The confederacy of feudal chiefs, which had been brought momentarily together by Sapalulu and his successors, was shattered by the violence of the shock, and the elements of which it was composed were engaged henceforward in struggles with each other. At this time the entire plain between the Amanus and the Euphrates was covered with rich cities, of which the sites are represented to-day by only a few wretched villages or by heaps of ruins. Arabian and Byzantine remains sometimes crown the summit of the latter, but as soon as we reach the lower strata we find in more or less abundance the ruins of buildings of the Greek or Persian period, and beneath these those belonging to a still earlier time. The history of Syria lies buried in such sites, and is waiting only for a patient and wealthy explorer to bring it to light.* The Khâti proper were settled to the south of the Taurus in the basin of the Sajur, but they were divided into several petty states, of which that which possessed Carchemish was the most important, and exercised a practical hegemony over the others. Its chiefs alone had the right to call themselves kings of the Khâti. The Patinu, who were their immediate neighbours on the west, stretched right up to the Mediterranean above the plains of Naharairn and beyond the Orontes; they had absorbed, it would seem, the provinces of the ancient Alasia. Aramaeans occupied the region to the south of the Patinu between the two Lebanon ranges, embracing the districts of Hamath and Qobah.**
* The results of the excavations at Zinjirli are evidence of
what historical material we may hope to find in these
tumuli. See the account of the earlier results in P. von
Luschan, Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli, 1893.
** The Aramaeans are mentioned by Tiglath-pileser I. as
situated between the Balikh, the Euphrates, and the Sajur.
The valleys of the Amanus and the southern slopes of the Taurus included within them some half-dozen badly defined principalities—Samalla on the Kara-Su,* Gurgum** around Marqasi, the Qui*** and Khilakku**** in the classical Cilicia, and the Kasku^ and Kummukh^^ in a bend of the Euphrates to the north and north-east of the Khâti.
* The country of Samalla, in Egyptian Samalûa, extended
around the Tell of Zinjirli, at the foot of the Amanus, in
the valley of Marash of the Arab historians.
** The name has been read Gamgumu, Gaugum, and connected by
Tom-kins with the Egyptian Augama, which he reads Gagama, in
the lists of Thûtmosis III. The Aramaean inscription on the
statue of King Panammu shows that it must be read Gurgumu,
and Sachau has identified this new name with that of Jurjum,
which was the name by which the province of the Amanus,
lying between Baias and the lake of Antioch, was known in
the Byzantine period; the ancient Gurgum stretches further
towards the north, around the town of Marqasi, which Tomkins
and Sachau have identified with Marash.
*** The site of the country of Qui was determined by
Schrader; it was that part of the Cilician plain which
stretches from the Amanus to the mountains of the Kêtis, and
takes in the great town of Tarsus. F. Lenor-mant has pointed
out that this country is mentioned twice in the Scriptures
(1 Kings x, 28 and 2 Chron. i. 16), in the time of
Solomon. The designation of the country, transformed into
the appellation of an eponymous god, is found in the name
Qauîsaru, “Qauî is king.”
**** Khilakku, the name of which is possibly the same as the
Egyptian Khalakka, is the Cilicia Trachsea of classical
geographers.
^ The country of Kashku, which has been connected with
Kashkisha, which takes the place of Karkisha in an Egyptian
text, was still a dependency of the Hittites in the time of
Tiglath-pileser. It was in the neighbourhood of the Urumu,
whose capital seems to have been Urum, the Ourima of
Ptolemy, near the bend of the Euphrates between Sumeîsat and
Birejik; it extended into the Commagene of classical times,
on the borders of Melitene and the Tubal.
^^ Kummukh lay on both sides of the Euphrates and of the
Upper Tigris; it became gradually restricted, until at
length it was conterminous with the Commagene of classical
geographers.
The ancient Mitanni to the east of Carchemish, which was so active in the time of the later Amenôthes, had now ceased to exist, and there was but a vague remembrance of its farmer prowess. It had foundered probably in the great cataclysm which engulfed the Hittite empire, although its name appears inscribed once more among those of the vassals of Egypt on the triumphal lists of Ramses III. Its chief tribes had probably migrated towards the regions which were afterwards described by the Greek geographers as the home of the Matieni on the Halys and in the neighbourhood of Lake Urmiah. Aramaean kingdoms, of which the greatest was that of Bit-Adîni,* had succeeded them, and bordered the Euphrates on each side as far as the Chalus and Balikh respectively; the ancient Harran belonged also to them, and their frontier stretched as far as Hamath, and to that of the Patinu on the Orontes.
* The province of Bît-Adîni was specially that part of the
country which lay between the Euphrates and the Balikh, but
it extended also to other Syrian provinces between the
Euphrates and the Aprie.
It was, as we have seen, a complete breaking up of the old nationalities, and we have evidence also of a similar disintegration in the countries to the north of the Taurus, in the direction of the Black Sea. Of the mighty Khâti with whom Thûtmosis III. had come into contact, there was no apparent trace: either the tribes of which they were composed had migrated towards the south, or those who had never left their native mountains had entered into new combinations and lost even the remembrance of their name. The Milidu, Tabal (Tubal), and Mushku (Meshech) stretched behind each other from east to west on the confines of the Tokhma-Su, and still further away other cities of less importance contended for the possession of the Upper Saros and the middle region of the Halys. These peoples, at once poor and warlike, had been attracted, like the Hittites of some centuries previous, by the riches accumulated in the strongholds of Syria. Eevolutions must have been frequent in these regions, but our knowledge of them is more a matter of conjecture than of actual evidence. Towards the year 1170 B.C. the Mushku swooped down on Kummukh, and made themselves its masters; then pursuing their good fortune, they took from the Assyrians the two provinces, Alzi and Purukuzzi, which lay not far from the sources of the Tigris and the Balikh.*
* The Annals of Tiglath-pileser I. place their invasion
fifty years before the beginning of his reign. Ed. Meyer saw
a connexion between this and the invasion of the People of
the Sea, which took place under Ramses III. I think that the
invasion of the Mushku was a purely local affair, and had
nothing in common with the general catastrophe occasioned by
the movement of the Asiatic armies.
A little later the Kashku, together with some Aramaeans, broke into Shubarti, then subject to Assyria, and took possession of a part of it. The majority of these invasions had, however, no permanent result: they never issued in the establishment of an empire like that of the Khâti, capable by its homogeneity of offering a serious resistance to the march of a conqueror from the south. To sum up the condition of affairs: if a redistribution of races had brought about a change in Northern Syria, their want of cohesion was no less marked than in the time of the Egyptian wars; the first enemy to make an attack upon the frontier of one or other of these tribes was sure of victory, and, if he persevered in his efforts, could make himself master of as much territory as he might choose. The Pharaohs had succeeded in welding together their African possessions, and their part in the drama of conquest had been played long ago; but the cities of the Tigris and the Lower Euphrates—Nineveh and Babylon-were ready to enter the lists as soon as they felt themselves strong enough to revive their ancient traditions of foreign conquest.
The successors of Agumkakrimê were not more fortunate than he had been in attempting to raise Babylon once more to the foremost rank; their want of power, their discord, the insubordination and sedition that existed among their Cossæan troops, and the almost periodic returns of the Theban generals to the banks of the Euphrates, sometimes even to those of the Balikh and the Khabur, all seemed to conspire to aggravate the helpless state into which Babylon had sunk since the close of the dynasty of Uruazagga. Elam was pressing upon her eastern, and Assyria on her northern frontier, and their kings not only harassed her with persistent malignity, but, by virtue of their alliances by marriage with her sovereigns, took advantage of every occasion to interfere both in domestic and state affairs; they would espouse the cause of some pretender during a revolt, they would assume the guardianship of such of their relatives as were left widows or minors, and, when the occasion presented itself, they took possession of the throne of Bel, or bestowed it on one of their creatures. Assyria particularly seemed to regard Babylon with a deadly hatred. The capitals of the two countries were not more than some one hundred and eighty-five miles apart, the intervening district being a flat and monotonous alluvial plain, unbroken by any feature which could serve as a natural frontier. The line of demarcation usually followed one of the many canals in the narrow strip of land between the Euphrates and the Tigris; it then crossed the latter, and was formed by one of the rivers draining the Iranian table-land,—either the Upper Zab, the Radanu, the Turnat, or some of their ramifications in the spurs of the mountain ranges. Each of the two states strove by every means in its power to stretch its boundary to the farthest limits, and to keep it there at all hazards. This narrow area was the scene of continual war, either between the armies of the two states or those of partisans, suspended from time to time by an elaborate treaty which was supposed to settle all difficulties, but, as a matter of fact, satisfied no one, and left both parties discontented with their lot and jealous of each other. The concessions made were never of sufficient importance to enable the conqueror to crush his rival and regain for himself the ancient domain of Khammurabi; his losses, on the other hand, were often considerable enough to paralyse his forces, and prevent him from extending his border in any other direction. When the Egyptians seized on Naharaim, Assyria and Babylon each adopted at the outset a different attitude towards the conquerors. Assyria, which never laid any permanent claims to the seaboard provinces of the Mediterranean, was not disposed to resent their occupation by Egypt, and desired only to make sure of their support or their neutrality. The sovereign then ruling Assyria, but of whose name we have no record, hastened to congratulate Thûtmosis III. on his victory at Megiddo, and sent him presents of precious vases, slaves, lapis-lazuli, chariots and horses, all of which the Egyptian conqueror regarded as so much tribute. Babylon, on the other hand, did not take action so promptly as Assyria; it was only towards the latter years of Thûtmosis that its king, Karaîndash, being hard pressed by the Assyrian Assurbelnishishu, at length decided to make a treaty with the intruder.*