Chapter III: The Babylonians in Canaan and the Egyptian Conquest (4)

The legendary exploits of Sesostris, that creation of Greek fancy and ignorance, were fastened upon Ramses II., whose long reign, inordinate vanity, and ceaseless activity as a builder made him one of the most prominent of the old Pharaohs. It was natural, therefore, at the beginning of hieroglyphic decipherment that the Greek accounts should be accepted in full, and that Ramses II. should have been regarded as the greatest of Egyptian conquerors. But further study soon showed that, in this respect at least, his reputation had little to support it. Like his monuments, too many of which are really stolen from his predecessors, or else sacrifice honesty of work to haste and pretentiousness, a large part of the conquests and victories that have been claimed for him was due to the imagination of the scribes. In the reaction which followed on this discovery, the modern historians of ancient Egypt were disposed to dispute his claim to be a conqueror at all. But we now know that such a scepticism was exaggerated, and though Ramses II. was not a conqueror like Thothmes III., he nevertheless maintained and extended the Asiatic empire which his father had recovered, and the lists of vanquished cities which he engraved on the walls of his temples were not mere repetitions of older catalogues, or the empty fictions of flattering chroniclers. Egyptian armies really marched once more into Northern Syria and the confines of Cilicia, and probably made their way to the banks of the Euphrates. We have no reason for denying that Assyrian troops may have been defeated by his arms, or that the king of Mitanni may have sent an embassy to his court. And we now have a good deal more than the indirect evidence of the treaty with the Hittites to show that Canaan was again a province of the Egyptian empire. The names of some of its cities which were captured in the early part of the Pharaoh's reign may still be read on the walls of the Ramesseum at Thebes. Among them are Ashkelon, Shalam or Jerusalem, Merom, and Beth-Anath, which were taken by storm in his eighth year. Dapul, "in the land of the Amorites," was captured at the same time, proving that the Egyptian forces penetrated as far as the Hittite frontiers. At Luxor other Canaanite names figure in the catalogue of vanquished states. Thus we have Carmel of Judah, Ir-shemesh and Hadashah (Josh. xv. 37), Gaza, Sela and Jacob-el, Socho, Yurza, and Korkha in Moab. The name of Moab itself appears for the first time among the subject nations, while we gather from a list of mining settlements, that Cyprus as well as the Sinaitic peninsula was under Egyptian authority.

A sarcastic account of the misadventures of a military officer in Palestine, which was written in the time of Ramses, is an evidence of the complete occupation of that country by the Egyptians. All parts of Canaan are alluded to in it, and as Dr. Max Müller has lately pointed out, we find in it for the first time the names of Shechem and Kirjath-Sepher. Similar testimony is borne by a hieroglyphic inscription recently discovered by Dr. Schumacher on the so-called "Stone of Job" in the Haurân. The stone (_Sakhrat 'Ayyub_) is a monolith westward of the Sea of Galilee, and not far from Tel 'Ashtereh, the ancient Ashtaroth-Karnaim, which was a seat of Egyptian government in the time of Khu-n-Aten. The monolith is adorned with Egyptian sculptures and hieroglyphs. One of the sculptures represents a Pharaoh above whose likeness is the cartouche of Ramses II., while opposite the king, to the left, is the figure of a god who wears the crown of Osiris, but has a full face. Over the god is his name in hieroglyphics. The name, however, is not Egyptian, but seems to be intended for the Canaanite Yakin-Zephon or "Yakin of the North." It is plain, therefore, that we have here a monument testifying to the rule of Ramses II., but a monument which was erected by natives of the country to a native divinity. For a while the hieroglyphic writing of Egypt had taken the place formerly occupied by the cuneiform syllabary of Babylonia, and Egyptian culture had succeeded in supplanting that which had come from the East.

The nineteenth dynasty ended even more disastrously than the eighteenth. It is true that the great confederacy of northern and Libyan tribes which attacked Egypt by sea and land in the reign of Meneptah, the son and successor of Ramses II., was successfully repulsed, but the energy of the Egyptian power seemed to exhaust itself in the effort. The throne fell into the hands of usurpers, and the house of Ramses was swept away by civil war and anarchy. The government was seized by a Syrian, Arisu by name, and for a time Egypt was compelled to submit to a foreign yoke. The overthrow of the foreigner and the restoration of the native monarchy was due to the valour of Set-nekht, the founder of the twentieth dynasty and the father of Ramses III.

It was under one of the immediate successors of Ramses II. that the exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt must have taken place. Egyptian tradition pointed to Meneptah; modern scholars incline rather to his successors Seti II. and Si-Ptah. With this event the patriarchal history of Canaan ought properly to come to an end. But the Egyptian monuments still cast light upon it, and enable us to carry it on almost to the moment when Joshua and his followers entered the Promised Land.

Palestine still formed part of the kingdom of Meneptah, at all events in the earlier years of his reign. A scribe has left us a record of the officials who passed to and from Canaan through the frontier fortress of Zaru during the middle of the month Pakhons in the third year of the king. One of these was Baal- ... the son of Zippor of Gaza, who carried a letter for the Egyptian overseer of the Syrian peasantry (or Perizzites), as well as another for Baal-[sa]lil-ga[b]u, the vassal-prince of Tyre. Another messenger was Sutekh-mes, the son of 'Aper-dagar, who also carried a despatch to the overseer of the peasantry, while a third envoy came in the reverse direction, from the city of Meneptah, "in the land of the Amorites."

In the troubles which preceded the accession of the twentieth dynasty the Asiatic possessions of Egypt were naturally lost, and were never again recovered. Ramses III., however, the last of the conquering Pharaohs, made at least one campaign in Palestine and Syria. Like Meneptah, he had to bear the brunt of an attack upon Egypt by the confederated hordes of the north which threatened to extinguish its civilization altogether. The nations of Asia Minor and the Ægean Sea had poured into Syria as the northern barbarians in later days poured into the provinces of the Roman Empire. Partly by land, partly by sea, they made their way through Phoenicia and the land of the Hittites, destroying everything as they went, and carrying in their train the subjugated princes of Naharaim and Kadesh. For a time they encamped in the "land of the Amorites," and then pursued their southward march. Ramses III. met them on the north-eastern frontier of his kingdom, and in a fiercely-contested battle utterly overthrew them. The ships of the invaders were captured or sunk, and their forces on land were decimated. Immense quantities of booty and prisoners were taken, and the shattered forces of the enemy retreated into Syria. There the Philistines and Zakkal possessed themselves of the sea-coast, and garrisoned the cities of the extreme south. Gaza ceased to be an Egyptian fortress, and became instead an effectual barrier to the Egyptian occupation of Canaan.

When Ramses III. followed the retreating invaders of his country into Syria, it is doubtful whether the Philistines had as yet settled themselves in their future home. At all events Gaza fell into his hands, and he found no difficulty in marching along the Mediterranean coast like the conquering Pharaohs who had preceded him. In his temple palace at Medînet Habu he has left a record of the conquests that he made in Syria. The great cities of the coast were untouched. No attempt was made to besiege or capture Tyre and Sidon, Beyrout and Gebal, and the Egyptian army marched past them, encamping on the way only at such places as "the headland of Carmel," "the source of the Magoras," or river of Beyrout, and the Bor or "Cistern." Otherwise its resting-places were at unknown villages like Inzath and Lui-el. North of Beyrout it struck eastward through the gorge of the Nahr el-Kelb, and took the city of Kumidi. Then it made its way by Shenir or Hermon to Hamath, which surrendered, and from thence still northward to "the plain" of Aleppo.

In the south of Palestine, in what was afterwards the territory of Judah, Ramses made yet another campaign. Here he claims to have taken Lebanoth and Beth-Anath, Carmel of Judah and Shebtin, Jacob-el and Hebron, Libnah and Aphek, Migdal-gad and Ir-Shemesh, Hadashah and the district of Salem or Jerusalem. From thence the Egyptian forces proceeded to the Lake of Reshpon or the Dead Sea, and then crossing the Jordan seized Korkha in Moab. But the campaign was little more than a raid; it left no permanent results behind it, and all traces of Egyptian authority disappeared with the departure of the Pharaoh's army. Canaan remained the prey of the first resolute invader who had strength and courage at his back.