It was probably unprotected by any troops, and the Hittite king was absent in some other part of his empire. Seti pillaged the Amurru, seized Ianuâmu and Qodshû by a sudden attack, marched in an oblique direction towards the Mediterranean, forcing the inhabitants of the Lebanon to cut timber from their mountains for the additions which he was premeditating in the temple of the Theban Amon, and finally returned by the coast road, receiving, as he passed through their territory, the homage of the Phoenicians. His entry into Egypt was celebrated by solemn festivities. The nobles, priests, and princes of both south and north hastened to meet him at the bridge of Zalû, and welcomed, with their chants, both the king and the troops of captives whom he was bringing back for the service of his father Amon at Karnak. The delight of his subjects was but natural, since for many years the Egyptians bad not witnessed such a triumph, and they no doubt believed that the prosperous era of Thûtmosis III. was about to return, and that the wealth of Naharaim would once more flow into Thebes as of old. Their illusion was short-lived, for this initial victory was followed by no other. Maurusaru, King of the Khâti, and subsequently his son Mautallu, withstood the Pharaoh with such resolution that he was forced to treat with them. A new alliance was concluded on the same conditions as the old one, and the boundaries of the two kingdoms remained the same as under Harmhabî, a proof that neither sovereign had gained any advantage over his rival. Hence the campaign did not in any way restore Egyptian supremacy, as had been hoped at the moment; it merely served to strengthen her authority in those provinces which the Khâti had failed to take from Egypt. The Phoenicians of Tyre and Sidon had too many commercial interests on the banks of the Nile to dream of breaking the slender tie which held them to the Pharaoh, since independence, or submission to another sovereign, might have ruined their trade. The Kharû and the Bedawîn, vanquished wherever they had ventured to oppose the Pharaoh’s troops, were less than ever capable of throwing off the Egyptian yoke. Syria fell back into its former state. The local princes once more resumed their intrigues and quarrels, varied at intervals by appeals to their suzerain for justice or succour. The “Royal Messengers” appeared from time to time with their escorts of archers and chariots to claim tribute, levy taxes, to make peace between quarrelsome vassals, or, if the case required it, to supersede some insubordinate chief by a governor of undoubted loyalty; in fine, the entire administration of the empire was a continuation of that of the preceding century. The peoples of Kûsh meanwhile had remained quiet during the campaign in Syria, and on the western frontier the Tihonû had suffered so severe a defeat that they were not likely to recover from it for some time.* The bands of pirates, Shardana and others, who infested the Delta, were hunted down, and the prisoners taken from among them were incorporated into the royal guard.**
* This war is represented at Karnak, and Ramses II. figures
there among the children of Seti I.
** We gather this from passages in the inscriptions from the
year V. onwards, in which Ramses II. boasts that he has a
number of Shardana prisoners in his guard; Rouge was,
perhaps, mistaken in magnifying these piratical raids into a
war of invasion.
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Ernil Brugsch-Bey.
Seti, however, does not appear to have had a confirmed taste for war. He showed energy when occasion required it, and he knew how to lead his soldiers, as the expedition of his first year amply proved; but when the necessity was over, he remained on the defensive, and made no further attempt at conquest. By his own choice he was “the jackal who prowls about the country to protect it,” rather than “the wizard lion marauding abroad by hidden paths,” * and Egypt enjoyed a profound peace in consequence of his ceaseless vigilance.
* These phrases are taken direct from the inscriptions of
Seti I.
A peaceful policy of this kind did not, of course, produce the amount of spoil and the endless relays of captives which had enabled his predecessors to raise temples and live in great luxury without overburdening their subjects with taxes. Seti was, therefore, the more anxious to do all in his power to develop the internal wealth of the country. The mining colonies of the Sinaitic Peninsula had never ceased working since operations had been resumed there under Hâtshopsîtû and Thûtmosis III., but the output had lessened during the troubles under the heretic kings. Seti sent inspectors thither, and endeavoured to stimulate the workmen to their former activity, but apparently with no great success. We are not able to ascertain if he continued the revival of trade with Pûanît inaugurated by Harmhabî; but at any rate he concentrated his attention on the regions bordering the Red Sea and the gold-mines which they contained. Those of Btbaï, which had been worked as early as the XIIth dynasty, did not yield as much as they had done formerly; not that they were exhausted, but owing to the lack of water in their neighbourhood and along the routes leading to them, they were nearly deserted. It was well known that they contained great wealth, but operations could not be carried on, as the workmen were in danger of dying of thirst. Seti despatched engineers to the spot to explore the surrounding wadys, to clear the ancient cisterns or cut others, and to establish victualling stations at regular intervals for the use of merchants supplying the gangs of miners with commodities. These stations generally consisted of square or rectangular enclosures, built of stones without mortar, and capable of resisting a prolonged attack. The entrance was by a narrow doorway of stone slabs, and in the interior were a few huts and one or two reservoirs for catching rain or storing the water of neighbouring springs. Sometimes a chapel was built close at hand, consecrated to the divinities of the desert, or to their compeers, Mînû of Coptos, Horus, Maut, or Isis. One of these, founded by Seti, still exists near the modern town of Redesieh, at the entrance to one of the valleys which furrow this gold region.
