The first authentic information, however, as to the movements of the Mediterranean maritime races is afforded by the Egyptian annals, which describe two formidable invasions by combined land armies and fleets, which were with difficulty repulsed. The first took place in the reign of Menepthah, son of the great Ramses II. of the eighteenth dynasty, about 1330 b.c.; the second under Ramses III. of the nineteenth dynasty, about 1250 b.c. The first invasion came from the West, and was headed by the King of the Lybians, a white race, who have been identified with the Numidians and modern Kabyles, but were reinforced to a confederacy of nearly all the Mediterranean races who sent auxiliary contingents both of sea and land forces. Among these appear, along with Dardanians, Teucri and Lycians of Asia Minor, who were already known as allies of the Hittites in their wars against Ramses II., a new class of auxiliaries from Greece, Italy, and the islands, whose names have been identified by some Egyptologists as Achæans, Tuscans, Sicilians, and Sardinians.
SEA-FIGHT IN THE TIME OF RAMSES III. (From temple of Ammon at Medinet-Abou.)
The second and more formidable attack came from the East, and was made by a combined fleet and land army, the latter composed of Hittites and Philistines, with the same auxiliaries from Asia Minor, and the fleet of the same confederation of Maritime States as in the first invasion, except that the Achæans have disappeared as leaders of the Greek powers, and their place is taken by the Danaoi, confirming the Greek tradition of the substitution of the dynasty of Danaus for that of Inachus, on the throne of Argos and Mycenæ. The Phœnicians alone of the Maritime States do not seem to have taken any part in these invasions, and, on the contrary, to have lived on terms of friendly vassalage and close commercial relations with Egypt ever since the expulsion of the Hyksos, and the great conquests of Ahmes and Thotmes III. in Syria and Asia. It is probably during this period that the early commerce and navigation of Jebail and Sidon took such a wide extension.
The details of these two great invasions, which are fully given in the Egyptian monuments, together with a picture of the naval combat, in which the invading fleet was finally defeated by Ramses III., after having forced an entrance into the eastern branch of the Nile, are extremely interesting. They show an advanced state of civilization already prevailing among nations whose very names were unknown or legendary. More than 300 years before the siege of Troy it appears that Asia Minor and the Greek mainland and islands were already inhabited by nations sufficiently advanced in civilization to fit out fleets which commanded the seas, and to form political confederations, to undertake distant expeditions, and to wage war on equal terms with the predominant powers of Asia and of Egypt. But though ancient as regards classical history, these beginnings of Greek civilization are comparatively modern, and cannot be carried back further than about 1500 b.c., while there is no evidence to carry the preceding period of Phœnician supremacy and commerce in the eastern Mediterranean, with the existence of the great trading cities of its earliest period, Byblos and Sidon, beyond 2000, or, at the very outside, 2500 b.c.
HITTITES.
The history of another great Empire has been partially brought to light, which was destroyed in 717 b.c. by the progress of Assyrian conquest, after having lasted more than 1000 years, and long exercised a predominant influence over Western Asia, viz. that of the Hittites. The first mention of them in the Old Testament appears in the time of Abraham, when we find them in Southern Syria, mixed with tribes of the Canaanites and Amorites, and grouped principally about Hebron. They are represented as on friendly terms with Abraham, selling him a piece of land for a sepulchre, and intermarrying with his family—Rebecca's soul being vexed by the contumacious behaviour of her daughters-in-law, "the daughters of Heth." This, however, was only an outlying branch of the nation, whose capital cities, when they appear clearly in history, were further north at Kadesh on the Orontes, and Carchemish on the Upper Euphrates, commanding the fords on that river on the great commercial route between Babylonia and the Mediterranean. They were a Turanian race, whose original seat was in Cappadocia, and the high plateaux and mountainous region extending from the Taurus range to the Black Sea. They are easily recognized on the Egyptian monuments by their yellow colour, peculiar features which are of Ugro-Turkish type, and their dress, which is that of highlanders inhabiting a snowy district, with close-fitting tunics, mittens, and boots resembling snowshoes with turned-up toes. They have also the Mongolian characters of beardless faces, and coarse black hair, which is sometimes trained into a pigtail.
