The various contingents which the sovereign could collect together and lead would, if he were an incapable general, be of little avail against the well-officered and veteran troops of Egypt. Still they were not to be despised, and contained the elements of an excellent army, superior both in quality and quantity to any which Syria had ever been able to put into the field. The infantry consisted of a limited number of archers or slingers. They had usually neither shield nor cuirass, but merely, in the way of protective armour, a padded head-dress, ornamented with a tuft. The bulk of the army carried short lances and broad-bladed choppers, or more generally, short thin-handled swords with flat two-edged blades, very broad at the base and terminating in a point.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Champollion.
Their mode of attack was in close phalanxes, whose shock must have been hard to bear, for the soldiers forming them were in part at least recruited from among the strong and hardy mountaineers of the Taurus. The chariotry comprised the nobles and the élite of the army, but it was differently constituted from that of the Egyptians, and employed other tactics.
The Hittite chariots were heavier, and the framework, instead of being a mere skeleton, was pannelled on the sides, the contour at the top being sometimes quite square, at other times rudely curved. It was bound together in the front by two disks of metal, and strengthened by strips of copper or bronze, which were sometimes plated with silver or gold. There were no quiver-cases as in Egyptian chariots, for the Hittite charioteers rarely resorted to the bow and arrow. The occupants of a chariot were three in number—the driver; the shield-bearer, whose office it was to protect his companions by means of a shield, sometimes of a round form, with a segment taken out on each side, and sometimes square; and finally, the warrior, with his sword and lance. The Hittite princes whom fortune had brought into relations with Thûtmosîs III. and Amenôthes II. were not able to avail themselves properly of the latent forces around them. It was owing probably to the feebleness of their character or to the turbulence of their barons that we must ascribe the poor part they played in the revolutions of the Eastern world at this time. The establishment of a strong military power on their southern frontier was certain, moreover, to be anything but pleasing to them; if they preferred not to risk everything by entering into a great struggle with the invaders, they could, without compromising themselves too much, harass them with sudden attacks, and intrigue in an underhand way against them to their own profit. Pharaoh’s generals were accustomed to punish, one after the other, these bands of invading tribes, and the sculptors duly recorded their names on a pylon at Thebes among those of the conquered nations, but these disasters had little effect in restraining the Hittites. They continued, in spite of them, to march southward, and the letters from the Egyptian governors record their progress year after year. They had a hand in all the plots which were being hatched among the Syrians, and all the disaffected who wished to be free from foreign oppression—such as Abdashirti and his son Azîru—addressed themselves to them for help in the way of chariots and men.*
* Azîru defends himself in one of his letters against the
accusation of having received four messengers from the King
of the Khâti, while he refused to receive those from Egypt.
The complicity of Aziru with the Khâti is denounced in an
appeal from the inhabitants of Tunipa. In a mutilated
letter, an unknown person calls attention to the
negotiations which a petty-Syrian prince had entered into
with the King of the Khâti.
Even inthe time of Amenôfches III. they had endeavoured to reap profit from the discords of Mitanni, and had asserted their supremacy over it. Dushratta, however, was able to defeat one of their chiefs. Repulsed on this side, they fell back upon that part of Naharaim lying between the Euphrates and Orontes, and made themselves masters of one town after another in spite of the despairing appeals of the conquered to the Theban king. From the accession of Khûniatonû, they set to work to annex the countries of Nukhassi, Nîi, Tunipa, and Zinzauru: they looked with covetous eyes upon Phoenicia, and were already menacing Coele-Syria. The religious confusion in Egypt under Tûtankhamon and Aî left them a free field for their ambitions, and when Harmhabî ventured to cross to the east of the isthmus, he found them definitely installed in the region stretching from the Mediterranean and the Lebanon to the Euphrates. Their then reigning prince, Sapalulu, appeared to have been the founder of a new dynasty: he united the forces of the country in a solid body, and was within a little of making a single state out of all Northern Syria.*
* Sapalulu has the same name as that wo meet with later on in the country of Patin, in the time of Salmanasar III., viz. Sapalulme. It is known to us only from a treaty with the Khâti, which makes him coeval with Ramses I.: it was with him probably that Harmhabî had to deal in his Syrian campaigns. The limit of his empire towards the south is gathered in a measure from what we know of the wars of Seti I. with the Khâti.
All Naharaim had submitted to him: Zahi, Alasia, and the Amurru had passed under his government from that of the Pharaohs; Carchemish, Tunipa, Nîi, Hamath, figured among his royal cities, and Qodshû was the defence of his southern frontier. His progress towards the east was not less considerable. Mitanni, Arzapi, and the principalities of the Euphrates as far as the Balikh, possibly even to the Khabur,* paid him homage: beyond this, Assyria and Chaldæa barred his way. Here, as on his other frontiers, fortune brought him face to face with the most formidable powers of the Asiatic world.