(b) Petrie[899] places the beginning of the invasion of Egypt by the Semites about 3400 b.c. When referring to a painting of one of these Princes of the Desert named Absha coming into Egypt, he writes that “though 1000 years before Abram” (whom he himself dates about 2100 b.c.) “he was one of the same race: it is therefore invaluable as an historical type of the great Semitic invasion.” Evidence from Egyptian sources seems to show that before and after the conquest by the Hyksos, Semitic invasions occurred after the VIth Dynasty and again c. 2250 b.c.
Petrie, on the strength of the cylinder of Khendy and the tablet of Khenzerm—two Babylonians “who rose to the throne of Egypt”—concludes that an invasion from Syro-Mesopotamia took place in the XIVth Dynasty, say 2800 b.c.
(c) It is not, however, till the XVIIIth Dynasty, c. 1400 b.c., that we reach firm ground for fixing the first point of direct historical contact between Babylonia and Egypt.
Authority for this dating is found in the famous tablets brought to light in 1887 at Tel-el-Amarna, which include letters from the rulers of Babylonia and Assyria to Amenhotep III. and his son Akhenaton. Apart from the historical value of their presumptive indication of an earlier intercourse, the discovery discloses three points of great interest.
First, the fact that these were written in Babylonian shows that this language had already become the lingua franca of the civilised world. Second, a more human personal note, the probability from the red dots (still visible) made by some Egyptian with a reed for the purpose of marking the divisions of the foreign words, that the acquisition of this lingua franca was advisable, perhaps necessary, to qualification for a clerkship or an embassy. Third, that Babylonian literature had found its way among the nations which used its language.
Of this we have conclusive evidence in two documents. The first concerns the goddess Ereshkigal, the other transmits the legend of Adapa.[900]
From the Bekten stele we deduce a close intercourse between the two countries about the XIXth Dynasty, for we read of Rameses II.[901] being in Mesopotamia “according to his wont, year by year,” and receiving tributes and presents from the chiefs of the countries round about.
The connection between Assyria (proper) and Egypt rests on ample evidence. Fish, or “beasts of the sea,” passed as presents, perhaps as trade. On the Broken Column of Tiglath-Pileser I. (Cylinder IV. 29-30) we read, “And a great beast of the River, a great beast of the Sea, the king of Musrê” (probably Egypt) “sent (unto him).”
The Select Papyri (pl. 75, 1, 7) tell of certain fish being brought, perhaps as a staple of trade, from the Puharuta or Euphrates to Egypt, and (in pl. 96, 1, 7) of another fish or fishy substance called Rura, being imported from the land of the great waters, Mesopotamia.[902]