* 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
Diyâleh; Jensen places them in the chain of the Khamrîn, and
Winckler compares Alman or Halman with the Holwân of the
present day.
** The Khâni have been placed by Delitzsch in the
neighbourhood of Mount Khâna, 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 Khâti.
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 Agumkakrimê doubtless felt that he was not strong enough to run the risk of war; he therefore sent an embassy to the Khâni, 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 Chaldæan 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 Agumkakrimê, and it is possible that dread of the Pharaoh was one of the chief causes which influenced the Cossæans to return a favourable answer to the Khâni. Thûtmosis 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—Kharû, Zahi, Lotanû, and Kefâtiû—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 Kefâtiû 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 Kefâtiû, 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 Kharû; 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 Shaûsû. Lotanû lay beyond, to the north of Kharû and to the north-east of Zahi, among the hills which separate the “Shephelah” from the Jordan.*
* The name of Lotanû or Rotanû has been assigned by Brugsch
to the Assyrians, but subsequently, by connecting it, more
ingeniously than plausibly, with the Assyrian iltânu, 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
Rotanû or Lotanû 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.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from a photograph by Insinger.