The revenue of the provinces taken from Egypt, and the products of his tolls, furnished him with abundance of means for obtaining recruits from among them.*
All these things contributed to make the power of the Khâti so considerable, that Harmhabî, when he had once tested it, judged it prudent not to join issues with them. He concluded with Sapalulu a treaty of peace and friendship, which, leaving the two powers in possession respectively of the territory each then occupied, gave legal sanction to the extension of the sphere of the Khâti at the expense of Egypt.** Syria continued to consist of two almost equal parts, stretching from Byblos to the sources of the Jordan and Damascus: the northern portion, formerly tributary to Egypt, became a Hittite possession; while the southern, consisting of Phoenicia and Canaan,*** which the Pharaoh had held for a long time with a more effective authority, and had more fully occupied, was retained for Egypt.
* E. de Rougé and the Egyptologists who followed him thought
at first that the troops designated in the Egyptian texts as
Lycians, Mysians, Dardanians, were the national armies of
these nations, each one commanded by its king, who had
hastened from Asia Minor to succour their ally the King of
the Khâti. I now think that those were bands of adventurers,
consisting of soldiers belonging to these nations, who came
to put themselves at the service of civilized monarchs, as
the Oarians, Ionians, and the Greeks of various cities did
later on: the individuals whom the texts mention as their
princes were not the kings of these nations, but the warrior
chiefs to which each band gave obedience.
** It is not certain that Harmhabî was the Pharaoh with whom
Sapalulu entered into treaty, and it might be insisted with
some reason that Ramses I. was the party to it on the side
of Egypt; but this hypothesis is rendered less probable by
the fact of the extremely short reign of the latter Pharaoh.
I am inclined to think, as W. Max Miiller has supposed, that
the passage in the Treaty of Ramses II. with the Prince of
the Khâti, which speaks of a treaty concluded with
Sapalulu, looks back to the time of Ramses II.‘s
predecessor, Harmhabî.
*** This follows from the situation of the two empires, as
indicated in the account of the campaign of Seti I. in his
first year. The king, after having defeated the nomads of
the Arabian desert, passed on without further fighting into
the country of the Amûrrû and the regions of the Lebanon,
which fact seems to imply the submission of Kharû. W. Max
Miiller was the first to* discern clearly this part of the
history of Egyptian conquest; he appears, however, to have
circumscribed somewhat too strictly the dominion of Harmhabî
in assigning Carmel as its limit. The list of the nations of
the north who yielded, or are alleged to have yielded,
submission to Harmhabî, were traced on the first pylon of
this monarch at Karnak, and on its adjoining walls. Among
others, the names of the Khâti and of Arvad are to be read
there.
This could have been but a provisional arrangement: if Thebes had not altogether renounced the hope of repossessing some day the lost conquests of Thûtmosis III., the Khâti, drawn by the same instinct which had urged them to cross their frontiers towards the south, were not likely to be content with less than the expulsion of the Egyptians from Syria, and the absorption of the whole country into the Hittite dominion. Peace was maintained during Harmhabî’s lifetime. We know nothing of Egyptian affairs during the last years of his reign. His rule may have come to an end owing to some court intrigue, or he may have had no male heir to follow him.* Ramses, who succeeded him, did not belong to the royal line, or was only remotely connected with it.**
* It would appear, from an Ostracon in the British Museum,
that the year XXI. follows after the year VII. of Harmhabî’s
reign; it is possible that the year XXI. may belong to one
of Harmhabî’s successors, Seti I. or Ramses II., for
example.
** The efforts to connect Ramses I. with a family of Semitic
origin, possibly the Shepherd-kings themselves, have not
been successful. Everything goes to prove that the Ramses
family was, and considered itself to be, of Egyptian origin.
Brugsch and Ed. Meyer were inclined to see in Ramses I. a
younger brother of Harmhabî. This hypothesis has nothing
either for Or against it up to the present.
He was already an old man when he ascended the throne, and we ought perhaps to identify him with one or other of the Ramses who flourished under the last Pharaohs of the XVIIIth dynasty, perhaps the one who governed Thebes under Khûniatonû, or another, who began but never finished his tomb in the hillside above Tel el-Amarna, in the burying-place of the worshippers of the Disk.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from a sketch in Rosellini.
He had held important offices under Harmhabî,* and had obtained in marriage for his son Seti the hand of Tuîa, who, of all the royal family, possessed the strongest rights to the crown.**