egypt; though, while mention is made of such conquests, nothing is said of the permanent possession of the conquered countries. Sesostris, who, in the lifetime of his father, Amenophis, had seized the whole coast of Arabia, next vanquished, for the first time, Lybia and Ethiopia, afterwards extended his conquests to Bactriana, subdued the Scythian nations in the Caucasian countries, in Colchis, and as far as the Don, and even took possession of Thrace. The descent of the Colchians from the Egyptians, or the existence of an Egyptian colony in Colchis, was regarded by the ancients as an historical fact. The yet more ancient King Osymandas is said to have undertaken an expedition, attended by an immense army, to reconquer Bactriana that had revolted against the Egyptian sway; and the triumphant arms of Osiris stretched on one hand as far as the Ganges, and on the other as far as the sources of the Danube. Here a question arises:--did the Egyptians possess heroic poems similar to the Ramayana and Mahabarata of the Indians, and were these marvellous narratives extracted from these poems? Or had all these narratives a signification purely mythic, as we may easily conjecture to be the case in the expedition of Osiris? In those historical ages which are better known to us, Egypt was certainly never a conquering power--at least its conquests were never of a solid and permanent nature; though even in those times Egypt made some transient conquests, or at least expeditions; and, guilty of great political encroachments on other states and nations, was often doomed to experience from these a vigorous resistance to her attempts. A part of Libya, the coast of Arabia contiguous to the Red Sea, and the Arabia Petræa, acknowledged for a long time the sceptre of the Pharaohs, (and this fact indeed, the various monuments covered over with hieroglyphics, which are found in those countries, would seem to corroborate): Ethiopia, too, or at least a considerable portion of that region, was for a long period in the possession of the Egyptian kings. The construction of the many ancient and vast edifices and monuments which are crowded together in the province of Thebais must, to all appearance, have required a greater number of hands than the Proper Egypt (a country by no means of considerable extent) could have furnished of itself. As Ethiopia had been conquered by the Egyptians, so the Ethiopians in their turn invaded Egypt, and founded there a royal dynasty. The second of these Ethiopian kings, Tirhaka, sought to stretch his conquests as far as Libya and the Northern coast of Africa, and must