For an invader proceeding from Asia Minor, or intending to make his way through the defiles of the Taurus, Samosata offered a convenient fording-place; but this route would compel the general, who had Naharaim or the kingdoms of Chaldæa in view, to make a long detour, and although the Assyrians used it at a later period, at the time of their expeditions to the valleys of the Halys, the Egyptians do not seem ever to have travelled by this road. Carchemish, the place of the third ford, was about equally distant from Thapsacus and Samosata, and lay in a rich and fertile province, which was so well watered that a drought or a famine would not be likely to enter into the expectations of its inhabitants. Hither pilgrims, merchants, soldiers, and all the wandering denizens of the world were accustomed to direct their steps, and the habit once established was perpetuated for centuries. On the left bank of the river, and almost opposite Carchemish, lay the region of Mitânni,* which was already occupied by a people of a different race, who used a language cognate, it would seem, with the imperfectly classified dialects spoken by the tribes of the Upper Tigris and Upper Euphrates.** Harran bordered on Mitânni, and beyond Harran one may recognise, in the vaguely defined Singar, Assur, Arrapkha, and Babel, states that arose out of the dismemberment of the ancient Chaldæan Empire.***
* Mitânni is mentioned on several Egyptian monuments; but
its importance was not recognised until after the discovery
of the Tel el-Amarna tablets and of its situation. The fact
that a letter from the Prince of Mitânni is stated in a
Hieratic docket to have come from Naharaim has been used as
a proof that the countries were identical; I have shown that
the docket proves only that Mitânni formed a part of
Naharaim. It extended over the province of Edessa and
Harran, stretching out towards the sources of the Tigris.
Niebuhr places it on the southern slope of the Masios, in
Mygdonia; Th. Reinach connects it with the Matiôni, and asks
whether this was not the region occupied by this people
before their emigration towards the Caspian.
** Several of the Tel el-Amarna tablets are couched in this
language.
*** These names were recognised from the first in the
inscriptions of Thûtmosis III. and in those of other
Pharaohs of the XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties.
The Carchemish route was, of course, well known to caravans, but armed bodies had rarely occasion to make use of it. It was a far cry from Memphis to Carchemish, and for the Egyptians this town continued to be a limit which they never passed, except incidentally, when they had to chastise some turbulent tribe, or to give some ill-guarded town to the flames.*
* A certain number of towns mentioned in the lists of
Thûtmosis III. were situated beyond the Euphrates, and they
belonged some to Mitânni and some to the regions further
away.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.
It would be a difficult task to define with any approach to accuracy the distribution of the Canaanites, Amorites, and Aramæans, and to indicate the precise points where they came into contact with their rivals of non-Semitic stock. Frontiers between races and languages can never be very easily determined, and this is especially true of the peoples of Syria. They are so broken up and mixed in this region, that even in neighbourhoods where one predominant tribe is concentrated, it is easy to find at every step representatives of all the others. Four or five townships, singled out at random from the middle of a province, would often be found to belong to as many different races, and their respective inhabitants, while living within a distance of a mile or two, would be as great strangers to each other as if they were separated by the breadth of a continent.
