Chapter II: The Reaction Against Egypt (1)

_The XIXth dynasty: Harmhabî--The Hittite empire in Syria and in Asia Minor--Seti I. and Ramses II.--The people of the sea: Minephtah and the Israelite Exodus._

While none of these ephemeral Pharaohs left behind them a, either legitimate or illegitimate, son there was no lack of princesses, any of which, having on her accession to the throne to choose a consort after her own heart, might thus become the founder of a new dynasty. By such a chance alliance Harmhabî, who was himself descended from Thûtmosis III., was raised to the kingly office.* His mother, Mûtnozmît, was of the royal line, and one of the most beautiful statues in the Gîzeh Museum probably represents her. The body is mutilated, but the head is charming in its intelligent and animated expression, in its full eyes and somewhat large, but finely modelled, mouth. The material of the statue is a finegrained limestone, and its milky whiteness tends to soften the malign character of her look and smile. It is possible that Mûtnozmît was the daughter of Amenôthes III. by his marriage with one of his sisters: it was from her, at any rate, and not from his great-grandfather, that Harmhabî derived his indisputable claims to royalty.**

* A fragment of an inscription at Karnak calls Thûtmosis
III. the father of his fathers. Champollion called him
Hornemnob, Rosellini, Hôr-hemheb, Hôr-em-hbai, and both
identified him with the Hôros of Manetho, hence the custom
among Egyptologists for a long time to designate him by the
name Horus. Dévéria was the first to show that the name
corresponded with the Armais of the lists of Manetho, and,
in fact, Armais is the Greek transcription of the group
Harmhabî in the bilingual texts of the Ptolemaic period.

** Mûtnozmît was at first considered the daughter and
successor of Harmhabî, or his wife. Birch showed that the
monuments did not confirm these hypotheses, and he was
inclined to think that she was Harmhabîs mother. As far as
I can see for the present, it is the only solution which
agrees with the evidence on the principal monument which has
made known her existence.

He was born, probably, in the last years of Amenôthes, when Tîi was the exclusive favourite of the sovereign; but it was alleged later on, when Harmhabî had emerged from obscurity, that Amon, destining him for the throne, had condescended to become his father by Mûtnozmît--a customary procedure with the god when his race on earth threatened to become debased.* It was he who had rocked the newly born infant to sleep, and, while Harsiesis was strengthening his limbs with protective amulets, had spread over the childs skin the freshness and brilliance which are the peculiar privilege of the immortals. While still in the nursery, the great and the insignificant alike prostrated themselves before Harmhabî, making him liberal offerings. Every one recognised in him, even when still a lad and incapable of reflection, the carriage and complexion of a god, and Horus of Cynopolis was accustomed to follow his steps, knowing that the time of his advancement was near. After having called the attention of the Egyptians to Harmhabî, Amon was anxious, in fact, to hasten the coming of the day when he might confer upon him supreme rank, and for this purpose inclined the heart of the reigning Pharaoh towards him. Aï proclaimed him his heir over the whole land.**

* All that we know of the youth of Harmhabî is contained in
the texts on a group preserved in the Turin Museum, and
pointed out by Champollion, translated and published
subsequently by Birch and by Brugsch. The first lines of the
inscription seem to me to contain an account of the union of
Amon with the queen, analogous to those at Deîr el-Baharî
treating of the birth of Hâtshopsîtû, and to those at Luxor
bearing upon Amenôthes III. (cf. vol. iv. pp. 342, 343; and
p. 51 of the present volume), and to prove for certain that
Harmhabîs mother was a princess of the royal line by right.

** The king is not named in the inscription. It cannot have
been Amenôthes IV., for an individual of the importance of
Harmhabî, living alongside this king, would at least have
had a tomb begun for him at. Tel el-Amarna. We may hesitate
between Aï and Tûtankhamon; but the inscription seems to say
definitely that Harmhabî succeeded directly to the king
under whom he had held important offices for many years, and
this compels us to fix upon Aï, who, as we have said at p.
108, et seq., of the present volume, was, to all
appearances, the last of the so-called heretical sovereigns.

He never gave cause for any dissatisfaction when called to court, and when he was asked questions by the monarch he replied always in fit terms, in such words as were calculated to produce serenity, and thus gained for himself a reputation as the incarnation of wisdom, all his plans and intentions appearing to have been conceived by Thot the Ibis himself. For many years he held a place of confidence with the sovereign. The nobles, from the moment he appeared at the gate of the palace, bowed their backs before him; the barbaric chiefs from the north or south stretched out their arms as soon as they approached him, and gave him the adoration they would bestow upon a god. His favourite residence was Memphis, his preference for it arising from his having possibly been born there, or from its having been assigned to him for his abode. Here he constructed for himself a magnificent tomb, the bas-reliefs of which exhibit him as already king, with the sceptre in his hand and the uraaus on his brow, while the adjoining cartouche does not as yet contain his name.*

* This part of the account is based upon, a study of a
certain number of texts and representations all coming from
Harmhabîs tomb at Saqqârah, and now scattered among the
various museums--at Gîzeh, Leyden, London, and Alexandria.
Birch was the first to assign those monuments to the Pharaoh
Harmhabî, supposing at the same time that he had been
dethroned by Ramses I., and had lived at Memphis in an
intermediate position between that of a prince and that of a
private individual; this opinion was adopted by Ed. Meyer,
rejected by Wiedemann and by myself. After full examination,
I think the Harmhabî of the tomb at Saqqârah and the Pharaoh
Harmhabî are one and the same person; Harmhabî, sufficiently
high placed to warrant his wearing the uraius, but not high
enough to have his name inscribed in a cartouche, must have
had his tomb constructed at Saqqârah, as Aï and possibly
Ramses I. had theirs built for them at Tel el-Amarna.

He was the mighty of the mighty, the great among the great, the general of generals, the messenger who ran to convey orders to the people of Asia and Ethiopia, the indispensable companion in council or on the field of battle,* at the time when Horus of Cynopolis resolved to seat him upon his eternal throne. Aï no longer occupied it. Horus took Harmhabî with him to Thebes, escorted him thither amid expressions of general joy, and led him to Amon in order that the god might bestow upon him the right to reign. The reception took place in the temple of Luxor, which served as a kind of private chapel for the descendants of Amenôthes. Amon rejoiced to see Harmhabî, the heir of the two worlds; he took him with him to the royal palace, introduced him into the apartments of his august daughter, Mûtnozmît; then, after she had recognised her child and had pressed him to her bosom, all the gods broke out into acclamations, and their cries ascended up to heaven.**

* The fragments of the tomb preserved at Leyden show him
leading to the Pharaoh Asiatics and Ethiopians, burthened
with tribute. The expressions and titles given above are
borrowed from the fragments at Gîzeh.

** Owing to a gap, the text cannot be accurately translated
at this point. The reading can be made out that Amon betook
himself to the palace, placing the prince before him, as far
as the sanctuary of his (Amons) daughter, the very
august...; she poured water on his hands, she embraced the
beauties (of the prince), she placed herself before him. It
will be seen that the name of the daughter of Amon is
wanting, and Birch thought that a terrestrial princess whom
Harmhabî had married was in question, Miifcnozmît, according
to Brugsch. If the reference is not to a goddess, who along
with Amon took part in the ceremonies, but to Mûtnozmît, we
must come to the conclusion that she, as heir and queen by
birth, must have ceded her rights by some ritual to her son
before he could be crowned.

Behold, Amon arrives with his son before him, at the palace, in order to put upon his head the diadem, and to prolong the length of his life! We install him, therefore, in his office, we give to him the insignia of Eâ, we pray Amon for him whom he has brought as our protector: may he as king have the festivals of Eâ and the years of Horus; may he accomplish his good pleasure in Thebes, in Heliopolis, in Memphis, and may he add to the veneration with which these cities are invested. And they immediately decided that the new Pharaoh should be called Horus-sturdy-bull, mighty in wise projects, lord of the Vulture and of the very marvellous Urseus in Thebes, the conquering Horus who takes pleasure in the truth, and who maintains the two lands, the lord of the south and north, Sozir Khopîrûrî chosen of Eâ, the offspring of the Sun, Harmhabî Mîamûn, giver of life. The _cortege_ came afterwards to the palace, the king walking before Amon: there the god embraced his son, placed the diadems upon his head, delivered to him the rule of the whole world, over foreign populations as well as those of Egypt, inasmuch as he possessed this power as the sovereign of the universe.

This is the customary subject of the records of enthronement. Pharaoh is the son of a god, chosen by his father, from among all those who might have a claim to it, to occupy for a time the throne of Horus; and as he became king only by a divine decree, he had publicly to express, at the moment of his elevation, his debt of gratitude to, and his boundless respect for, the deity, who had made him what he was. In this case, however, the protocol embodied something more than the traditional formality, and its hackneyed phrases borrowed a special meaning from the circumstances of the moment. Amon, who had been insulted and proscribed by Khûniatonû, had not fully recovered his prestige under the rule of the immediate successors of his enemy.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph taken by Beato.

They had restored to him his privileges and his worship, they had become reconciled to him, and avowed themselves his faithful ones, but all this was as much an act of political necessity as a matter of religion: they still continued to tolerate, if not to favour, the rival doctrinal system, and the temple of the hateful Disk still dishonoured by its vicinity the sanctuary of Karnak. Harmhabî, on the other hand, was devoted to Amon, who had moulded him in embryo, and had trained him from his birth to worship none but him. Harmhabîs triumph marked the end of the evil days, and inaugurated a new era, in which Amon saw himself again master of Thebes and of the world. Immediately after his enthronement Harmhabî rivalled the first Amen-ôthes in his zeal for the interests of his divine father: he overturned the obelisks of Atonû and the building before which they stood; then, that no trace of them might remain, he worked up the stones into the masonry of two pylons, which he set up upon the site, to the south of the gates of Thûtmosis III. They remained concealed in the new fabric for centuries, but in the year 27 B.C. a great earthquake brought them abruptly to light. We find everywhere among the ruins, at the foot of the dislocated gates, or at the bases of the headless colossal figures, heaps of blocks detached from the structure, on which can be made out remnants of prayers addressed to the Disk, scenes of worship, and cartouches of Amenôfches IV., Aï, and Tûtankhamon. The work begun by Harmhabî at Thebes was continued with unabated zeal through the length of the whole river-valley. He restored the sanctuaries from the marshes of Athû even to Nubia; he repaired their sculptures so that they were better than before, not to speak of the fine things he did in them, rejoicing the eyes of Râ. That which he had found injured he put into its original condition, erecting a hundred statues, carefully formed of valuable stone, for every one which was lacking. He inspected the ruined towns of the gods in the land, and made them such as they had been in the time of the first Ennead, and he allotted to them estates and offerings for every day, as well as a set of sacred vessels entirely of gold and silver; he settled priests in them, bookmen, carefully chosen soldiers, and assigned to them fields, cattle, all the necessary material to make prayers to Râ every morning. These measures were inspired by consideration for the ancient deities; but he added to them others, which tended to secure the welfare of the people and the stability of the government. Up to this time the officials and the Egyptian soldiers had displayed a tendency to oppress the fellahîn, without taking into consideration the injury to the treasury occasioned by their rapacity. Constant supervision was the only means of restraining them, for even the best-served Pharaohs, Thûtmosis, and Amenôthes III. themselves, were obliged to have frequent recourse to the rigour of the law to keep the scandalous depredations of the officials within bounds.*

* Harmhabî refers to the edicts of Thûtmosis III.

The religious disputes of the preceding years, in enfeebling the authority of the central power, had given a free hand to these oppressors. The scribes and tax-collectors were accustomed to exact contributions for the public service from the ships, whether laden or not, of those who were in a small way of business, and once they had laid their hands upon them, they did not readily let them go. The poor fellow falling into their clutches lost his cargo, and he was at his wits end to know how to deliver at the royal storehouses the various wares with which he calculated to pay his taxes. No sooner had the Court arrived at some place than the servants scoured the neighbourhood, confiscating the land produce, and seizing upon slaves, under pretence that they were acting for the king, while they had only their personal ends in view. Soldiers appropriated all the hides of animals with the object, doubtless, of making from them leather jackets and helmets, or of duplicating their shields, with the result that when the treasury made its claim for leather, none was to be found. It was hardly possible, moreover, to bring the culprits to justice, for the chief men of the towns and villages, the prophets, and all those who ought to have looked after the interests of the taxpayer, took money from the criminals for protecting them from justice, and compelled the innocent victims also to purchase their protection. Harmhabî, who was continually looking for opportunities to put down injustice and to punish deceit, at length decided to pro-mulgate a very severe edict against the magistrates and the double-dealing officials: any of them who was found to have neglected his duty was to have his nose cut off, and was to be sent into perpetual exile to Zalu, on the eastern frontier. His commands, faithfully carried out, soon produced a salutary effect, and as he would on no account relax the severity of the sentence, exactions were no longer heard of, to the advantage of the revenue of the State. On the last day of each month the gates of his palace were open to every one.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Prisse dAvennes.

Any one on giving his name to the guard could enter the court of honour, where he would find food in abundance to satisfy his hunger while he was awaiting an audience. The king all the while was seated in the sight of all at the tribune, whence he would throw among his faithful friends necklaces and bracelets of gold: he inquired into complaints one after another, heard every case, announced his judgments in brief words, and dismissed his subjects, who went away proud and happy at having had their affairs dealt with by the sovereign himself.*

* All these details are taken from a stele discovered in
1882. The text is so mutilated that it is impossible to give
a literal rendering of it in all its parts, but the sense is
sufficiently clear to warrant our rilling up the whole with
considerable certainty.

The portraits of Harmhabî which have come down to us give us the impression of a character at once energetic and agreeable. The most beautiful of these is little more than a fragment broken off a black granite statue. Its mournful expression is not pleasing to the spectator, and at the first view alienates his sympathy. The face, which is still youthful, breathes an air of melancholy, an expression which is somewhat rare among the Pharaohs of the best period: the thin and straight nose is well set on the face, the elongated eyes have somewhat heavy lids; the large, fleshy lips, slightly contracted at the corners of the mouth, are cut with a sharpness that gives them singular vigour, and the firm and finely modelled chin loses little of its form from the false beard depending from it. Every detail is treated with such freedom that one would think the sculptor must have had some soft material to work upon, rather than a rock almost hard enough to defy the chisel; the command over it is so complete that the difficulty of the work is forgotten in the perfection of the result. The dreamy expression of his face, however, did not prevent Harmhabî from displaying beyond Egypt, as within it, singular activity.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Autograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.

Although Egypt had never given up its claims to dominion over the whole river-valley, as far as the plains of Sennar, yet since the time of Amenôthes III. no sovereign had condescended, it would I appear, to conduct in person the expeditions directed against the tribes of! the Upper Nile. Harmhabî was anxious to revive the custom which imposed upon the Pharaohs the obligation to make their first essay in arms in Ethiopia, as Horus, son of Isis, had done of yore, and he seized the pretext of the occurrence of certain raids there to lead a body of troops himself into the heart of the negro country.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.

He had just ordered at this time the construction of the two southern pylons at Karnak, and there was great activity in the quarries of Silsileh. A commemorative chapel also was in course of excavation here in the sandstone rock, and he had dedicated it to his father, Amon-Ba of Thebes, coupling with him the local divinities, Hapî the Nile, and Sobkû the patron of Ombos. The sanctuary is excavated somewhat deeply into the hillside, and the dark rooms within it are decorated with the usual scenes of worship, but the vaulted approach to them displays upon its western wall the victory of the king. We see here a figure receiving from Amon the assurance of a long and happy life, and another letting fly his arrows at a host of fleeing enemies; Ethiopians raise their heads to him in suppliant gesture; soldiers march past with their captives; above one of the doors we see twelve military leaders marching and carrying the king aloft upon their shoulders, while a group of priests and nobles salute him, offering incense.*

* The significance of the monument was pointed out first by
Champollion. The series of races conquered was represented
at Karnak on the internal face of one of the pylons built by
Harmhabi; it appears to have been usurped by Ramses II.

At this period Egyptian ships were ploughing the Red Sea, and their captains were renewing official relations with Pûanît. Somali chiefs were paying visits to the palace, as in the time of Thûtmosis III. The wars of Amon had, in fact, begun again. The god, having suffered neglect for half a century, had a greater need than ever of gold and silver to fill his coffers; he required masons for his buildings, slaves and cattle for his farms, perfumed essences and incense for his daily rites. His resources had gradually become exhausted, and his treasury would soon be empty if he did not employ the usual means to replenish it. He incited Harmhabi to proceed against the countries from which, in olden times he had enriched himself--to the south in the first place, and then, having decreed victory there, and having naturally taken for himself the greater part of the spoils, he turned his attention to Asia.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Daniel Heron.
The black spots are due to the torches of the fellahîn of
the neighbourhood who have visited the rock tomb in bygone
years.

In the latter campaign the Egyptian troops took once more the route through Coele-Syria, and if the expedition experienced here more difficulties than on the banks of the Upper Nile, it was, nevertheless, brought to an equally triumphant conclusion. Those of their adversaries who had offered an obstinate resistance were transported into other lands, and the rebel cities were either razed to the ground or given to the flames: the inhabitants having taken refuge in the mountains, where they were in danger of perishing from hunger, made supplications for peace, which was granted to them on the usual conditions of doing homage and paying tribute.*

* These details are taken from the fragment of an
inscription now in the museum at Vienna; Bergmann, and also
Erman, think that we have in this text the indication of an
immigration into Egypt of a tribe of the Monâtiu.

We do not exactly know how far he penetrated into the country; the list of the towns and nations over which he boasts of having triumphed contains, along with names unknown to us, some already famous or soon to become so--Arvad, Pibukhu, the Khâti, and possibly Alasia. The Haui-Nibu themselves must have felt the effects of the campaign, for several of their chiefs associated, doubtless, with the Phoenicians, presented themselves before the Pharaoh at Thebes. Egypt was maintaining, therefore, its ascendency, or at least appearing to maintain it in those regions where the kings of the XVIIIth dynasty had ruled after the campaigns of Thûtmosis I., Thûtmosis III., and Amenothes II. Its influence, nevertheless, was not so undisputed as in former days; not that the Egyptian soldiers were less valiant, but owing to the fact that another power had risen up alongside them whose armies were strong enough to encounter them on the field of battle and to obtain a victory over them.

Beyond Naharaim, in the deep recesses of the Amanus and Taurus, there had lived, for no one knows how many centuries, the rude and warlike tribes of the Khâti, related not so, much to the Semites of the Syrian plain as to the populations of doubtful race and language who occupied the upper basins of the Halys and Euphrates.* The Chaldæan conquest had barely touched them; the Egyptian campaign had not more effect, and Thûtmosis III. himself, after having crossed their frontiers and sacked several of their towns, made no serious pretence to reckon them among his subjects. Their chiefs were accustomed, like their neighbours, to use, for correspondence with other countries, the cuneiform mode of writing; they had among them, therefore, for this purpose, a host of scribes, interpreters, and official registrars of events, such as we find to have accompanied the sovereigns of Assyria and Babylon.** These chiefs were accustomed to send from time to time a present to the Pharaoh, which the latter was pleased to regard as a tribute,*** or they would offer, perhaps, one of their daughters in marriage to the king at Thebes, and after the marriage show themselves anxious to maintain good faith with their son-in-law.

* Halévy asserts that the Khâti were Semites, and bases his
assertion on materials of the Assyrian period. Thés Khâti,
absorbed in Syria by the Semites, with whom they were
blended, appear to have been by origin a non-Semitic people.

** A letter from the King of the Khâti to the Pharaoh
Amenothes IV. is written in cuneiform writing and in a
Semitic language. It has been thought that other documents,
drawn up in a non-Semitic language and coming from Mitanni
and Arzapi, contain a dialect of the Hittite speech or that
language itself. A writer of books, attached to the person
of the Hittite King Khatusaru, is named amongst the dead
found on the field of battle at Qodshû.

*** It is thus perhaps we must understand the mention of
tribute from the Khâti in the _Annals of Thûtmosis III._, 1.
26, in the year XXXIII., also in the year XL. One of the Tel
el-Amarna letters refers to presents of this kind, which the
King of Khâti addresses to Amenôthes IV. to celebrate his
enthronement, and to ask him to maintain with himself the
traditional good relations of their two families.

They had, moreover, commercial relations with Egypt, and furnished it with cattle, chariots, and those splendid Cappadocian horses whose breed was celebrated down to the Greek period.* They were already, indeed, people of consideration; their territory was so extensive that the contemporaries of Thutmosis III. called them the Greater Khâti; and the epithet vile, which the chancellors of the Pharaohs added to their name, only shows by its virulence the impression which they had produced upon the mind of their adversaries.**

* The horses of the Khâti were called _abarî_, strong,
vigorous, as also their bulls. The King of Alasia, while
offering to Amenôthes III. a profitable speculation, advises
him to have nothing to do with the King of the Khâti or with
the King of Sangar, and thus furnishes proof that the
Egyptians held constant commercial relations with the Khâti.

** M. de Rougé suggested that Khâti the Little was the
name of the Hittites of Hebron. The expression, Khâti the
Great, has been compared with that of Khanirabbat, Khani
the Great, which in the Assyrian texts would seem to
designate a part of Cappadocia, in which the province of
Miliddi occurs, and the identification of the two has found
an ardent defender in W. Max Millier. Until further light is
thrown upon it, the most probable reading of the word is not
Khani-_ra_bat, but Khani-_gal_bat. The name Khani-Galbat is
possibly preserved in Julbat, which the Arab geographers
applied in the Middle Ages to a province situated in Lesser
Armenia.

Their type of face distinguishes them clearly from the nations conterminous with them on the south. The Egyptian draughtsmen represented them as squat and short in stature, though vigorous, strong-limbed, and with broad and full shoulders in youth, but as inclined frequently to obesity in old age. The head is long and heavy, the forehead flattened, the chin moderate in size, the nose prominent, the eyebrows and cheeks projecting, the eyes small, oblique, and deep-set, the mouth fleshy, and usually framed in by two deep wrinkles; the flesh colour is a yellowish or reddish white, but clearer than that of the Phoenicians or the Amurru.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.

Their ordinary costume consisted, sometimes of a shirt with short sleeves, sometimes of a sort of loin-cloth, more or less ample according to the rank of the individual wearing it, and bound round the waist by a belt. To these they added a scanty mantle, red or blue, fringed like that of the Chaldæans, which they passed over the left shoulder and brought back under the right, so as to leave the latter exposed. They wore shoes with thick soles, turning up distinctly at the toes,* and they encased their hands in gloves, reaching halfway up the arm.

* This characteristic is found on the majority of the
monuments which the peoples of Asia Minor have left to us,
and it is one of the most striking indications of the
northern origin of the Khâti. The Egyptian artists and
modern draughtsmen have often neglected it, and the majority
of them have represented the Khâti without shoes.

They shaved off both moustache and beard, but gave free growth to their hair, which they divided into two or three locks, and allowed to fall upon their backs and breasts. The kings head-dress, which was distinctive of royalty, was a tall pointed hat, resembling to some extent the white crown of the Pharaohs. The dress of the people, taken all together, was of better and thicker material than that of the Syrians or Egyptians. The mountains and elevated plateaus which they inhabited were subject to extraordinary vicissitudes of heat and cold. If the summer burnt up everything, the winter reigned here with an extreme rigour, and dragged on for months: clothing and footgear had to be seen to, if the snow and the icy winds of December were to be resisted. The character of their towns, and the domestic life of their nobles and the common people, can only be guessed at. Some, at least, of the peasants must have sheltered themselves in villages half underground, similar to those which are still to be found in this region. The town-folk and the nobles had adopted for the most part the Chaldæan or Egyptian manners and customs in use among the Semites of Syria. As to their religion, they reverenced a number of secondary deities who had their abode in the tempest, in the clouds, the sea, the rivers, the springs, the mountains, and the forests. Above this crowd there were several sovereign divinities of the thunder or the air, sun-gods and moon-gods, of which the chief was called Khâti, and was considered to be the father of the nation. They ascribed to all their deities a warlike and savage character. The Egyptians pictured some of them as a kind of Râ,* others as representing Sit, or rather Sûtkhû, that patron of the Hyksôs which was identified by them with Sit: every town had its tutelary heroes, of whom they were accustomed to speak as if of its Sûtkhû--Sûtkhû of Paliqa, Sûtkhû of Khissapa, Sûtkhû of Sarsu, Sûtkhû of Salpina. The goddesses in their eyes also became Astartés, and this one fact suggests that these deities were, like their Phoenician and Canaanite sisters, of a double nature--in one aspect chaste, fierce, and warlike, and in another lascivious and pacific. One god was called Mauru, another Targu, others Qaui and Khepa.**

* The Cilician inscriptions of the Græco-Roman period reveal
the existence in this region of a god, Rho, Rhos. Did this
god exist among the Khâti, and did the similarity of the
pronunciation of it to that of the god Râ suggest to the
Egyptians the existence of a similar god among these people,
or did they simply translate into their language the name of
the Hittite god representing the sun?

** The names Mauru and Qaui are deduced from the forms
Maurusaru and Qauisaru, which were borne by the Khâti: Qaui
was probably the eponymous hero of the Qui people, as Khâti
was of the Khâti. Tarku and Tisubu appear to me to be
contained in the names Targanunasa, Targazatas, and
Tartisubu; Tisubu is probably the Têssupas mentioned in the
letter from Dushratta written in Mitannian, and identical
with the Tushupu of another letter from the same king, and
in a despatch from Tarkondaraush. Targu, Targa, Targanu,
resemble the god Tarkhu, which is known to us from the
proper names of these regions preserved in attributes
covered by each of these divine names, and as to the forms
with which they were invested.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a picture in Lepsius.
Khatusaru, King of the Khâti, who was for thirty years a
contemporary of Ramses II.

Tishubu, the Rammân of the Assyrians, was doubtless lord of the tempest and of the atmosphere; Shausbe answered to Shala and to Ishtar the queen of love;* but we are frequently in ignorance as to the Assyrian and Greek inscriptions. Kheba, Khepa, Khîpa, is said to be a denomination of Rammân; we find it in the names of the princesses Tadu-khîpa, Gilu-khîpa, Puu-khîpa.

The majority of them, both male and female, were of gigantic stature, and were arrayed in the vesture of earthly kings and queens: they brandished their arms, displayed the insignia of their authority, such as a flower or bunch of grapes, and while receiving the offerings of the people were seated on a chair before an altar, or stood each on the animal representing him--such as a lion, a stag, or wild goat. The temples of their towns have disappeared, but they could never have been, it would seem, either-large or magnificent: the favourite places of worship were the tops of mountains, in the vicinity of springs, or the depths of mysterious grottoes, where the deity revealed himself to his priests, and received the faithful at the solemn festivals celebrated several times a year.*

* The association of Tushupu, Tessupas, Tisubu, with Rammânu
is made out from an Assyrian tablet published by Bezold: it
was reserved for Say ce and Jensen to determine the nature
of the god. Shausbe has been identified with Ishtar or Shala
by Jensen.

We know as little about their political organisation as about their religion.* We may believe, however, that it was feudal in character, and that every clan had its hereditary chief and its proper gods: the clans collectively rendered obedience to a common king, whose effective authority depended upon his character and age.**

* The religious cities and the festivals of the Greek epoch
are described by Strabo; these festivals were very ancient,
and their institution, if not the method of celebrating
them, may go back to the time of the Hittite empire.

** The description of the battle of Qodshû in the time of
Ramses II. shows us the King of the Khâti surrounded by his
vassals. The evidence of the existence of a similar feudal
organisation from the time of the XVIIIth dynasty is
furnished by a letter of Dushratta, King of Mitanni, where
he relates to Amenôthes IV. the revolt of his brother
Artassumara, and speaks of the help which one of the
neighbouring chiefs, Pirkhi, and all the Khâti had given to
the rebel.

The various contingents which the sovereign could collect together and lead would, if he were an incapable general, be of little avail against the well-officered and veteran troops of Egypt. Still they were not to be despised, and contained the elements of an excellent army, superior both in quality and quantity to any which Syria had ever been able to put into the field. The infantry consisted of a limited number of archers or slingers. They had usually neither shield nor cuirass, but merely, in the way of protective armour, a padded head-dress, ornamented with a tuft. The bulk of the army carried short lances and broad-bladed choppers, or more generally, short thin-handled swords with flat two-edged blades, very broad at the base and terminating in a point.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Champollion.

Their mode of attack was in close phalanxes, whose shock must have been hard to bear, for the soldiers forming them were in part at least recruited from among the strong and hardy mountaineers of the Taurus. The chariotry comprised the nobles and the _élite_ of the army, but it was differently constituted from that of the Egyptians, and employed other tactics.

The Hittite chariots were heavier, and the framework, instead of being a mere skeleton, was pannelled on the sides, the contour at the top being sometimes quite square, at other times rudely curved. It was bound together in the front by two disks of metal, and strengthened by strips of copper or bronze, which were sometimes plated with silver or gold. There were no quiver-cases as in Egyptian chariots, for the Hittite charioteers rarely resorted to the bow and arrow. The occupants of a chariot were three in number--the driver; the shield-bearer, whose office it was to protect his companions by means of a shield, sometimes of a round form, with a segment taken out on each side, and sometimes square; and finally, the warrior, with his sword and lance. The Hittite princes whom fortune had brought into relations with Thûtmosîs III. and Amenôthes II. were not able to avail themselves properly of the latent forces around them. It was owing probably to the feebleness of their character or to the turbulence of their barons that we must ascribe the poor part they played in the revolutions of the Eastern world at this time. The establishment of a strong military power on their southern frontier was certain, moreover, to be anything but pleasing to them; if they preferred not to risk everything by entering into a great struggle with the invaders, they could, without compromising themselves too much, harass them with sudden attacks, and intrigue in an underhand way against them to their own profit. Pharaohs generals were accustomed to punish, one after the other, these bands of invading tribes, and the sculptors duly recorded their names on a pylon at Thebes among those of the conquered nations, but these disasters had little effect in restraining the Hittites. They continued, in spite of them, to march southward, and the letters from the Egyptian governors record their progress year after year. They had a hand in all the plots which were being hatched among the Syrians, and all the disaffected who wished to be free from foreign oppression--such as Abdashirti and his son Azîru--addressed themselves to them for help in the way of chariots and men.*

* Azîru defends himself in one of his letters against the
accusation of having received four messengers from the King
of the Khâti, while he refused to receive those from Egypt.
The complicity of Aziru with the Khâti is denounced in an
appeal from the inhabitants of Tunipa. In a mutilated
letter, an unknown person calls attention to the
negotiations which a petty-Syrian prince had entered into
with the King of the Khâti.

Even inthe time of Amenôfches III. they had endeavoured to reap profit from the discords of Mitanni, and had asserted their supremacy over it. Dushratta, however, was able to defeat one of their chiefs. Repulsed on this side, they fell back upon that part of Naharaim lying between the Euphrates and Orontes, and made themselves masters of one town after another in spite of the despairing appeals of the conquered to the Theban king. From the accession of Khûniatonû, they set to work to annex the countries of Nukhassi, Nîi, Tunipa, and Zinzauru: they looked with covetous eyes upon Phoenicia, and were already menacing Coele-Syria. The religious confusion in Egypt under Tûtankhamon and Aî left them a free field for their ambitions, and when Harmhabî ventured to cross to the east of the isthmus, he found them definitely installed in the region stretching from the Mediterranean and the Lebanon to the Euphrates. Their then reigning prince, Sapalulu, appeared to have been the founder of a new dynasty: he united the forces of the country in a solid body, and was within a little of making a single state out of all Northern Syria.*

* Sapalulu has the same name as that wo meet with later on in the country of Patin, in the time of Salmanasar III., viz. Sapalulme. It is known to us only from a treaty with the Khâti, which makes him coeval with Ramses I.: it was with him probably that Harmhabî had to deal in his Syrian campaigns. The limit of his empire towards the south is gathered in a measure from what we know of the wars of Seti I. with the Khâti.

All Naharaim had submitted to him: Zahi, Alasia, and the Amurru had passed under his government from that of the Pharaohs; Carchemish, Tunipa, Nîi, Hamath, figured among his royal cities, and Qodshû was the defence of his southern frontier. His progress towards the east was not less considerable. Mitanni, Arzapi, and the principalities of the Euphrates as far as the Balikh, possibly even to the Khabur,* paid him homage: beyond this, Assyria and Chaldæa barred his way. Here, as on his other frontiers, fortune brought him face to face with the most formidable powers of the Asiatic world.

* The text of the poem of Pentaûîrît mentions, among the
countries confederate with the Khâti, all Naharaim; that is
to say, the country on either side of the Euphrates,
embracing Mitanni and the principalities named in the Amarna
correspondence, and in addition some provinces whose sites
have not yet been discovered, but which may be placed
without much risk of error to the north of the Taurus.

The latter prince was obliged to capture Qodshû, and to conquer the people of the Lebanon. Had he sufficient forces at his disposal to triumph over them, or only enough to hold his ground? Both hypotheses could have been answered in the affirmative if each one of these great powers, confiding in its own resources, had attacked him separately. The Amorites, the people of Zahi, Alasia, and Naharaim, together with recruits from Hittite tribes, would then have put him in a position to resist, and even to carry off victory with a high hand in the final struggle. But an alliance between Assyria or Babylon and Thebes was always possible. There had been such things before, in the time of Thut-mosis IV. and in that of Amenôthes III., but they were lukewarm agreements, and their effect was not much to boast of, for the two parties to the covenant had then no common enemy to deal with, and their mutual interests were not, therefore, bound up with their united action. The circumstances were very different now. The rapid growth of a nascent kingdom, the restless spirit of its people, its trespasses on domains in which the older powers had been accustomed to hold the upper hand,--did not all this tend to transform the convention, more commercial than military, with which up to this time they had been content, into an offensive and defensive treaty? If they decided to act in concert, how could Sapalulu or his successors, seeing that he was obliged to defend himself on two frontiers at the same moment, muster sufficient resources to withstand the double assault? The Hittites, as we know them more especially from the hieroglyphic inscriptions, might be regarded as the lords only of Northern Syria, and their power be measured merely by the extent of territory which they occupied to the south of the Taurus and on the two banks of the Middle Euphrates. But this does not by any means represent the real facts. This was but the half of their empire; the rest extended to the westward and northward, beyond the mountains into that region, known afterwards as Asia Minor, in which Egyptian tradition had from ancient times confused some twenty nations under the common vague epithet of Haûî-nîbû. Official language still employed it as a convenient and comprehensive term, but the voyages of the Phoenicians and the travels of the Royal Messengers, as well as, probably, the maritime commerce of the merchants of the Delta, had taught the scribes for more than a century and a half to make distinctions among these nations which they had previously summed up in one. The Lufeu* were to be found there, as well as the Danauna,** the Shardana,*** and others besides, who lay behind one another on the coast. Of the second line of populations behind the region of the coast tribes, we have up to the present no means of knowing anything with certainty. Asia Minor, furthermore, is divided into two regions, so distinctly separated by nature as well as by races that one would be almost inclined to regard them as two countries foreign to each other.

* The Luku, Luka, are mentioned in the Amarna correspondence
under the form Lukki as pirates and highway robbers. The
identity of these people with the Lycians I hold as well
established.

** The Danauna are mentioned along with the Luku in the
Amarna correspondence. The termination, _-auna, -ana_ of
this word appears to be the ending in -aon found in Asiatic
names like Lykaôn by the side of Lykos, Kataôn by the side
of Kêtis and Kat-patuka; while the form of the name Danaos
is preserved in Greek legend, Danaôn is found only on
Oriental monuments. The Danauna came from their islands,
that is to say, from the coasts of Asia Minor, or from
Greece, the term not being pressed too literally, as the
Egyptians were inclined to call all distant lands situated
to the north beyond the Mediterranean Sea islands.

*** E. de Rougé and Chabas were inclined to identify the
Shardana with the Sardes and the island of Sardinia. Unger
made them out to be the Khartanoi of Libya, and was followed
by Brugsch. W. Max Müller revived the hypotheses of De Rougé
and Chabas, and saw in them bands from the Italian island. I
am still persuaded, as I was twenty-five years ago, that
they were Asiatics--the Mæonian tribe which gave its name
to Sardis. The Serdani or Shardana are mentioned as serving
in the Egyptian Army in the Tel el-Amarna tablets.

In its centre it consists of a well-defined undulating plain, having a gentle slope towards the Black Sea, and of the shape of a kind of convex trapezium, clearly bounded towards the north by the highlands of Pontus, and on the south by the tortuous chain of the Taurus. A line of low hills fringes the country on the west, from the Olympus of Mysia to the Taurus of Pisidia. Towards the east it is bounded by broken chains of mountains of unequal height, to which the name Anti-Taurus is not very appropriately applied. An immense volcanic cone, Mount Argseus, looks down from a height of some 13,000 feet over the wide isthmus which connects the country with the lands of the Euphrates. This volcano is now extinct, but it still preserved in old days something of its languishing energy, throwing out flames at intervals above the sacred forests which clothed its slopes. The rivers having their sources in the region just described, have not all succeeded in piercing the obstacles which separate them from the sea, but the Pyramus and the Sarus find their way into the Mediterranean and the Iris, Halys and Sangarios into the Euxine. The others flow into the lowlands, forming meres, marshes, and lakes of fluctuating extent. The largest of these lakes, called Tatta, is salt, and its superficial extent varies with the season. In brief, the plateau of this region is nothing but an extension of the highlands of Central Asia, and has the same vegetation, fauna, and climate, the same extremes of temperature, the same aridity, and the same wretched and poverty-stricken character as the latter. The maritime portions are of an entirely different aspect.

The western coast which stretches into the Ægean is furrowed by deep valleys, opening out as they reach the sea, and the rivers--the Caicus, the Hermos, the Cayster, and Meander--which flow through them are effective makers of soil, bringing down with them, as they do, a continual supply of alluvium, which, deposited at their mouths, causes the land to encroach there upon the sea. The littoral is penetrated here and there by deep creeks, and is fringed with beautiful islands--Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Cos, Rhodes--of which the majority are near enough to the continent to act as defences of the seaboard, and to guard the mouths of the rivers, while they are far enough away to be secure from the effects of any violent disturbances which might arise in the mainland. The Cyclades, distributed in two lines, are scattered, as it were, at hazard between Asia and Europe, like great blocks which have fallen around the piers of a broken bridge. The passage from one to the other is an easy matter, and owing to them, the sea rather serves to bring together the two continents than to divide them. Two groups of heights, imperfectly connected with the central plateau, tower above the Ægean slope--wooded Ida on the north, veiled in cloud, rich in the flocks and herds upon its sides, and in the metals within its bosom; and on the south, the volcanic bastions of Lycia, where tradition was wont to place the fire-breathing Chimaera. A rocky and irregularly broken coast stretches to the west of Lycia, in a line almost parallel with the Taurus, through which, at intervals, torrents leaping from the heights make their way into the sea. At the extreme eastern point of the coast, almost at the angle where the Cilician littoral meets that of Syria, the Pyramus and the Sarus have brought down between them sufficient material to form an alluvial plain, which the classical geographers designated by the name of the Level Cilicia, to distinguish it from the rough region of the interior, Gilicia Trachea.

The populations dwelling in this peninsula belong to very varied races. On the south and south-west certain Semites had found an abode--the mysterious inhabitants of Solyma, and especially the Phoenicians in their scattered trading-stations. On the north-east, beside the Khâti, distributed throughout the valleys of the Anti-Taurus, between the Euphrates and Mount Argseus, there were tribes allied to the Khâti*--possibly at this time the Tabal and the Mushkâ--and, on the shores of the Black Sea, those workers in metal, which, following the Greeks, we may call, for want of a better designation, the Chalybes.

* A certain number of these tribes or of their towns are to
be found in the list contained in the treaty of Ramses II.
with the Khâti.