Whatever might have been the nature of their private sentiments, they professed to be anxious to maintain, for their mutual interests, the relations with Egypt entered on half a century before, and as the surest method of attaining their object was by a good marriage, they would each seek an Egyptian wife for himself, or would offer Amenôthes a princess of one of their own royal families. The Egyptian king was, however, firm in refusing to bestow a princess of the solar blood even on the most powerful of the foreign kings; his pride rebelled at the thought that she might one day be consigned to a place among the inferior wives or concubines, but he gladly accepted, and even sought for wives for himself, from among the Syrian and Chaldæan princesses. Kallimmasin of Babylon gave Amenôthes first his sister, and when age had deprived this princess of her beauty, then his daughter Irtabi in marriage.*
* Letter from Amenôthes III. to Kallimmasin, concerning a
sister of the latter, who was married to the King of Egypt,
but of whom there are no further records remaining at
Babylon, and also one of his daughters whom Amenôthes had
demanded in marriage; and letters from Kallimmasin,
consenting to bestow his daughter Irtabi on the Pharaoh, and
proposing to give to Amenothes whichever one he might choose
of the daughters of his house.
Sutarna of Mitanni had in the same way given the Pharaoh his daughter Gilukhîpa; indeed, most of the kings of that period had one or two relations in the harem at Thebes. This connexion usually proved a support to Asiatic sovereigns, such alliances being a safeguard against the rivalries of their brothers or cousins. At times, however, they were the means of exposing them to serious dangers. When Sutarna died he was succeeded by his son Dushratta, but a numerous party put forward another prince, named Artassumara, who was probably Gilukhîpa’s brother, on the mother’s side;* a Hittite king of the name of Pirkhi espoused the cause of the pretender, and a civil war broke out.
* Her exact relationship is not explicitly expressed, but is
implied in the facts, for there seems no reason why
Gilukhîpa should have taken the part of one brother rather
than another, unless Artassumara had been nearer to her than
Dushratta; that is to say, her brother on the mother’s side
as well as on the father’s.
Dushratta was victorious, and caused his brother to be strangled, but was not without anxiety as to the consequences which might follow this execution should Gilukhîpa desire to avenge the victim, and to this end stir up the anger of the suzerain against him. Dushratta, therefore, wrote a humble epistle, showing that he had received provocation, and that he had found it necessary to strike a decisive blow to save his own life; the tablet was accompanied by various presents to the royal pair, comprising horses, slaves, jewels, and perfumes. Gilukhîpa, however, bore Dushratta no ill-will, and the latter’s anxieties were allayed. The so-called expeditions of Amenôthes to the Syrian provinces must constantly have been merely visits of inspection, during which amusements, and especially the chase, occupied nearly as important a place as war and politics. Amenôthes III. took to heart that pre-eminently royal duty of ridding the country of wild beasts, and fulfilled it more conscientiously than any of his predecessors. He had killed 112 lions during the first ten years of his reign, and as it was an exploit of which he was remarkably proud, he perpetuated the memory of it in a special inscription, which he caused to be engraved on numbers of large scarabs of fine green enamel. Egypt prospered under his peaceful government, and if the king made no great efforts to extend her frontiers, he spared no pains to enrich the country by developing industry and agriculture, and also endeavoured to perfect the military organisation which had rendered the conquest of the East so easy a matter.
A census, undertaken by his minister Amenôthes, the son of Hâpi, ensured a more correct assessment of the taxes, and a regular scheme of recruiting for the army.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from the photograph
published in Mariette.
Whole tribes of slaves were brought into the country by means of the border raids which were always taking place, and their opportune arrival helped to fill up the vacancies which repeated wars had caused among the rural and urban population; such a strong impetus to agriculture was also given by this importation, that when, towards the middle of the reign, the minister Khâmhâîfc presented the tax-gathers at court, he was able to boast that he had stored in the State granaries a larger quantity of corn than had been gathered in for thirty years. The traffic carried on between Asia and the Delta by means of both Egyptian and foreign ships was controlled by customhouses erected at the mouths of the Nile, the coast being protected by cruising vessels against the attacks of pirates. The fortresses of the isthmus and of the Libyan border, having been restored or rebuilt, constituted a check on the turbulence of the nomad tribes, while garrisons posted at intervals at the entrance to the Wadys leading to the desert restrained the plunderers scattered between the Nile and the Red Sea, and between the chain of Oases and the unexplored regions of the Sahara.* Egypt was at once the most powerful as well as the most prosperous kingdom in the world, being able to command more labour and more precious metals for the embellishment of her towns and the construction of her monuments than any other.