I will break the bar of Damascus, And cut off the inhabitant from the valley of Aven, And him who holds the scepter from the house of Eden; And the people of Syria shall go into captivity to Kir," says Yahweh.
Even this account has received no support from the Egyptian monuments, and the deeds ascribed by the Greeks to Sesostris have been supposed to be a blending of those of two monarchs of the xix. Dynasty, Sethos I and Raamses II, interwoven with those of Ousartesen III (Dynasty xii.) and Tothmosis III (Dyn. xviii). But the carrying away of tiny number of prisoners from fields of battle is something altogether different from the political removal of a nation. It had in it nothing systematic or designed. It was but the employment of those whom war had thrown into their hands, as slaves. The Egyptian monarchs availed themselves of this resource, to spare the labor of their native subjects in their great works of utility or of vanity. But the prisoners so employed were but a slave population, analogous to those who, in other nations, labored in the mines or in agriculture.