[ [!-- H2 anchor --] ] [ [!-- IMG --]
CHAPTER III—THE EIGHTEENTH THEBAN DYNASTY
Thûtmosis I. and his army—Hâtshopsîtû and Thûtmosis III.
The account of the first expedition undertaken by Thûtmosis in Asia, a region at that time new to the Egyptians, would be interesting if we could lay our hands upon it. We should perhaps find in the midst of official documents, or among the short phrases of funerary biographies, some indication of the impression which the country produced upon its conquerors.
With the exception of a few merchants or adventurers, no one from Thebes to Memphis had any other idea of Asia than that which could be gathered from the scattered notices of it in the semi-historical romances of the preceding age. The actual sight of the country must have been a revelation; everything appearing new and paradoxical to men of whom the majority had never left their fatherland, except on some warlike expedition into Ethiopia or on some rapid raid along the coasts of the Red Sea. Instead of their own narrow valley, extending between its two mountain ranges, and fertilised by the periodical overflowing of the Nile which recurred regularly almost to a day, they had before them wide irregular plains, owing their fertility not to inundations, but to occasional rains or the influence of insignificant streams; hills of varying heights covered with vines and other products of cultivation; mountains of different altitudes irregularly distributed, clothed with forests, furrowed with torrents, their summits often crowned with snow even in the hottest period of summer: and in this region of nature, where everything was strange to them, they found nations differing widely from each other in appearance and customs, towns with crenellated walls perched upon heights difficult of access; and finally, a civilization far excelling that which they encountered anywhere in Africa outside their own boundaries. Thûtmosis succeeded in reaching on his first expedition a limit which none of his successors was able to surpass, and the road taken by him in this campaign—from Gaza to Megiddo, from Megiddo to Qodshû, from Qodshû to Carchemish—was that which was followed henceforward by the Egyptian troops in all their expeditions to the Euphrates. Of the difficulties which he encountered on his way we have no information. On arriving at Naharaim, however, we know that he came into contact with the army of the enemy, which was under the command of a single general—perhaps the King of Mitanni himself, or one of the lieutenants of the “Cossæan King of Babylon”—who had collected together most of the petty princes of the northern country to resist the advance of the intruder. The contest was hotly fought out on both sides, but victory at length remained with the invaders, and innumerable prisoners fell into their hands. The veteran Âhmosi, son of Abîna, who was serving in his last campaign, and his cousin, Âhmosi Pannekhabît, distinguished themselves according to their wont. The former, having seized upon a chariot, brought it, with the three soldiers who occupied it, to the Pharaoh, and received once more “the collar of gold;” the latter killed twenty-one of the enemy, carrying off their hands as trophies, captured a chariot, took one prisoner, and obtained as reward a valuable collection of jewellery, consisting of collars, bracelets, sculptured lions, choice vases, and costly weapons. A stele, erected on the banks of the Euphrates not far from the scene of the battle, marked the spot which the conqueror wished to be recognised henceforth as the frontier of his empire. He re-entered Thebes with immense booty, by which gods as well as men profited, for he consecrated a part of it to the embellishment of the temple of Amon, and the sight of the spoil undoubtedly removed the lingering prejudices which the people had cherished against expeditions beyond the isthmus. Thûtmosis was held up by his subjects to the praise of posterity as having come into actual contact with that country and its people, which had hitherto been known to the Egyptians merely through the more or less veracious tales of exiles and travellers. The aspect of the great river of the Naharaim, which could be compared with the Nile for the volume of its waters, excited their admiration. They were, however, puzzled by the fact that it flowed from north to south, and even were accustomed to joke at the necessity of reversing the terms employed in Egypt to express going up or down the river. This first Syrian campaign became the model for most of those subsequently undertaken by the Pharaohs. It took the form of a bold advance of troops, directed from Zalû towards the north-east, in a diagonal line through the country, who routed on the way any armies which might be opposed to them, carrying by assault such towns as were easy of capture, while passing by others which seemed strongly defended—pillaging, burning, and slaying on every side. There was no suspension of hostilities, no going into winter quarters, but a triumphant return of the expedition at the end of four or five months, with the probability of having to begin fresh operations in the following year should the vanquished break out into revolt.*
* From the account of the campaigns of Amenôthes II., I
thought we might conclude that this Pharaoh wintered in
Syria at least once; but the text does not admit of this
interpretation, and we must, therefore, for the present give
up the idea that the Pharaohs ever spent more than a few
months of the year on hostile territory.
The troops employed in these campaigns were superior to any others hitherto put into the field. The Egyptian army, inured to war by its long struggle with the Shepherd-kings, and kept in training since the reign of Âhmosis by having to repulse the perpetual incursions of the Ethiopian or Libyan barbarians, had no difficulty, in overcoming the Syrians; not that the latter were wanting in courage or discipline, but owing to their limited supply of recruits, and the political disintegration of the country, they could not readily place under arms such enormous numbers as those of the Egyptians. Egyptian military organisation had remained practically unchanged since early times: the army had always consisted, firstly, of the militia who held fiefs, and were under the obligation of personal service either to the prince of the nome or to the sovereign; secondly, of a permanent force, which was divided into two corps, distributed respectively between the Sa’id and the Delta. Those companies which were quartered on the frontier, or about the king either at Thebes or at one of the royal residences, were bound to hold themselves in readiness to muster for a campaign at any given moment. The number of natives liable to be levied when occasion required, by “generations,” or as we should say by classes, may have amounted to over a hundred thousand men,* but they were never all called out, and it does not appear that the army on active service ever contained more than thirty thousand men at a time, and probably on ordinary occasions not much more than ten or fifteen thousand.**
* The only numbers which we know are those given by
Herodotus for the Saïte period, which are evidently
exaggerated. Coming down to modern times, we see that
Mehemet-Ali, from 1830 to 1840, had nearly 120,000 men in
Syria, Egypt, and the Sudan; and in 1841, at the time when
the treaties imposed upon him the ill-kept obligation of
reducing his army to 18,000 men, it still contained 81,000.
We shall probably not be far wrong in estimating the total
force which the Pharaohs of the XVIIIth dynasty, lords of
the whole valley of the Nile, and of part of Asia, had at
their disposal at 120,000 or 130,000 men; these, however,
were never all called out at once.
** We have no direct information respecting the armies
acting in Syria; we only know that, at the battle of Qodshû,
Ramses II. had against him 2500 chariots containing three
men each, making 7500 charioteers, besides a troop estimated
at the Ramesseum at 8000 men, at Luxor at 9000, so that the
Syrian army probably contained about 20,000 men. It would
seem that the Egyptian army was less numerous, and I
estimate it with great hesitation at about 15,000 or 18,000
men: it was considered a powerful army, while that of the
Hittites was regarded as an innumerable host. A passage in
the Anastasi Papyrus, No. 1, tells us the composition of a
corps led by Ramses II. against the tribes in the vicinity
of Qocoîr and the Rahanû valley; it consisted of 5000 men,
of whom 620 were Shardana, 1600 Qahak, 70 Mashaûasha, and
880 Negroes.