Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.
The new king’s relations with other foreign princes were no less friendly; the chief of the Khâti (Hittites) complimented him on his accession, the King of Alasia wrote to him to express his earnest desire for a continuance of peace between the two states. Burnaburiash of Babylon had, it is true, hoped to obtain an Egyptian princess in marriage for his son, and being disappointed, had endeavoured to pick a quarrel over the value of the presents which had been sent him, together with the notice of the accession of the new sovereign. But his kingdom lay too far away to make his ill-will of much consequence, and his complaints passed unheeded. In Coele-Syria and Phoenicia the situation remained unchanged. The vassal cities were in a perpetual state of disturbance, though not more so than in the past. Azîru, son of Abdashirti, chief of the country of the Amorites, had always, even during the lifetime of Amenôthes III., been the most turbulent of vassals. The smaller states of the Orontes and of the coast about Arvad had been laid waste by his repeated incursions and troubled by his intrigues. He had taken and pillaged twenty towns, among which were Simyra, Sini, Irqata, and Qodshû, and he was already threatening Byblos, Berytus, and Sidon. It was useless to complain of him, for he always managed to exculpate himself to the royal messengers. Khaî, Dûdû, Amenemaûpît had in turn all pronounced him innocent. Pharaoh himself, after citing him to appear in Egypt to give an explanation of his conduct, had allowed himself to be won over by his fair speaking, and had dismissed him uncondemned. Other princes, who lacked his cleverness and power, tried to imitate him, and from north to south the whole of Syria could only be compared to some great arena, in which fighting was continually carried on between one tribe or town and another—Tyre against Sidon, Sidon against Byblos, Jerusalem against Lachish. All of them appealed to Khûniatonû, and endeavoured to enlist him on their side. Their despatches arrived by scores, and the perusal of them at the present day would lead us to imagine that Egypt had all but lost her supremacy. The Egyptian ministers, however, were entirely unmoved by them, and continued to refuse material support to any of the numerous rivals, except in a few rare cases, where a too prolonged indifference would have provoked an open revolt in some part of the country.
Khûniatonû died young, about the XVIIIth year of his reign.* He was buried in the depths of a ravine in the mountain-side to the east of the town, and his tomb remained unknown till within the last few years. Although one of his daughters who died before her father had been interred there, the place seems to have been entirely unprepared for the reception of the king’s body. The funeral chamber and the passages are scarcely even rough-hewn, and the reception halls show a mere commencement of decoration.** The other tombs of the locality are divided into two groups, separated by the ravine reserved for the burying-place of the royal house. The noble families possessed each their own tomb on the slopes of the hillside; the common people were laid to rest in pits lower down, almost on the level of the plain. The cutting and decoration of all these tombs had been entrusted to a company of contractors, who had executed them according to two or three stereotyped plans, without any variation, except in size. Nearly all the walls are bare, or present but few inscriptions; those tombs only are completed whose occupants died before the Pharaoh.
* The length of Khûniatonû’s reign was fixed by Griffith
with almost absolute certainty by means of the dates written
in ink on the jars of wine and preserves found in the ruins
of the palace.
** The tomb has been found, as I anticipated, in the ravine
which separates the northern after the southern group of
burying-places. The Arabs opened it in 1891, and Grébaut has
since completely excavated it. The scenes depicted in it are
connected with the death and funeral of the Princess
Mâqîtatonû.
Drawn by Boudier, after a photograph by Insinger.
The façades of the tombs are cut in the rock, and contain, for the most part, but one door, the jambs of which are covered on both sides by several lines of hieroglyphs; and it is just possible to distinguish traces of the adoration of the radiant Disk on the lintels, together with the cartouches containing the names of the king and god. The chapel is a large rectangular chamber, from one end of which opens the inclined passage leading to the coffin. The roof is sometimes supported by columns, having capitals decorated with designs of flowers or of geese hung from the abacus by their feet with their heads turned upwards.