population of the city of Koptos were Arabs; they were the camel-drivers
and carriers for the Theban merchants in the trade across the desert.
Some of the conquests of Ramses had been over that nation in southern
Ethiopia, and the Arab power must have further risen after the defeat of
the Ethiopians by Euergetes I. Ethiopia in the time of Augustus was held
by Arabs; a race who thought peace a state of disgraceful idleness,
and war the only employment worthy of men; and who made frequent hasty
inroads into Nubia, and sometimes into Egypt. They fought for plunder,
not for conquest, and usually retreated as quickly as they came,
with such booty as they laid their hands on. To use words which were
proverbial while the Nile swarmed with crocodiles, "They did as the dogs
do, they drank and ran away;" and the Romans found it necessary to place
a body of troops near the cataracts of Syênê to stop their marching
northward and laying waste the Thebaid. While the larger part of the
Roman legions was withdrawn into Arabia on an unsuccessful quest for
treasure, a body of thirty thousand of these men, whom we may call
either Arabs, from their blood and language, or Ethiopians, from their
country, marched northward into Egypt, and overpowered the three
Roman cohorts at Elephantine, Syênê, and Philas. Badly armed and badly
trained, they were led on by the generals of Candace, Queen of Napata,
to the fourth cataract. They were, however, easily driven back when
Gallus led against them an army of ten thousand men, and drove them to
Ethiopian Pselchis, now remaining as the modern village of Dakkeh. There
he defeated them again, and took the city by storm. From Pselchis he
marched across the Nubian desert two hundred and fifty miles to Premnis,
on the northerly bend of the river, and then made himself master of
Napata, the capital. A guard was at the moment left in the country to
check any future inroads; but the Romans made no attempts to hold it.

[Illustration: 016.jpg ON THE EDGE OF THE DESERT]