* A part of the latter temple, that which had been rebuilt in the Saite epoch, was still standing at the beginning of the XIXth century, with columns bearing the cartouches of Hakori; it was destroyed about the year 1825, and Champollion found only the foundations of the walls.



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

Famine constantly resulted from these disturbances, and it taxed all the powers of the ruling prince to provide at such times for his people. A chief of the Commissariat, Bebi by name, who lived about this period, gives us a lengthy account of the number of loaves, oxen, goats, and pigs, which he allowed to all the inhabitants both great and little, down even to the quantity of oil and incense, which he had taken care to store up for them: his prudence was always justified by the issue, for "during the many years in which the famine recurred, he distributed grain in the city to all those who hungered."

Babai, the first of the lords of El-Kab whose name has come down to us, was a captain in the service of Saqnunri Tiuaqni.* His son Ahmosi, having approached the end of his career, cut a tomb for himself in the hill which overlooks the northern side of the town. He relates on the walls of his sepulchre, for the benefit of posterity, the most praiseworthy actions of his long life. He had scarcely emerged from childhood when he was called upon to act for his father, and before his marriage he was appointed to the command of the barque The Calf. From thence he was promoted to the ship The North, and on account of his activity he was chosen to escort his namesake the king on foot, whenever he drove in his chariot. He repaired to his post at the moment when the decisive war against the Hyksos broke out.

* There are still some doubts as to the descent of this Ahmosi. Some authorities hold that Babai was the name of his father and Abina that of his grandfather; others think that Babai was his father and Abina his mother; others, again, make out Babai and Abina to be variants of the same name, probably a Semitic one, borne by the father of Ahmosi; the majority of modern Egyptologists (including myself) regard this last hypothesis as being the most probable one.

The tradition current in the time of the Ptolemies reckoned the number of men under the command of King Ahmosis when he encamped before Avaris at 480,000. This immense multitude failed to bring matters to a successful issue, and the siege dragged on indefinitely. The king afc length preferred to treat with the Shepherds, and gave them permission to retreat into Syria safe and sound, together with their wives, their children, and all their goods. This account, however, in no way agrees with the all too brief narration of events furnished by the inscription in the tomb. The army to which Egypt really owed its deliverance was not the undisciplined rabble of later tradition, but, on the contrary, consisted of troops similar to those which subsequently invaded Syria, some 15,000 to 20,000 in number, fully equipped and ably officered, supported, moreover, by a fleet ready to transfer them across the canals and arms of the river in a vigorous condition and ready for the battle.*

* It may be pointed out that Ahmosi, son of Abina, was a sailor and a leader of sailors; that he passed from one vessel to another, until he was at length appointed to the command of one of the most important ships in the royal fleet. Transport by water always played considerable part in the wars which were carried on in Egyptian territory; I have elsewhere drawn attention to campaigns conducted in this manner under the Horacleopolitan dynasties, and we shall see that the Ethiopian conquerors adopted the same mode of transit in the course of their invasion of Egypt.

As soon as this fleet arrived at the scene of hostilities, the engagement began. Ahmosi-si-Abina conducted the manouvres under the king's eye, and soon gave such evidence of his capacity, that he was transferred by royal favour to the Rising in Memphis—a vessel with a high freeboard. He was shortly afterwards appointed to a post in a division told off for duty on the river Zadiku, which ran under the walls of the enemy's fortress.* Two successive and vigorous attacks made in this quarter were barren of important results. Ahmosi-si-Abina succeeded in each of the attacks in killing an enemy, bringing back as trophies a hand of each of his victims, and his prowess, made known to the king by one of the heralds, twice procured for him, "the gold of valour," probably in the form of collars, chains, or bracelets.**

* The name of this canal was first recognised by Brugsch, then misunderstood and translated "the water bearing the name of the water of Avaris." It is now road "Zadiku," and, with the Egyptian article, Pa-zadiku, or Pzadiku. The name is of Semitic origin, and is derived from the root meaning "to be just;" we do not know to which of the watercourses traversing the east of the Delta it ought to be applied.

** The fact that the attacks from this side were not successful is proved by the sequel. If they had succeeded, as is usually supposed, the Egyptians would not have fallen back on another point further south in order to renew the struggle.



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

The assault having been repulsed in this quarter, the Egyptians made their way towards the south, and came into conflict with the enemy at the village of Taqimit.* Here, again, the battle remained undecided, but Ahmosi-si-Abina had an adventure. He had taken a prisoner, and in bringing him back lost himself, fell into a muddy ditch, and, when he had freed himself from the dirt as well as he could, pursued his way by mistake for some time in the direction of Avaris. He found out his error, however, before it was too late, came back to the camp safe and sound, and received once more some gold as a reward of his brave conduct. A second attack upon the town was crowned with complete success; it was taken by storm, given over to pillage, and Ahmosi-si-Abina succeeded in capturing one man and three women, who were afterwards, at the distribution of the spoil, given to him as slaves.** The enemy evacuated in haste the last strongholds which they held in the east of the Delta, and took refuge in the Syrian provinces on the Egyptian frontier. Whether it was that they assumed here a menacing attitude, or whether Ahmosis hoped to deal them a crushing blow before they could find time to breathe, or to rally around them sufficient forces to renew the offensive, he made up his mind to cross the frontier, which he did in the 5th year of his reign.

* The site of Taqimit is unknown.

** The prisoner who was given to Ahmosis after the victory, is probably Paamu, the Asiatic, mentioned in the list of his slaves which he had engraved on one of the walls of his tomb.

It was the first time for centuries that a Pharaoh had trusted himself in Asia, and the same dread of the unknown which had restrained his ancestors of the XIIth dynasty, doubtless arrested Ahmosis also on the threshold of the continent. He did not penetrate further than the border provinces of Zahi, situated on the edge of the desert, and contented himself with pillaging the little town of Sharuhana.* Ahmosi-si-Abina was again his companion, together with his cousin, Ahmosi-Pannekhabit, then at the beginning of his career, who brought away on this occasion two young girls for his household.**

* Sharuhana, which is mentioned again under Thutmosis III. is not the plain of Sharon, as Birch imagined, but the Sharuhen of the Biblical texts, in the tribe of Simeon (Josh. xix. 6), as Brugsch recognised it to be. It is probably identical with the modern Tell-esh-Sheriah, which lies north-west of Beersheba.

** Ahmosi Pannekhabit lay in tomb No. 2, at El-Kab. His history is briefly told on one of the walls, and on two sides of the pedestal of his statues. We have one of these, or rather two plates from the pedestal of one of them, in the Louvre; the other is in a good state of preservation, and belongs to Mr. Finlay. The inscription is found in a mutilated condition on the wall of the tomb, but the three monuments which have come down to us are sufficiently complementary to one another to enable us to restore nearly the whole of the original text.

The expedition having accomplished its purpose, the Egyptians returned home with their spoil, and did not revisit Asia for a long period. If the Hyksos generals had fostered in their minds the idea that they could recover their lost ground, and easily re-enter upon the possession of their African domain, this reverse must have cruelly disillusioned them. They must have been forced to acknowledge that their power was at an end, and to renounce all hope of returning to the country which had so summarily ejected them. The majority of their own people did not follow them into exile, but remained attached to the soil on which they lived, and the tribes which had successively settled down beside them—including the Beni-Israel themselves—no longer dreamed of a return to their fatherland. The condition of these people varied according to their locality. Those who had taken up a position in the plain of the Delta were subjected to actual slavery. Ahmosis destroyed the camp at Avails, quartered his officers in the towns, and constructed forts at strategic points, or rebuilt the ancient citadels to resist the incursions of the Bedouin. The vanquished people in the Delta, hemmed in as they were by a network of fortresses, were thus reduced to a rabble of serfs, to be taxed and subjected to the corvee without mercy. But further north, the fluctuating population which roamed between the Sebennytic and Pelusiac branches of the Nile were not exposed to such rough treatment. The marshes of the coast-line afforded them a safe retreat, in which they could take refuge at the first threat of exactions on the part of the royal emissaries. Secure within dense thickets, upon islands approached by interminable causeways, often covered with water, or by long tortuous canals concealed in the thick growth of reeds, they were able to defy with impunity the efforts of the most disciplined troops, and treason alone could put them at the mercy of their foes. Most of the Pharaohs felt that the advantages to be gained by conquering them would be outweighed by the difficulty of the enterprise; all that could result from a campaign would be the destruction of one or two villages, the acquisition of a few hundred refractory captives, of some ill-favoured cattle, and a trophy of nets and worm-eaten boats. The kings, therefore, preferred to keep a close watch over these undisciplined hordes, and as long as their depredations were kept within reasonable limits, they were left unmolested to their wild and precarious life.

The Asiatic invasion had put a sudden stop to the advance of Egyptian rule in the vast plains of the Upper Nile. The Theban princes, to whom Nubia was directly subject, had been too completely engrossed in the wars against their hereditary enemy, to devote much time to the continuation of that work of colonization in the south which had been carried on so vigorously by their forefathers of the XIIth and XIIIth dynasties. The inhabitants of the Nile valley, as far as the second cataract, rendered them obedience, but without any change in the conditions and mode of their daily life, which appear to have remained unaltered for centuries. The temples of Usirtasen and Amenemhait were allowed to fall into decay one after another, the towns waned in prosperity, and were unable to keep their buildings and monuments in repair; the inundation continued to bring with it periodically its fleet of boats, which the sailors of Kush had laden with timber, gum, elephants' tusks, and gold dust: from time to time a band of Bedouin from Uauait or Mazaiu would suddenly bear down upon some village and carry off its spoils; the nearest garrison would be called to its aid, or, on critical occasions, the king himself, at the head of his guards, would fall on the marauders and drive them back into the mountains. Ahrnosis, being greeted on his return from Syria by the news of such an outbreak, thought it a favourable moment to impress upon the nomadic tribes of Nubia the greatness of his conquest. On this occasion it was the people of Khonthanunofir, settled in the wadys east of the Nile, above Semneh, which required a lesson. The army which had just expelled the Hyksos was rapidly conveyed to the opposite borders of the country by the fleet, the two Ahmosi of Nekhabit occupying the highest posts. The Egyptians, as was customary, landed at the nearest point to the enemy's territory, and succeeded in killing a few of the rebels. Ahmosi-si-Abina brought back two prisoners and three hands, for which he was rewarded by a gift of two female Bedouin slaves, besides the "gold of valour." This victory in the south following on such decisive success in the north, filled the heart of the Pharaoh with pride, and the view taken of it by those who surrounded him is evident even in the brief sentences of the narrative. He is described as descending the river on the royal galley, elated in spirit and flushed by his triumph in Nubia, which had followed so closely on the deliverance of the Delta. But scarcely had he reached Thebes, when an unforeseen catastrophe turned his confidence into alarm, and compelled him to retrace his steps. It would appear that at the very moment when he was priding himself on the successful issue of his Ethiopian expedition, one of the sudden outbreaks, which frequently occurred in those regions, had culminated in a Sudanese invasion of Egypt. We are not told the name of the rebel leader, nor those of the tribes who took part in it. The Egyptian people, threatened in a moment of such apparent security by this inroad of barbarians, regarded them as a fresh incursion of the Hyksos, and applied to these southerners the opprobrious term of "Fever-stricken," already used to denote their Asiatic conquerors. The enemy descended the Nile, committing terrible atrocities, and polluting every sanctuary of the Theban gods which came within their reach. They had reached a spot called Tentoa,* before they fell in with the Egyptian troops. Ahmosi-si-Abina again distinguished himself in the engagement. The vessel which he commanded, probably the Rising in Memphis, ran alongside the chief galliot of the Sudanese fleet, and took possession of it after a struggle, in which Ahmosi made two of the enemy's sailors prisoners with his own hand. The king generously rewarded those whose valour had thus turned the day in his favour, for the danger had appeared to him critical; he allotted to every man on board the victorious vessel five slaves, and five ancra of land situated in his native province of each respectively. The invasion was not without its natural consequences to Egypt itself.

* The name of this locality does not occur elsewhere; it would seem to refer, not to a village, but rather to a canal, or the branch of a river, or a harbour somewhere along the Nile. I am unable to locate it definitely, but am inclined to think we ought to look for it, if not in Egypt itself, at any rate in that part of Nubia which is nearest to Egypt. M. Revillout, taking up a theory which had been abandoned by Chabas, recognising in this expedition an offensive incursion of the Shepherds, suggests that Tantoa may be the modern Tantah in the Delta.

A certain Titianu, who appears to have been at the head of a powerful faction, rose in rebellion at some place not named in the narrative, but in the rear of the army. The rapidity with which Ahmosis repulsed the Nubians, and turned upon his new enemy, completely baffled the latter's plans, and he and his followers were cut to pieces, but the danger had for the moment been serious.* It was, if not the last expedition undertaken in this reign, at least the last commanded by the Pharaoh in person. By his activity and courage Ahmosis had well earned the right to pass the remainder of his days in peace.

* The wording of the text is so much condensed that it is difficult to be sure of its moaning. Modern scholars agree with Brugsch that Titianu is the name of a man, but several Egyptologists believe its bearer to have been chief of the Ethiopian tribes, while others think him to have been a rebellious Egyptian prince, or a king of the Shepherds, or give up the task of identification in despair. The tortuous wording of the text, and the expressions which occur in it, seem to indicate that the rebel was a prince of the royal blood, and even that the name he bears was not his real one. Later on we shall find that, on a similar occasion, the official documents refer to a prince who took part in a plot against Ramses III. by the fictitious name of Pentauirit; Titianu was probably a nickname of the same kind inserted in place of the real name. It seems that, in cases of high treason, the criminal not only lost his life, but his name was proscribed both in this world and in the next.

A revival of military greatness always entailed a renaissance in art, followed by an age of building activity. The claims of the gods upon the spoils of war must be satisfied before those of men, because the victory and the booty obtained through it were alike owing to the divine help given in battle. A tenth, therefore, of the slaves, cattle, and precious metals was set apart for the service of the gods, and even fields, towns, and provinces were allotted to them, the produce of which was applied to enhance the importance of their cult or to repair and enlarge their temples. The main body of the building was strengthened, halls and pylons were added to the original plan, and the impulse once given to architectural work, the co-operation of other artificers soon followed. Sculptors and painters whose art had been at a standstill for generations during the centuries of Egypt's humiliation, and whose hands had lost their cunning for want of practice, were now once more in demand. They had probably never completely lost the technical knowledge of their calling, and the ancient buildings furnished them with various types of models, which they had but to copy faithfully in order to revive their old traditions. A few years after this revival a new school sprang up, whose originality became daily more patent, and whose leaders soon showed themselves to be in no way inferior to the masters of the older schools. Ahmosis could not be accused of ingratitude to the gods; as soon as his wars allowed him the necessary leisure, he began his work of temple-building. The accession to power of the great Theban families had been of little advantage to Thebes itself. Its Pharaohs, on assuming the sovereignty of the whole valley, had not hesitated to abandon their native city, and had made Heracleopolis, the Fayum or even Memphis, their seat of government, only returning to Thebes in the time of the XIIIth dynasty, when the decadence of their power had set in. The honour of furnishing rulers for its country had often devolved on Thebes, but the city had reaped but little benefit from the fact; this time, however, the tide of fortune was to be turned. The other cities of Egypt had come to regard Thebes as their metropolis from the time when they had temples. The main body of the building was strengthened, halls and pylons were added to the original plan, and the impulse once given to architectural work, the co-operation of other artificers soon followed. Sculptors and painters whose art had been at a standstill for generations during the centuries of Egypt's humiliation, and whose hands had lost their cunning for want of practice, were now once more in demand. They had probably never completely lost the technical knowledge of their calling, and the ancient buildings furnished them with various types of models, which they had but to copy faithfully in order to revive their old traditions. A few years after this revival a new school sprang up, whose originality became daily more patent, and whose leaders soon showed themselves to be in no way inferior to the masters of the older schools. Ahmosis could not be accused of ingratitude to the gods; as soon as his wars allowed him the necessary leisure, he began his work of temple-building. The accession to power of the great Theban families had been of little advantage to Thebes itself. Its Pharaohs, on assuming the sovereignty of the whole valley, had not hesitated to abandon their native city, and had made Heracleopolis, the Fayum or even Memphis, their seat of government, only returning to Thebes in the time of the XIIIth dynasty, when the decadence of their power had set in. The honour of furnishing rulers for its country had often devolved on Thebes, but the city had reaped but little benefit from the fact; this time, however, the tide of fortune was to be turned.



The other cities of Egypt had come to regard Thebes as their metropolis from the time when they had learned to rally round its princes to wage war against the Hyksos. It had been the last town to lay down arms at the time of the invasion, and the first to take them up again in the struggle for liberty. Thus the Egypt which vindicated her position among the nations of the world was not the Egypt of the Memphite dynasties. It was the great Egypt of the Amenemhaits and the Usirtasens, still further aggrandised by recent victories. Thebes was her natural capital, and its kings could not have chosen a more suitable position from whence to command effectually the whole empire. Situated at an equal distance from both frontiers, the Pharaoh residing there, on the outbreak of a war either in the north or south, had but half the length of the country to traverse in order to reach the scene of action. Ahmosis spared no pains to improve the city, but his resources did not allow of his embarking on any very extensive schemes; he did not touch the temple of Amon, and if he undertook any buildings in its neighbourhood, they must have been minor edifices. He could, indeed, have had but little leisure to attempt much else, for it was not till the XXIInd year of his reign that he was able to set seriously to work.*

* In the inscription of the year XXII., Ahmosis expressly states that he opened new chambers in the quarries of Turah for the works in connection with the Theban Amon, as well as for those of the temple of the Memphite Phtah.

An opportunity then occurred to revive a practice long fallen into disuse under the foreign kings, and to set once more in motion an essential part of the machinery of Egyptian administration. The quarries of Turah, as is well known, enjoyed the privilege of furnishing the finest materials to the royal architects; nowhere else could be found limestone of such whiteness, so easy to cut, or so calculated to lend itself to the carving of delicate inscriptions and bas-reliefs. The commoner veins had never ceased to be worked by private enterprise, gangs of quarrymen being always employed, as at the present day, in cutting small stone for building purposes, or in ruthlessly chipping it to pieces to burn for lime in the kilns of the neighbouring villages; but the finest veins were always kept for State purposes. Contemporary chroniclers might have formed a very just estimate of national prosperity by the degree of activity shown in working these royal preserves; when the amount of stone extracted was lessened, prosperity was on the wane, and might be pronounced to be at its lowest ebb when the noise of the quarryman's hammer finally ceased to be heard.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Vyse-Perring.

Every dynasty whose resources were such as to justify their resumption of the work proudly recorded the fact on stelae which lined the approaches to the masons' yards. Ahmosis reopened the Turah quarry-chambers, and procured for himself "good stone and white" for the temples of Anion at Thebes and of Phtah at Memphis. No monument has as yet been discovered to throw any light on the fate of Memphis subsequent to the time of the Amenemhaits. It must have suffered quite as much as any city of the Delta from the Shepherd invasion, and from the wars which preceded their expulsion, since it was situated on the highway of an invading army, and would offer an attraction for pillagers. By a curious turn of fortune it was the "Fankhui," or Asiatic prisoners, who were set to quarry the stone for the restoration of the monuments which their own forefathers had reduced to ruins.* The bas-reliefs sculptured on the stelae of Ahmosis show them in full activity under the corvee; we see here the stone block detached from the quarry being squared by the chisel, or transported on a sledge drawn by oxen.

* The Fankhui are, properly speaking, all white prisoners, without distinction of race. Their name is derived from the root fokhu, fankhu = to bind, press, carry off, steal, destroy; if it is sometimes used in the sense of Phoenicians, it is only in the Ptolemaic epoch. Here the term "Fankhui" refers to the Shepherds and Asiatics made prisoners in the campaign of the year V. against Sharuhana.

Ahmosis had several children by his various wives; six at least owned Nofritari for their mother and possessed near claims to the crown, but she may have borne him others whose existence is unrecorded. The eldest appears to have been a son, Sipiri; he received all the honours due to an hereditary prince, but died without having reigned, and his second brother, Amenhotpu—called by the Greeks Amenothes*—took his place.

* The form Amenophis, which is usually employed, is, properly speaking, the equivalent of the name Amenemaupitu, or Amenaupiti, which belongs to a king of the XXIst Tanite dynasty; the true Greek transcription of the Ptolemaic epoch, corresponding to the pronunciation Amehotpe, or Amenhopte, is Amenothes. Under the XVIIIth dynasty the cuneiform transcription of the tablets of Tel-el Amarna, Amankhatbi, seems to indicate the pronunciation Amanhautpi, Amanhatpi, side by side with the pronunciation Aman-hautpu, Amenhotpu.

Ahmosis was laid to rest in the chapel which he had prepared for himself in the cemetery of Drah-abu'l-Neggah, among the modest pyramids of the XIth, XIIIth, and XVIIth dynasties.* He was venerated as a god, and his cult was continued for six or eight centuries later, until the increasing insecurity of the Theban necropolis at last necessitated the removal of the kings from their funeral chambers.** The coffin of Ahmosis was found to be still intact, though it was a poorly made one, shaped to the contours of the body, and smeared over with yellow; it represents the king with the false beard depending from his chin, and his breast covered with a pectoral ornament, the features, hair, and accessories being picked out in blue. His name has been hastily inscribed in ink on the front of the winding-sheet, and when the lid was removed, garlands of faded pink flowers were still found about the neck, laid there as a last offering by the priests who placed the Pharaoh and his compeers in their secret burying-place.

* The precise site is at present unknown: we see, however, that it was in this place, when wo observe that Ahmosis was worshipped by the Servants of the Necropolis, amongst the kings and princes of his family who were buried at Drah- abu'l-Neggah.

** His priests and the minor employes of his cult are mentioned on a stele in the museum at Turin, and on a brick in the Berlin Museum. He is worshipped as a god, along with Osiris, Horus, and Isis, on a stele in the Lyons Museum, brought from Abydos: he had, probably, during one of his journeys across Egypt, made a donation to the temple of that city, on condition that he should be worshipped there for ever; for a stele at Marseilles shows him offering homage to Osiris in the bark of the god itself, and another stele in the Louvre informs us that Pharaoh Thutmosis IV. several times sent one of his messengers to Abydos for the purpose of presenting land to Osiris and to his own ancestor Ahmosis.



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

Amenothes I. had not attained his majority when his father "thus winged his way to heaven," leaving him as heir to the throne.* Nofritari assumed the authority; after having shared the royal honours for nearly twenty-five years with her husband, she resolutely refused to resign them.** She was thus the first of those queens by divine right who, scorning the inaction of the harem, took on themselves the right to fulfil the active duties of a sovereign, and claimed the recognition of the equality or superiority of their titles to those of their husbands or sons.

* The last date known is that of the year XXII. at Turah; Manetho's lists give, in one place, twenty-five years and four months after the expulsion; in another, twenty-six years in round numbers, as the total duration of his reign, which has every appearance of probability.

** There is no direct evidence to prove that Amenothes I. was a minor when he came to the throne; still the presumptions in favour of this hypothesis, afforded by the monuments, are so strong that many historians of ancient Egypt have accepted it. Queen Nofritari is represented as reigning, side by side with her reigning son, on some few Theban tombs which can be attributed to their epoch.



Drawn by Bouclier, from the photograph by M. de Mertens taken in the Berlin Museum.

The aged Ahhotpu, who, like Nofritari, was of pure royal descent, and who might well have urged her superior rank, had been content to retire in favour of her children; she lived to the tenth year of her grandson's reign, respected by all her family, but abstaining from all interference in political affairs. When at length she passed away, full of days and honour, she was embalmed with special care, and her body was placed in a gilded mummy-case, the head of which presented a faithful copy of her features. Beside her were piled the jewels she had received in her lifetime from her husband and son. The majority of them a fan with a handle plated with gold, a mirror of gilt bronze with ebony handle, bracelets and ankle-rings, some of solid and some of hollow gold, edged with fine chains of plaited gold wire, others formed of beads of gold, lapis-lazuli, cornelian, and green felspar, many of them engraved with the cartouche of Ahmosis. Belonging also to Ahmosis we have a beautiful quiver, in which figures of the king and the gods stand out in high relief on a gold plaque, delicately chased with a graving tool; the background is formed of small pieces of lapis and blue glass, cunningly cut to fit each other. One bracelet in particular, found on the queen's wrist, consisted of three parallel bands of solid gold set with turquoises, and having, a vulture with extended wings on the front. The queen's hair was held in place by a gold circlet, scarcely as large as a bracelet; a cartouche was affixed to the circlet, bearing the name of Ahmosis in blue paste, and flanked by small sphinxes, one on each side, as supporters. A thick flexible chain of gold was passed several times round her neck, and attached to it as a pendant was a beautiful scarab, partly of gold and partly of blue porcelain striped with gold. The breast ornament was completed by a necklace of several rows of twisted cords, from which depended antelopes pursued by tigers, sitting jackals, hawks, vultures, and the winged urasus, all attached to the winding-sheet by means of a small ring soldered on the back of each animal. The fastening of this necklace was formed of the heads of two gold hawks, the details of the heads being worked out in blue enamel. Both weapons and amulets were found among the jewels, including three gold flies suspended by a thin chain, nine gold and silver axes, a lion's head in gold of most minute workmanship, a sceptre of black wood plated with gold, daggers to defend the deceased from the dangers of the unseen world, boomerangs of hard wood, and the battle-axe of Ahmosis. Besides these, there were two boats, one of gold and one of silver, originally intended for the Pharaoh Kamosu—models of the skiff in which his mummy crossed the Nile to reach its last resting-place, and to sail in the wake of the gods on the western sea.



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

Nofritari thus reigned conjointly with Amenothes, and even if we have no record of any act in which she was specially concerned, we know at least that her rule was a prosperous one, and that her memory was revered by her subjects. While the majority of queens were relegated after death to the crowd of shadowy ancestors to whom habitual sacrifice was offered, the worshippers not knowing even to which sex these royal personages belonged, the remembrance of Nofritari always remained distinct in their minds, and her cult spread till it might be said to have become a kind of popular religion. In this veneration Ahmosis was rarely associated with the queen, but Amenothes and several of her other children shared in it—her son Sipiri, for instance, and her daughters Sitamon,* Sitkamosi, and Maritamon; Nofritari became, in fact, an actual goddess, taking her place beside Amon, Khonsu, and Maut,** the members of the Theban Triad, or standing alone as an object of worship for her devotees.

* Sitamon is mentioned, with her mother, on the Karnak stele and on the coffin of Butehamon.

** She is worshipped with the Theban Triad by Brihor, at Karnak, in the temple of Khonsu.



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

She was identified with Isis, Hathor, and the mistresses of Hades, and adopted their attributes, even to the black or blue coloured skin of these funerary divinities.*

* Her statue in the Turin Museum represents her as having black skin. She is also painted black standing before Amenothes (who is white) in the Deir el-Medineh tomb, now preserved in the Berlin Museum, in that of Nibnutiru, and hi that of Unnofir, at Sheikh Abd el-Qurnah. Her face is painted blue in the tomb of Kasa. The representations of this queen with a black skin have caused her to be taken for a negress, the daughter of an Ethiopian Pharaoh, or at any rate the daughter of a chief of some Nubian tribe; it was thought that Ahmosis must have married her to secure the help of the negro tribes in his wars, and that it was owing to this alliance that he succeeded in expelling the Hyksos. Later discoveries have not confirmed these hypotheses. Nofritari was most probably an Egyptian of unmixed race, as we have seen, and daughter of Ahhotpu I., and the black or blue colour of her skin is merely owing to her identification with the goddesses of the dead.

Considerable endowments were given for maintaining worship at her tomb, and were administered by a special class of priests. Her mummy reposed among those of the princes of her family, in the hiding-place at Deir-el-Bahari: it was enclosed in an enormous wooden sarcophagus covered with linen and stucco, the lower part being shaped to the body, while the upper part representing the head and arms could be lifted off in one piece. The shoulders are covered with a network in relief, the meshes of which are painted blue on a yellow background. The Queen's hands are crossed over her breast, and clasp the crux ansata, the symbol of life. The whole mummy-case measures a little over nine feet from the sole of the feet to the top of the head, which is furthermore surmounted by a cap, and two long ostrich-feathers. The appearance is not so much that of a coffin as of one of those enormous caryatides which we sometimes find adorning the front of a temple.

We may perhaps attribute to the influence of Nofritari the lack of zest evinced by Amenothes for expeditions into Syria. Even the most energetic kings had always shrunk from penetrating much beyond the isthmus. Those who ventured so far as to work the mines of Sinai had nevertheless felt a secret fear of invading Asia proper—a dread which they never succeeded in overcoming. When the raids of the Bedouin obliged the Egyptian sovereign to cross the frontier into their territory, he would retire as soon as possible, without attempting any permanent conquest. After the expulsion of the Hyksos, Ahmosis seemed inclined to pursue a less timorous course. He made an advance on Sharuhana and pillaged it, and the booty he brought back ought to have encouraged him to attempt more important expeditions; but he never returned to this region, and it would seem that when his first enthusiasm had subsided, he was paralysed by the same fear which had fallen on his ancestors. Nofritari may have counselled her son not to break through the traditions which his father had so strictly followed, for Amenothes I. confined his campaigns to Africa, and the traditional battle-fields there. He embarked for the land of Kush on the vessel of Ahmosi-si-Abina "for the purpose of enlarging the frontiers of Egypt." It was, we may believe, a thoroughly conventional campaign, conducted according to the strictest precedents of the XIIth dynasty. The Pharaoh, as might be expected, came into personal contact with the enemy, and slew their chief with his own hand; the barbarian warriors sold their lives dearly, but were unable to protect their country from pillage, the victors carrying off whatever they could seize—men, women, and cattle. The pursuit of the enemy had led the army some distance into the desert, as far as a halting-place called the "Upper cistern"—Khnumit hirit; instead of retracing his steps to the Nile squadron, and returning slowly by boat, Amenothes resolved to take a short cut homewards. Ahmosi conducted him back overland in two days, and was rewarded for his speed by the gift of a quantity of gold, and two female slaves. An incursion into Libya followed quickly on the Ethiopian campaign.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph supplied by Flinders Petrie.

The tribe of the Kihaka, settled between Lake Mareotis and the Oasis of Amon, had probably attacked in an audacious manner the western provinces of the Delta; a raid was organized against them, and the issue was commemorated by a small wooden stele, on which we see the victor represented as brandishing his sword over a barbarian lying prostrate at his feet. The exploits of Amenothes appear to have ended with this raid, for we possess no monument recording any further victory gained by him. This, however, has not prevented his contemporaries from celebrating him as a conquering and 'victorious king. He is portrayed standing erect in his chariot ready to charge, or as carrying off two barbarians whom he holds half suffocated in his sinewy arms, or as gleefully smiting the princes of foreign lands. He acquitted himself of the duties of the chase as became a true Pharaoh, for we find him depicted in the act of seizing a lion by the tail and raising him suddenly in mid-air previous to despatching him. These are, indeed, but conventional pictures of war, to which we must not attach an undue importance. Egypt had need of repose in order to recover from the losses it had sustained during the years of struggle with the invaders. If Amenothes courted peace from preference and not from political motives, his own generation profited as much by his indolence as the preceding one had gained by the energy of Ahrnosis. The towns in his reign resumed their ordinary life, agriculture flourished, and commerce again followed its accustomed routes. Egypt increased its resources, and was thus able to prepare for future conquest. The taste for building had not as yet sufficiently developed to become a drain upon the public treasury. We have, however, records showing that Amenothes excavated a cavern in the mountain of Ibrim in Nubia, dedicated to Satit, one of the goddesses of the cataract.



It is also stated that he worked regularly the quarries of Silsileh, but we do not know for what buildings the sandstone thus extracted was destined.* Karnak was also adorned with chapels, and with at least one colossus,** while several chambers built of the white limestone of Turah were added to Ombos. Thebes had thus every reason to cherish the memory of this pacific king.

* A bas-relief on the western bank of the river represents him deified: Panaiti, the name of a superintendent of the quarries who lived in his reign, has been preserved in several graffiti, while another graffito gives us only the protocol of the sovereign, and indicates that the quarries were worked in his reign.

** The chambers of white limestone are marked I, K, on Mariette's plan; it is possible that they may have been merely decorated under Thutmosis III., whose cartouches alternate with those of Amenothes I. The colossus is now in front of the third Pylon, and Wiedemann concluded from this fact that Amenothes had begun extensive works for enlarging the temple of Amon; Mariette believed, with greater probability, that the colossus formerly stood at the entrance to the XIIth dynasty temple, but was removed to its present position by Thutmosis III.

As Nofritari had been metamorphosed into a form of Isis, Amenothes was similarly represented as Osiris, the protector of the Necropolis, and he was depicted as such with the sombre colour of the funerary divinities; his image, moreover, together with those of the other gods, was used to decorate the interiors of coffins, and to protect the mummies of his devotees.*

* Wiedemann has collected several examples, to which it would be easy to add others. The names of the king are in this case constantly accompanied by unusual epithets, which are enclosed in one or other of his cartouches: Mons. Kevillout, deceived by these unfamiliar forms, has made out of one of these variants, on a painted cloth in the Louvre, a new Amenothes, whom he styles Amenothes V.



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

One of his statues, now in the Turin Museum, represents him sitting on his throne in the posture of a king giving audience to his subjects, or in that of a god receiving the homage of his worshippers. The modelling of the bust betrays a flexibility of handling which is astonishing in a work of art so little removed from barbaric times; the head is a marvel of delicacy and natural grace. We feel that the sculptor has taken a delight in chiselling the features of his sovereign, and in reproducing the benevolent and almost dreamy expression which characterised them.* The cult of Amenothes lasted for seven or eight centuries, until the time when his coffin was removed and placed with those of the other members of his family in the place where it remained concealed until our own times.**

* Another statue of very fine workmanship, but mutilated, is preserved in the Gizeh Museum; this statue is of the time of Seti I., and, as is customary, represents Amenothes in the likeness of the king then reigning.

** We know, from the Abbott Papyrus, that the pyramid of Amenothes I. was situated at Dr-ah Abou'l-Neggah, among those of the Pharaohs of the XIth, XIIth, and XVIIth dynasties. The remains of it have not yet been discovered.

It is shaped to correspond with the form of the human body and painted white; the face resembles that of his statue, and the eyes of enamel, touched with kohl, give it a wonderful appearance of animation. The body is swathed in orange-coloured linen, kept in place by bands of brownish linen, and is further covered by a mask of wood and cartonnage, painted to match the exterior of the coffin. Long garlands of faded flowers deck the mummy from head to foot. A wasp, attracted by their scent, must have settled upon them at the moment of burial, and become imprisoned by the lid; the insect has been completely preserved from corruption by the balsams of the embalmer, and its gauzy wings have passed un-crumpled through the long centuries.

Amenothes had married Ahhotpu II, his sister by the same father and mother;* Ahmasi, the daughter born of this union, was given in marriage to Thutmosis, one of her brothers, the son of a mere concubine, by name Sonisonbu.** Ahmasi, like her ancestor Nofritari, had therefore the right to exercise all the royal functions, and she might have claimed precedence of her husband. Whether from conjugal affection or from weakness of character, she yielded, however, the priority to Thutmosis, and allowed him to assume the sole government.

* Ahhotpu II. may be seen beside her husband on several monuments. The proof that she was full sister of Amenothes I. is furnished by the title of "hereditary princess" which is given to her daughter Ahmasi; this princess would not have taken precedence of her brother and husband Thutmosis, who was the son of an inferior wife, had she not been the daughter of the only legitimate spouse of Amenothes I. The marriage had already taken place before the accession of Thutmosis I., as Ahmasi figures in a document dated the first year of his reign.

** The absence of any cartouche shows that Sonisonbu did not belong to the royal family, and the very form of the name points her out to have been of the middle classes, and merely a concubine. The accession of her son, however, ennobled her, and he represents her as a queen on the walls of the temple at Deir el-Bahari; even then he merely styles her "Royal Mother," the only title she could really claim, as her inferior position in the harem prevented her from using that of "Royal Spouse."



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the photograph taken by Emil Brugsch-Bey.

He was crowned at Thebes on the 21st of the third month of Pirit; and a circular, addressed to the representatives of the ancient seignorial families and to the officers of the crown, announced the names assumed by the new sovereign. "This is the royal rescript to announce to you that my Majesty has arisen king of the two Egypts, on the seat of the Horus of the living, without equal, for ever, and that my titles are as follows: The vigorous bull Horus, beloved of Mait, the Lord of the Vulture and of the Uraeus who raises itself as a flame, most valiant,—the golden Horns, whose years are good and who puts life into all hearts, king of the two Egypts, Akhopirkeri, son of the Sun, Thutmosis, living for ever.* Cause, therefore, sacrifices to be offered to the gods of the south and of Elephantine,** and hymns to be chanted for the well-being of the King Akhopirkeri, living for ever, and then cause the oath to be taken in the name of my Majesty, born of the royal mother Sonisonbu, who is in good health.—This is sent to thee that thou mayest know that the royal house is prosperous, and in good health and condition, the 1st year, the 21st of the third month of Pirit, the day of coronation."

* This is really the protocol of the king, as we find it on the monuments, with his two Horus names and his solar titles.

** The copy of the letter which has come down to us is addressed to the commander of Elephantine: hence the mention of the gods of that town. The names of the divinities must have been altered to suit each district, to which the order to offer sacrifices for the prosperity of the new sovereign was sent.

The new king was tall in stature, broad-shouldered, well knit, and capable of enduring the fatigues of war without flagging. His statues represent him as having a full, round face, long nose, square chin, rather thick lips, and a smiling but firm expression. Thutmosis brought with him on ascending the throne the spirit of the younger generation, who, born shortly after the deliverance from the Hyksos, had grown up in the peaceful days of Amenothes, and, elated by the easy victories obtained over the nations of the south, were inspired by ambitions unknown to the Egyptians of earlier times. To this younger race Africa no longer offered a sufficiently wide or attractive field; the whole country was their own as far as the confluence of the two Niles, and the Theban gods were worshipped at Napata no less devoutly than at Thebes itself. What remained to be conquered in that direction was scarcely worth the trouble of reducing to a province or of annexing as a colony; it comprised a number of tribes hopelessly divided among themselves, and consequently, in spite of their renowned bravery, without power of resistance. Light columns of troops, drafted at intervals on either side of the river, ensured order among the submissive, or despoiled the refractory of their possessions in cattle, slaves, and precious stones. Thutmosis I. had to repress, however, very shortly after his accession, a revolt of these borderers at the second and third cataracts, but they were easily overcome in a campaign of a few days' duration, in which the two Ahmosis of Al-Kab took an honourable part. There was, as usual, an encounter of the two fleets in the middle of the river: the young king himself attacked the enemy's chief, pierced him with his first arrow, and made a considerable number of prisoners. Thutmosis had the corpse of the chief suspended as a trophy in front of the royal ship, and sailed northwards towards Thebes, where, however, he was not destined to remain long.* An ample field of action presented itself to him in the north-east, affording scope for great exploits, as profitable as they were glorious.**

* That this expedition must be placed at the beginning of the king's reign, in his first year, is shown by two facts: (1) It precedes the Syrian campaign in the biography of the two Ahmosis of El-Kab; (2) the Syrian campaign must have ended in the second year of the reign, since Thutmosis I., on the stele of Tombos which bears that date, gives particulars of the course of the Euphrates, and records the submission of the countries watered by that river. The date of the invasion may be placed between 2300 and 2250 B.C.; if we count 661 years for the three dynasties together, as Erman proposes, we find that the accession of Ahmosis would fall between 1640 and 1590. I should place it provisionally in the year 1600, in order not to leave the position of the succeeding reigns uncertain; I estimate the possible error at about half a century.

** It is impossible at present to draw up a correct table of the native or foreign sovereigns who reigned over Egypt during the time of the Hyksos. I have given the list of the kings of the XIIIth and XIVth dynasties which are known to us from the Turin Papyrus. I here append that of the Pharaohs of the following dynasties, who are mentioned either in the fragments of Manetho or on the monuments:



Syria offered to Egyptian cupidity a virgin prey in its large commercial towns inhabited by an industrious population, who by maritime trade and caravan traffic had amassed enormous wealth. The country had been previously subdued by the Chaldaeans, who still exercised an undisputed influence over it, and it was but natural that the conquerors of the Hyksos should act in their turn as invaders. The incursion of Asiatics into Egypt thus provoked a reaction which issued in an Egyptian invasion of Asiatic soil. Thutmosis and his contemporaries had inherited none of the instinctive fear of penetrating into Syria which influenced Ahmosis and his successor: the Theban legions were, perhaps, slow to advance, but once they had trodden the roads of Palestine, they were not likely to forego the delights of conquest. From that time forward there was perpetual warfare and pillaging expeditions from the plains of the Blue Nile to those of the Euphrates, so that scarcely a year passed without bringing to the city of Amon its tribute of victories and riches gained at the point of the sword. One day the news would be brought that the Amorites or the Khati had taken the field, to be immediately followed by the announcement that their forces had been shattered against the valour of the Egyptian battalions. Another day, Pharaoh would re-enter the city with the flower of his generals and veterans; the chiefs whom he had taken prisoners, sometimes with his own hand, would be conducted through the streets, and then led to die at the foot of the altars, while fantastic processions of richly clothed captives, beasts led by halters, and slaves bending under the weight of the spoil would stretch in an endless line behind him.



Meanwhile the Timihu, roused by some unknown cause, would attack the outposts stationed on the frontier, or news would come that the Peoples of the Sea had landed on the western side of the Delta; the Pharaoh had again to take the field, invariably with the same speedy and successful issue. The Libyans seemed to fare no better than the Syrians, and before long those who had survived the defeat would be paraded before the Theban citizens, previous to being sent to join the Asiatic prisoners in the mines or quarries; their blue eyes and fair hair showing from beneath strangely shaped helmets, while their white skins, tall stature, and tattooed bodies excited for a few hours the interest and mirth of the idle crowd. At another time, one of the customary raids into the land of Kush would take place, consisting of a rapid march across the sands of the Ethiopian desert and a cruise along the coasts of Puanifc. This would be followed by another triumphal procession, in which fresh elements of interest would appear, heralded by flourish of trumpets and roll of drums: Pharaoh would re-enter the city borne on the shoulders of his officers, followed by negroes heavily chained, or coupled in such a way that it was impossible for them to move without grotesque contortions, while the acclamations of the multitude and the chanting of the priests would resound from all sides as the cortege passed through the city gates on its way to the temple of Amon. Egypt, roused as it were to warlike frenzy, hurled her armies across all her frontiers simultaneously, and her sudden appearance in the heart of Syria gave a new turn to human history. The isolation of the kingdoms of the ancient world was at an end; the conflict of the nations was about to begin.



CHAPTER II—SYRIA AT THE BEGINNING OF THE EGYPTIAN CONQUEST

SYRIA AT THE BEGINNING OF THE EGYPTIAN CONQUEST

NINEVEH AND THE FIRST COSSAEAN KINGS-THE PEOPLES OF SYRIA, THEIR TOWNS, THEIR CIVILIZATION, THEIR RELIGION-PHOENICIA.

The dynasty of Uruazagga-The Cossseans: their country, their gods, their conquest of Chaldaea-The first sovereigns of Assyria, and the first Cossaean Icings: Agumhakrime.

The Egyptian names for Syria: Khara, Zahi, Lotanu, Kefatiu-The military highway from the Nile to the Euphrates: first section from Zalu to Gaza-The Canaanites: their fortresses, their agricultural character: the forest between Jaffa and Mount Carmel, Megiddo-The three routes beyond Megiddo: Qodshu-Alasia, Naharaim, Garchemish; Mitanni and the countries beyond the Euphrates.

Disintegration of the Syrian, Canaanite, Amorite, and Khdti populations; obliteration of types-Influence of Babylon on costumes, customs, and religion—Baalim and Astarte, plant-gods and stone-gods-Religion, human sacrifices, festivals; sacred stones—Tombs and the fate of man after death-Phoenician cosmogony.

Phoenicia—Arad, Marathus, Simyra, Botrys—Byblos, its temple, its goddess, the myth of Adonis: Aphaka and the valley of the Nahr-Ibrahim, the festivals of the death and resurrection of Adonis—Berytus and its god El; Sidon and its suburbs—Tyre: its foundation, its gods, its necropolis, its domain in the Lebanon.

Isolation of the Phoenicians with regard to the other nations of Syria; their love of the sea and the causes which developed it—Legendary accounts of the beginning of their colonization—Their commercial proceedings, their banks and factories; their ships—Cyprus, its wealth, its occupations—The Phoenician colonies in Asia Minor and the AEgean Sea: purple dye—The nations of the AEgean.



CHAPTER II—SYRIA AT THE BEGINNING OF THE EGYPTIAN CONQUEST

Nineveh and the first Cossaean kings—The peoples of Syria, their towns, their civilization, their religion—Phoenicia.

The world beyond the Arabian desert presented to the eyes of the enterprising Pharaohs an active and bustling scene. Babylonian civilization still maintained its hold there without a rival, but Babylonian rule had ceased to exercise any longer a direct control, having probably disappeared with the sovereigns who had introduced it. When Ammisatana died, about the year 2099, the line of Khammurabi became extinct, and a family from the Sea-lands came into power.*

* The origin of this second dynasty and the reading of its name still afford matter for discussion. Amid the many conflicting opinions, it behoves us to remember that Gulkishar, the only prince of this dynasty whose title we possess, calls himself King of the Country of the Sea, that is to say, of the marshy country at the mouth of the Euphrates: this simple fact directs us to seek the cradle of the family in those districts of Southern Chaldaea. Sayce rejects this identification on philological and chronological grounds, and sees in Gulkishar, "King of the Sea-lands," a vassal Kalda prince.

This unexpected revolution of affairs did not by any means restore to the cities of Lower Chaldaea the supreme authority which they once possessed. Babylon had made such good use of its centuries of rule that it had gained upon its rivals, and was not likely now to fall back into a secondary place. Henceforward, no matter what dynasty came into power, as soon as the fortune of war had placed it upon the throne, Babylon succeeded in adopting it, and at once made it its own. The new lord of the country, Ilumailu, having abandoned his patrimonial inheritance, came to reside near to Merodach.*

* The name has been read An-ma-an or Anman by Pinches, subsequently Ilumailu, Mailu, finally Anumailu and perhaps Humailu. The true reading of it is still unknown. Hommel believed he had discovered in Hilprecht's book an inscription belonging to the reign of this prince; but Hilprecht has shown that it belonged to a king of Erech, An-a-an, anterior to the time of An-ma-an.

He was followed during the four next centuries by a dynasty of ten princes, in uninterrupted succession. Their rule was introduced and maintained without serious opposition. The small principalities of the south were theirs by right, and the only town which might have caused them any trouble—Assur—was dependent on them, being satisfied with the title of vicegerents for its princes,—Khallu, Irishum, Ismidagan and his son Sarnsiramman I., Igurkapkapu and his son Sarnsiramman II.* As to the course of events beyond the Khabur, and any efforts Ilumailu's descendants may have made to establish their authority in the direction of the Mediterranean, we have no inscriptions to inform us, and must be content to remain in ignorance. The last two of these princes, Melamkurkurra and Eagamil, were not connected with each other, and had no direct relationship with their predecessors.** The shortness of their reigns presents a striking contrast with the length of those preceding them, and probably indicates a period of war or revolution. When these princes disappeared, we know not how or why, about the year 1714 B.C., they were succeeded by a king of foreign extraction; and one of the semi-barbarous race of Kashshu ascended the throne which had been occupied since the days of Khammurabi by Chaldaeans of ancient stock.***

* Inscription of Irishum, son of Khallu, on a brick found at Kalah-Shergat, and an inscription of Sarnsiramman II., son of Igurkapkapu, on another brick from the same place. Sarnsiramman I. and his father Ismidagan are mentioned in the great inscription of Tiglath-pileser II., as having lived 641 years before King Assurdan, who himself had preceded Tiglath-pileser by sixty years: they thus reigned between 1900 and 1800 years before our era, according to tradition, whose authenticity we have no other means of verifying.

** The name of the last is read Eagamil, for want of anything better: Oppert makes it Eaga, simply transcribing the signs; and Hilprecht, who took up the question again after him, has no reading to propose.

*** I give here the list of the kings of the second dynasty, from the documents discovered by Pinches: No monument remains of any of these princes, and even the reading of their names is merely provisional: those placed between brackets represent Delitzsch's readings. A Gulkishar is mentioned in an inscription of Belnadiuabal; but Jensen is doubtful if the Gulkishar mentioned in this place is identical with the one in the lists.



These Kashshu, who spring up suddenly out of obscurity, had from the earliest times inhabited the mountainous districts of Zagros, on the confines of Elymai's and Media, where the Cossaeans of the classical historians flourished in the time of Alexander.*

* The Kashshu are identified with the Cossaeans by Sayce, by Schrader, by Fr. Delitzsch, by Halevy, by Tiele, by Hommel, and by Jensen. Oppert maintains that they answer to the Kissians of Herodotus, that is to say, to the inhabitants of the district of which Susa is the capital. Lehmann supports this opinion. Winckler gives none, and several Assyriologists incline to that of Kiepert, according to which the Kissians are identical with the Cossaeans.

It was a rugged and unattractive country, protected by nature and easy to defend, made up as it was of narrow tortuous valleys, of plains of moderate extent but of rare fertility, of mountain chains whose grim sides were covered with forests, and whose peaks were snow-crowned during half the year, and of rivers, or, more correctly speaking, torrents, for the rains and the melting of the snow rendered them impassable in spring and autumn. The entrance to this region was by two or three well-fortified passes: if an enemy were unwilling to incur the loss of time and men needed to carry these by main force, he had to make a detour by narrow goat-tracks, along which the assailants were obliged to advance in single file, as best they could, exposed to the assaults of a foe concealed among the rocks and trees. The tribes who were entrenched behind this natural rampart made frequent and unexpected raids upon the marshy meadows and fat pastures of Chaldaea: they dashed through the country, pillaging and burning all that came in their way, and then, quickly regaining their hiding-places, were able to place their booty in safety before the frontier garrisons had recovered from the first alarm.* These tribes were governed by numerous chiefs acknowledging a single king—ianzi—whose will was supreme over nearly the whole country:** some of them had a slight veneer of Chaldaean civilization, while among the rest almost every stage of barbarism might be found. The remains of their language show that it was remotely allied to the dialect of Susa, and contained many Semitic words.*** What is recorded of their religion reaches us merely at second hand, and the groundwork of it has doubtless been modified by the Babylonian scribes who have transmitted it to us.****

* It was thus in the time of Alexander and his successors, and the information given by the classical historians about this period is equally applicable to earlier times, as we may conclude from the numerous passages from Assyrian inscriptions which have been collected by Fr. Delitzsch.

** Delitzsch conjectures that Ianzi, or Ianzu, had become a kind of proper name, analogous to the term Pharaoh employed by the Egyptians.

*** A certain number of Cossaean words has been preserved and translated, some in one of the royal Babylonian lists, and some on a tablet in the British Museum, discovered and interpreted by Fr. Delitzsch. Several Assyriologists think that they showed a marked affinity with the idiom of the Susa inscriptions, and with that of the Achaemenian inscriptions of the second type; others deny the proposed connection, or suggest that the Cossaean language was a Semitic dialect, related to the Chaldaeo-Assyrian. Oppert, who was the first to point out the existence of this dialect, thirty years ago, believed it to be the Elamite; he still persists in his opinion, and has published several notes in defence of it.

**** It has been studied by Pr. Delitzsch, who insists on the influence which daily intercourse with the Chaldaeans had on it after the conquest; Halevy, in most of the names of the gods given as Cossaean, sees merely the names of Chaldaean divinities slightly disguised in the writing.

They worshipped twelve great gods, of whom the chief—Kashshu, the lord of heaven-gave his name to the principal tribe, and possibly to the whole race:* Shumalia, queen of the snowy heights, was enthroned beside him,** and the divinities next in order were, as in the cities of the Euphrates, the Moon, the Sun (Sakh or Shuriash), the air or the tempest (Ubriash), and Khudkha.*** Then followed the stellar deities or secondary incarnations of the sun,—Mirizir, who represented both Istar and Beltis; and Khala, answering to Gula.****

* The existence of Kashshu is proved by the name of Kashshunadinakhe: Ashshur also bore a name identical with that of his worshippers.

** She is mentioned in a rescript of Nebuchadrezzar I., at the head of the gods of Namar, that is to say, the Cossaean deities, as "the lady of the shining mountains, the inhabitants of the summits, the frequenter of peaks." She is called Shimalia in Rawlinson, but Delitzsch has restored her name which was slightly mutilated; one of her statues was taken by Samsiramman III., King of Assyria, in one of that sovereign's campaigns against Chaldaea.

*** All these identifications are furnished by the glossary of Delitzsch. Ubriash, under the form of Buriash, is met with in a large number of proper names, Burnaburiash, Shagashaltiburiash, Ulamburiash, Kadashmanburiash, where the Assyrian scribe translates it Bel-matati, lord of the world: Buriash is, therefore, an epithet of the god who was called Ramman in Chaldaea. The name of the moon-god is mutilated, and only the initial syllable Shi... remains, followed by an indistinct sign: it has not yet been restored.

**** Halevy considers Khala, or Khali, as a harsh form of Gula: if this is the case, the Cossaeans must have borrowed the name, and perhaps the goddess herself, from their Chaldaean neighbours.

The Chaldaean Ninip corresponded both to Gidar and Maruttash, Bel to Kharbe and Turgu, Merodach to Shipak, Nergal to Shugab.* The Cossaean kings, already enriched by the spoils of their neighbours, and supported by a warlike youth, eager to enlist under their banner at the first call,** must have been often tempted to quit their barren domains and to swoop down on the rich country which lay at their feet. We are ignorant of the course of events which, towards the close of the XVIIIth century B.C., led to their gaining possession of it. The Cossaean king who seized on Babylon was named Gandish, and the few inscriptions we possess of his reign are cut with a clumsiness that betrays the barbarism of the conqueror. They cover the pivot stones on which Sargon of Agade or one of the Bursins had hung the doors of the temple of Nippur, but which Gandish dedicated afresh in order to win for himself, in the eyes of posterity, the credit of the work of these sovereigns.***

* Hilprecht has established the identity of Turgu with Bel of Nippur.

** Strabo relates, from some forgotten historian of Alexander, that the Cossaeans "had formerly been able to place as many as thirteen thousand archers in line, in the wars which they waged with the help of the Elymaeans against the inhabitants of Susa and Babylon."

*** The full name of this king, Gandish or Gandash, which is furnished by the royal lists, is written Gaddash on a monument in the British Museum discovered by Pinches, whose conclusions have been erroneously denied by Winckler. A process of abbreviation, of which there are examples in the names of other kings of the same dynasty, reduced the name to Gande in the current language.

Bel found favour in the eyes of the Cossaeans who saw in him Kharbe or Turgu, the recognised patron of their royal family: for this reason Gandish and his successors regarded Bel with peculiar devotion. These kings did all they could for the decoration and endowment of the ancient temple of Ekur, which had been somewhat neglected by the sovereigns of purely Babylonian extraction, and this devotion to one of the most venerated Chaldaean sanctuaries contributed largely towards their winning the hearts of the conquered people.*

* Hilpreoht calls attention on this point to the fact that no one has yet discovered at Nippur a single ex-voto consecrated by any king of the two first Babylonian dynasties.

The Cossaean rule over the countries of the Euphrates was doubtless similar in its beginnings to that which the Hyksos exercised at first over the nomes of Egypt. The Cossaean kings did not merely bring with them an army to protect their persons, or to occupy a small number of important posts; they were followed by the whole nation, and spread themselves over the entire country. The bulk of the invaders instinctively betook themselves to districts where, if they could not resume the kind of life to which they were accustomed in their own land, they could, at least give full rein to their love of a free and wild existence. As there were no mountains in the country, they turned to the marshes, and, like the Hyksos in Egypt, made themselves at home about the mouths of the rivers, on the half-submerged low lands, and on the sandy islets of the lagoons which formed an undefined borderland between the alluvial region and the Persian Gulf. The covert afforded, by the thickets furnished scope for the chase which these hunters had been accustomed to pursue in the depths of their native forests, while fishing, on the other hand, supplied them with an additional element of food. When their depredations drew down upon them reprisals from their neighbours, the mounds occupied, by their fortresses, and surrounded by muddy swamps, offered them almost as secure retreats as their former strongholds on the lofty sides of the Zagros. They made alliances with the native Aramaeans—with those Kashdi, properly called Chaldaeans, whose name we have imposed upon all the nations who, from a very early date, bore rule on the banks of the Lower Euphrates. Here they formed themselves into a State—Karduniash—whose princes at times rebelled, against all external authority, and at other times acknowledged the sovereignty of the Babylonian monarchs.*

* The state of Karduniash, whose name appears for the first time on the monuments of the Cossaean period, has been localised in a somewhat vague manner, in the south of Babylonia, in the country of the Kashdi, and afterwards formally identified with the Countries of the Sea, and with the principality which was called Bit-Yakin in the Assyrian period. In the Tel-el-Amarna tablets the name is already applied to the entire country occupied by the Cossaean kings or their descendants, that is to say, to the whole of Babylonia. Sargon II. at that time distinguishes between an Upper and a Lower Karduniash; and in consequence the earliest Assyriologists considered it as an Assyrian designation of Babylon, or of the district surrounding it, an opinion which was opposed by Delitzsch, as he believed it to be an indigenous term which at first indicated the district round Babylon, and afterwards the whole of Babylonia. From one frequent spelling of the name, the meaning appears to have been Fortress of Duniash; to this Delitzsch preferred the translation Garden of Duniash, from an erroneous different reading—Ganduniash: Duniash, at first derived from a Chaldaean God Dun, whose name may exist in Dunghi, is a Cossaean name, which the Assyrians translated, as they did Buriash, Belmatati, lord of the country. Winckler rejects the ancient etymology, and proposes to divide the word as Kardu-niash and to see in it a Cossaean translation of the expression mat-kaldi, country of the Caldaeans: Hommel on his side, as well as Delitzsch, had thought of seeking in the Chaldaeans proper—Kaldi for Kashdi, or Kash-da, "domain of the Cossaeans "—the descendants of the Cossaeans of Karduniash, at least as far as race is concerned. In the cuneiform texts the name is written Kara—D. P. Duniyas, "the Wall of the god Duniyas" (cf. the Median Wall or Wall of Semiramis which defended Babylonia on the north).

The people of Sumir and Akkad, already a composite of many different races, absorbed thus another foreign element, which, while modifying its homogeneity, did not destroy its natural character. Those Cossaean tribes who had not quitted their own country retained their original barbarism, but the hope of plunder constantly drew them from their haunts, and they attacked and devastated the cities of the plain unhindered by the thought that they were now inhabited by their fellow-countrymen. The raid once over, many of them did not return home, but took service under some distant foreign ruler—the Syrian princes attracting many, who subsequently became the backbone of their armies,* while others remained at Babylon and enrolled themselves in the body-guard of the kings.

* Halevy has at least proved that the Khabiri mentioned in. the Tel el-Amarna tablets were Cossaeans, contrary to the opinion of Sayce, who makes them tribes grouped round Hebron, which W. Max Mueller seems to accept; Winckler, returning to an old opinion, believes them to have been Hebrews.

To the last they were an undisciplined militia, dangerous, and difficult to please: one day they would hail their chiefs with acclamations, to kill them the next in one of those sudden outbreaks in which they were accustomed to make and unmake their kings.* The first invaders were not long in acquiring, by means of daily intercourse with the old inhabitants, the new civilization: sooner or later they became blended with the natives, losing all their own peculiarities, with the exception of their outlandish names, a few heroic legends,** and the worship of two or three gods—Shumalia, Shugab, and Shukamuna.

* This is the opinion of Hommel, supported by the testimony of the Synchronous Hist.: in this latter document the Cossaeans are found revolting against King Kadashmankharbe, and replacing him on the throne by a certain Nazibugash, who was of obscure origin.

** Pr. Delitzsch and Schrader compare their name with that of Kush, who appears in the Bible as the father of Nimrod (Gen. x. 8-12); Hommel and Sayce think that the history of Nimrod is a reminiscence of the Cossaean rule. Jensen is alone in his attempt to attribute to the Cossaeans the first idea of the epic of Gilgames.

As in the case of the Hyksos in Africa, the barbarian conquerors thus became merged in the more civilized people which they had subdued. This work of assimilation seems at first to have occupied the whole attention of both races, for the immediate successors of Gandish were unable to retain under their rule all the provinces of which the empire was formerly composed. They continued to possess the territory situated on the middle course of the Euphrates as far as the mouth of the Balikh, but they lost the region extending to the east of the Khabur, at the foot of the Masios, and in the upper basin of the Tigris: the vicegerents of Assur also withdrew from them, and, declaring that they owed no obedience excepting to the god of their city, assumed the royal dignity. The first four of these kings whose names have come down to us, Sulili, Belkapkapu, Adasi, and Belbani,* appear to have been but indifferent rulers, but they knew bow to hold their own against the attacks of their neighbours, and when, after a century of weakness and inactivity, Babylon reasserted herself, and endeavoured to recover her lost territory, they had so completely established their independence that every attack on it was unsuccessful. The Cossaean king at that time—an active and enterprising prince, whose name was held in honour up to the days of the Ninevite supremacy—was Agumkakrime, the son of Tassigurumash.**

* These four names do not so much represent four consecutive reigns as two separate traditions which were current respecting the beginnings of Assyrian royalty. The most ancient of them gives the chief place to two personages named Belkapkapu and Sulili; this tradition has been transmitted to us by Rammannirari III., because it connected the origin of his race with these kings. The second tradition placed a certain Belbani, the son of Adasi, in the room of Belkapkapu and Sulili: Esarhaddon made use of it in order to ascribe to his own family an antiquity at least equal to that of the family to which Rammannirari III. belonged. Each king appropriated from the ancient popular traditions those names which seemed to him best calculated to enhance the prestige of his dynasty, but we cannot tell how far the personages selected enjoyed an authentic historical existence: it is best to admit them at least provisionally into the royal series, without trusting too much to what is related of them.

** The tablet discovered by Pinches is broken after the fifth king of the dynasty. The inscription of Agumkakrime, containing a genealogy of this prince which goes back as far as the fifth generation, has led to the restoration of the earlier part of the list as follows:

Gandish, Gaddash, Adumitasii .... 1655-? B.C. Gande ........................... 1714-1707 B.C. Tassigurumash.................... ? Agumrabi, his son................ 1707-1685 Agumkakrime ..................... ? [A]guyashi ...................... 1685-1663 Ushshi, his son.................. 1663-1655

This "brilliant scion of Shukamuna" entitled himself lord of the Kashshu and of Akkad, of Babylon the widespread, of Padan, of Alman, and of the swarthy Guti.* Ashnunak had been devastated; he repeopled it, and the four "houses of the world" rendered him obedience; on the other hand, Elam revolted from its allegiance, Assur resisted him, and if he still exercised some semblance of authority over Northern Syria, it was owing to a traditional respect which the towns of that country voluntarily rendered to him, but which did not involve either subjection or control. The people of Khani still retained possession of the statues of Merodach and of his consort Zarpanit, which had been stolen, we know not how, some time previously from Chaldaea.** Agumkakrime recovered them and replaced them in their proper temple. This was an important event, and earned him the good will of the priests.

* The translation black-headed, i.e. dark-haired and complexioned, Guti, is uncertain; Jensen interprets the epithet nishi saldati to mean "the Guti, stupid (foolish? culpable?) people." The Guti held both banks of the lower Zab, in the mountains on the east of Assyria. Delitzsch has placed Padan and Alman in the mountains to the east of the Diyaleh; Jensen places them in the chain of the Khamrin, and Winckler compares Alman or Halman with the Holwan of the present day.

** The Khani have been placed by Delitzsch in the neighbourhood of Mount Khana, mentioned in the accounts of the Assyrian campaigns, that is to say, in the Amanos, between the Euphrates and the bay of Alexandretta: he is inclined to regard the name as a form of that of the Khati.

The king reorganised public worship; he caused new fittings for the temples to be made to take the place of those which had disappeared, and the inscription which records this work enumerates with satisfaction the large quantities of crystal, jasper, and lapis-lazuli which he lavished on the sanctuary, the utensils of silver and gold which he dedicated, together with the "seas" of wrought bronze decorated with monsters and religious emblems.* This restoration of the statues, so flattering to the national pride and piety, would have been exacted and insisted upon by a Khammurabi at the point of the sword, but Agumkakrime doubtless felt that he was not strong enough to run the risk of war; he therefore sent an embassy to the Khani, and such was the prestige which the name of Babylon still possessed, from the deserts of the Caspian to the shores of the Mediterranean, that he was able to obtain a concession from that people which he would probably have been powerless to extort by force of arms.**

* We do not possess the original of the inscription which tells us of these facts, but merely an early copy.

** Strictly speaking, one might suppose that a war took place; but most Assyriologists declare unhesitatingly that there was merely an embassy and a diplomatic negotiation.

The Egyptians had, therefore, no need to anticipate Chaldaean interference when, forsaking their ancient traditions, they penetrated for the first time into the heart of Syria. Not only was Babylon no longer supreme there, but the coalition of those cities on which she had depended for help in subduing the West was partially dissolved, and the foreign princes who had succeeded to her patrimony were so far conscious of their weakness, that they voluntarily kept aloof from the countries in which, previous to their advent, Babylon had held undivided sway. The Egyptian conquest of Syria had already begun in the days of Agumkakrime, and it is possible that dread of the Pharaoh was one of the chief causes which influenced the Cossaeans to return a favourable answer to the Khani. Thutmosis I., on entering Syria, encountered therefore only the native levies, and it must be admitted that, in spite of their renowned courage, they were not likely to prove formidable adversaries in Egyptian estimation. Not one of the local Syrian dynasties was sufficiently powerful to collect all the forces of the country around its chief, so as to oppose a compact body of troops to the attack of the African armies. The whole country consisted of a collection of petty states, a complex group of peoples and territories which even the Egyptians themselves never completely succeeded in disentangling. They classed the inhabitants, however, under three or four very comprehensive names—Kharu, Zahi, Lotanu, and Kefatiu—all of which frequently recur in the inscriptions, but without having always that exactness of meaning we look for in geographical terms. As was often the case in similar circumstances, these names were used at first to denote the districts close to the Egyptian frontier with which the inhabitants of the Delta had constant intercourse. The Kefatiu seem to have been at the outset the people of the sea-coast, more especially of the region occupied later by the Phoenicians, but all the tribes with whom the Phoenicians came in contact on the Asiatic and European border were before long included under the same name.*

* The Kefatiu, whose name was first read Kefa, and later Kefto, were originally identified with the inhabitants of Cyprus or Crete, and subsequently with those of Cilicia, although the decree of Canopus locates them in Phoenicia.

Zahi originally comprised that portion of the desert and of the maritime plain on the north-east of Egypt which was coasted by the fleets, or traversed by the armies of Egypt, as they passed to and fro between Syria and the banks of the Nile. This region had been ravaged by Ahmosis during his raid upon Sharuhana, the year after the fall of Avaris. To the south-east of Zahi lay Kharu; it included the greater part of Mount Seir, whose wadys, thinly dotted over with oases, were inhabited by tribes of more or less stationary habits. The approaches to it were protected by a few towns, or rather fortified villages, built in the neighbourhood of springs, and surrounded by cultivated fields and poverty-stricken gardens; but the bulk of the people lived in tents or in caves on the mountain-sides. The Egyptians constantly confounded those Khauri, whom the Hebrews in after-times found scattered among the children of Edom, with the other tribes of Bedouin marauders, and designated them vaguely as Shausu. Lotanu lay beyond, to the north of Kharu and to the north-east of Zahi, among the hills which separate the "Shephelah" from the Jordan.*

* The name of Lotanu or Rotanu has been assigned by Brugsch to the Assyrians, but subsequently, by connecting it, more ingeniously than plausibly, with the Assyrian iltanu, he extended it to all the peoples of the north; we now know that in the texts it denotes the whole of Syria, and, more generally, all the peoples dwelling in the basins of the Orontes and the Euphrates. The attempt to connect the name Rotanu or Lotanu with that of the Edomite tribe of Lotan (Gen. xxxvi. 20, 22) was first made by P. de Saulcy; it was afterwards taken up by Haigh and adopted by Renan.

As it was more remote from the isthmus, and formed the Egyptian horizon in that direction, all the new countries with which the Egyptians became acquainted beyond its northern limits were by degrees included under the one name of Lotanu, and this term was extended to comprise successively the entire valley of the Jordan, then that of the Orontes, and finally even that of the Euphrates. Lotanu became thenceforth a vague and fluctuating term, which the Egyptians applied indiscriminately to widely differing Asiatic nations, and to which they added another indefinite epithet when they desired to use it in a more limited sense: that part of Syria nearest to Egypt being in this case qualified as Upper Lotanu, while the towns and kingdoms further north were described as being in Lower Lotanu. In the same way the terms Zahi and Kharu were extended to cover other and more northerly regions. Zahi was applied to the coast as far as the mouth of the Nahr el-Kebir and to the country of the Lebanon which lay between the Mediterranean and the middle course of the Orontes. Kharu ran parallel to Zahi, but comprised the mountain district, and came to include most of the countries which were at first ranged under Upper Lotanu; it was never applied to the region beyond the neighbourhood of Mount Tabor, nor to the trans-Jordanie provinces. The three names in their wider sense preserved the same relation to each other as before, Zahi lying to the west and north-west of Kharu, and Lower Lotanu to the north of Kharu and north-east of Zahi, but the extension of meaning did not abolish the old conception of their position, and hence arose confusion in the minds of those who employed them; the scribes, for instance, who registered in some far-off Theban temple the victories of the Pharaoh would sometimes write Zahi where they should have inscribed Kharu, and it is a difficult matter for us always to detect their mistakes. It would be unjust to blame them too severely for their inaccuracies, for what means had they of determining the relative positions of that confusing collection of states with which the Egyptians came in contact as soon as they had set foot on Syrian soil?