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leave no doubt that Usertesen I. is intended here. The tone of the reply is as gracious as possible, according with the king's character as stated by Sanehat, "He is a friend of great sweetness, and knows how to gain love." He quite recognises the inquiries after the queen, and replies concerning her. And then he assures Sanehat of welcome on his return, and promises him all that he asks, including a tomb "in the company of the royal children," a full recognition of his real rank. Incidentally we learn that the Amu buried their dead wrapped in a sheep's skin; as we also learn, further on, that they anointed themselves with oil (olive?), wore the hair long, and slept on the ground. The funeral that is promised accords with the burials of the XIIth Dynasty: the gilded case, the head painted blue, and the canopy of cypress wood, are all known of this period, but would be out of place in describing a Ramesside burial. Sanehat's reply is a full course of the usual
REMARKS
137 religious adulation, and differs in this remarkably from his petition. In fact it is hard to be certain where his petition begins; possibly the opening of it has been lost out of the text in copying from a mutilated papyrus; or possibly it was sent merely as a memorandum of Sanehat's position and desires, without venturing to address it personally to the king; or even it may have not been allowable then to make such petitions formally, so as to leave the initiative to the king's free will, just as it is not allowable nowadays to question royalty, but only to answer when spoken to. The proposal to bring forward his fellow-sheikhs as witnesses of his unabated loyalty is very curious, and seems superfluous after Usertesen's assurances. Beyond Abisha of the Amu at Beni Hasan, these are the only early personal names of Syrians that we know. The Fenkhu in this connection can hardly be other than the Phoenicians; and, if so, this points to their being already estab-
138 THE ADVENTURES OF SANEHAT
lished in southern Syria at this date. But these chiefs were not allowed to come forward; and it seems to have been the policy of Egypt to keep the Syrians off as much as possible, not a single man who came with Sanehat being allowed to cross the frontier. The allusion to the Tenu belonging to Pharaoh, like his dogs, is peculiarly fitting to this period, as the dog seems to have been more familiarly domesticated in the XIth and XIIth Dynasties than at any other age, and dogs are often then represented on the funereal steles, even with their names. The expression for strangeness—"as a man of the Delta sees himself at the cataract, as a man of the plain who sees himself in the deserts"—is true to this day. Nothing upsets an Egyptian's self-reliance like going back a few miles into the desert; and almost any man of the cultivated plain will flee with terror if he finds himself left alone far in the desert, or even taken to the top of the desert hills. .