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 Lotanû, 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. Lotanû 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 Lotanû, while the towns and kingdoms further north were described as being in Lower Lotanû. In the same way the terms Zahi and Kharû 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. Kharû ran parallel to Zahi, but comprised the mountain district, and came to include most of the countries which were at first ranged under Upper Lotanû; 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 Kharû, and Lower Lotanû to the north of Kharû 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 Kharû, 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?
A choice of several routes into Asia, possessing unequal advantages, was open to the traveller, but the most direct of them passed through the town of Zalû. The old entrenchments running from the Ked Sea to the marshes of the Pelusiac branch still protected the isthmus, and beyond these, forming an additional defence, was a canal on the banks of which a fortress was constructed. This was occupied by the troops who guarded the frontier, and no traveller was allowed to pass without having declared his name and rank, signified the business which took him into Syria or Egypt, and shown the letters with which he was entrusted.*
* The notes of an official living at Zalu in the time of
Mîneptah are preserved on the back of pls. v., vi. of the
Anastasi Papyrus III,; his business was to keep a register
of the movements of the comers and goers between Egypt and
Syria during a few days of the month Pakhons, in the year
III.
It was from Zalû that the Pharaohs set out with their troops, when summoned to Kharû by a hostile confederacy; it was to Zalû they returned triumphant after the campaign, and there, at the gates of the town, they were welcomed by the magnates of the kingdom. The road ran for some distance over a region which was covered by the inundation of the Nile during six months of the year; it then turned eastward, and for some distance skirted the sea-shore, passing between the Mediterranean and the swamp which writers of the Greek period called the Lake of Sirbonis.*
* The Sirbonian Lake is sometimes half full of water,
sometimes almost entirely dry; at the present time it bears
the name of Sebkhat Berdawil, from King Baldwin I. of
Jerusalem, who on his return from his Egyptian campaign died
on its shores, in 1148, before he could reach El-Artsh.
This stage of the journey was beset with difficulties, for the Sirbonian Lake did not always present the same aspect, and its margins were constantly shifting. When the canals which connected it with the open sea happened to become obstructed, the sheet of water subsided from evaporation, leaving in many places merely an expanse of shifting mud, often concealed under the sand which the wind brought up from the desert. Travellers ran imminent risk of sinking in this quagmire, and the Greek historians tell of large armies being almost entirely swallowed up in it. About halfway along the length of the lake rose the solitary hill of Mount Casios; beyond this the sea-coast widened till it became a vast slightly undulating plain, covered with scanty herbage, and dotted over with wells containing an abundant supply of water, which, however, was brackish and disagreeable to drink.
Beyond these lay a grove of palms, a brick prison, and a cluster of miserable houses, bounded by a broad wady, usually dry. The bed of the torrent often served as the boundary between Africa and Asia, and the town was for many years merely a convict prison, where ordinary criminals, condemned to mutilation and exile, were confined; indeed, the Greeks assure us that it owed its name of Rhinocolûra to the number of noseless convicts who were to be seen there.*
* The ruins of the ancient town, which were of considerable
extent, are half buried under the sand, out of which an
Egyptian naos of the Ptolemaic period has been dug, and
placed near the well which supplies the fort, where it
serves as a drinking trough for the horses. Brugsch believed
he could identify its site with that of the Syrian town
Hurnikheri, which he erroneously reads Harinkola; the
ancient form of the name is unknown, the Greek form varies
between Rhinocorûra and Rhinocolûra. The story of the
mutilated convicts is to be found in Diodorus Siculus, as
well as in Strabo; it rests on a historical fact. Under the
XVIIIth dynasty Zalû was used as a place of confinement for
dishonest officials. For this purpose it was probably
replaced by Rhinocolûra, when the Egyptian frontier was
removed from the neighbourhood of Selle to that of El-Arîsh.