History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12)

by G. Maspero

* See the letter of Amenôthes III. to Kallimmasin of
Babylon, where the King of Egypt complains of the inimical
designs which the Babylonian messengers had planned against
him, and of the intrigues they had connected on their return
to their own country; see also the letter from Burnaburiash
to Amenôthes IV., in which he defends himself from the
accusation of having plotted against the King of Egypt at
any time, and recalls the circumstance that his father
Kurigalzu had refused to encourage the rebellion of one of
the Syrian tribes, subjects of Amenôthes III.
** See the letter of Dushratta, King of Mitanni, to the
Pharaoh Amenôthes IV.

He would have desired nothing better than to exhibit such liberality, had not the repeated calls on his purse at last constrained him to parsimony; he would have been ruined, and Egypt with him, had he given all that was expected of him. Except in a few extraordinary cases, the gifts sent never realised the expectations of the recipients; for instance, when twenty or thirty pounds of precious metal were looked for, the amount despatched would be merely two or three. The indignation of these disappointed beggars and their recriminations were then most amusing: “From the time when my father and thine entered into friendly relations, they loaded each other with presents, and never waited to be asked to exchange amenities;* and now my brother sends me two minas of gold as a gift! Send me abundance of gold, as much as thy father sent, and even, for so it must be, more than thy father.” ** Pretexts were never wanting to give reasonable weight to such demands: one correspondent had begun to build a temple or a palace in one of his capitals,*** another was reserving his fairest daughter for the Pharaoh, and he gave him to understand that anything he might receive would help to complete the bride’s trousseau.****

* Burnaburiash complains that the king’s messengers had only
brought him on one occasion two minas of gold, on another
occasion twenty minas; moreover, that the quality of the
metal was so bad that hardly five minas of pure gold could
be extracted from it.
** Literally, “and they would never make each other a fair
request.” The meaning I propose is doubtful, but it appears
to be required by the context. The letter from which this
passage was taken is from Burnaburiash, King of Babylon, to
Amenôthes IV.
*** This is the pretext advanced by Burnaburiash in the
letter just cited.
**** This seems to have been the motive in a somewhat
embarrassing letter which Dushratta, King of Mitanni, wrote
to the Pharaoh Amenôthes III. on the occasion of his fixing
the dowry of his daughter.

The princesses thus sent from Babylon or Mitanni to the court of Thebes enjoyed on their arrival a more honourable welcome, and were assigned a more exalted rank than those who came from Kharû and Phoenicia. As a matter of fact, they were not hostages given over to the conqueror to be disposed of at will, but queens who were united in legal marriage to an ally.* Once admitted to the Pharaoh’s court, they retained their full rights as his wife, as well as their own fortune and mode of life. Some would bring to their betrothed chests of jewels, utensils, and stuffs, the enumeration of which would cover both sides of a large tablet; others would arrive escorted by several hundred slaves or matrons as personal attendants.** A few of them preserved their original name,*** many assumed an Egyptian designation,**** and so far adapted themselves to the costumes, manners, and language of their adopted country, that they dropped all intercourse with their native land, and became regular Egyptians.

* The daughter of the King of the Khâti, wife of Ramses IL,
was treated, as we see from the monuments, with as much
honour as would have been accorded to Egyptian princesses of
pure blood.
** Gilukhipa, who was sent to Egypt to become the wife of
Amenôthes III., took with her a company of three hundred and
seventy women for her service. She was a daughter of
Sutarna, King of Mitanni, and is mentioned several times in
the Tel el-Amarna correspondence.
*** For example, Gilukhipa, whose name is transcribed
Kilagîpa in Egyptian, and another princess of Mitanni, niece
of Gilukhipa, called Tadu-khîpa, daughter of Dushratta and
wife of Amenôthes IV.
**** The prince of the Khâti’s daughter who married Ramses
II. is an example; we know her only by her Egyptian name
Mâîtnofîrûrî. The wife of Ramses III. added to the Egyptian
name of Isis her original name, Humazarati.

When, after several years, an ambassador arrived with greetings from their father or brother, he would be puzzled by the changed appearance of these ladies, and would almost doubt their identity: indeed, those only who had been about them in childhood were in such cases able to recognise them.* These princesses all adopted the gods of their husbands,** though without necessarily renouncing their own. From time to time their parents would send them, with much pomp, a statue of one of their national divinities—Ishtar, for example—which, accompanied by native priests, would remain for some months at the court.***

* This was the case with the daughter of Kallimmasin, King
of Babylon, married to Amenôthes III.; her father’s
ambassador did not recognise her.
** The daughter of the King of the Khâti, wife of Ramses
II., is represented in an attitude of worship before her
deified husband and two Egyptian gods.
*** Dushratta of Mitanni, sending a statue of Ishtar to his
daughter, wife of Amenôthes III., reminds her that the same
statue had already made the voyage to Egypt in the time of
his father Sutarna.

The children of these queens ranked next in order to those whose mothers belonged to the solar race, but nothing prevented them marrying their brothers or sisters of pure descent, and being eventually raised to the throne. The members of their families who remained in Asia were naturally proud of these bonds of close affinity with the Pharaoh, and they rarely missed an opportunity of reminding him in their letters that they stood to him in the relationship of brother-in-law, or one of his fathers-in-law; their vanity stood them in good stead, since it afforded them another claim on the favours which they were perpetually asking of him.*

* Dushratta of Mitanni never loses an opportunity of calling
Aoienôthes III., husband of his sister Gilukhîpa, and of one
of his daughters, “akhiya,” my brother, and “khatani-ya,” my
son-in-law.

These foreign wives had often to interfere in some of the contentions which were bound to arise between two States whose subjects were in constant intercourse with one another. Invasions or provincial wars may have affected or even temporarily suspended the passage to and from of caravans between the countries of the Tigris and those of the Nile; but as soon as peace was re-established, even though it were the insecure peace of those distant ages, the desert traffic was again resumed and carried on with renewed vigour. The Egyptian traders who penetrated into regions beyond the Euphrates, carried with them, and almost unconsciously disseminated along the whole extent of their route, the numberless products of Egyptian industry, hitherto but little known outside their own country, and rendered expensive owing to the difficulty of transmission or the greed of the merchants. The Syrians now saw for the first time in great quantities, objects which had been known to them hitherto merely through the few rare specimens which made their way across the frontier: arms, stuffs, metal implements, household utensils—in fine, all the objects which ministered to daily needs or to luxury. These were now offered to them at reasonable prices, either by the hawkers who accompanied the army or by the soldiers themselves, always ready, as soldiers are, to part with their possessions in order to procure a few extra pleasures in the intervals of fighting.