Egyptian Empire in Asia

Egypt Exploration Society
Egyptian Empire in Asia

Author(s): D. G. Hogarth
Source: The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Jan., 1914), pp. 9-17
Published by: Egypt Exploration Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3853665
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9
EGYPTIAN EMPIRE IN ASIA1
I HAVE been asked to deliver the first of a series of popular lectur

Ancient Egypt. I do not understand by " popular" the merely superficial, but I do
understand that a lecture is desired which shall not be overfilled with details and
unfamiliar names, but at the same time shall embody recent discovery and attempt
general co-ordination of knowledge. Therefore on the present occasion, taking for
subject Egyptian Empire in Asia, I propose to deal very generally not only with its
political and military character, but also with its cultural effect. Some new evidence on
all these points, but especially on the last, has been coming to light as the result of recent
explorations in Syria, notably that of the British Museunm at Jerablus, the site of Car-
chemish, and that conducted by Professor Garstang for the University of Liverpool at
Sakjegozu, whose ancient name is still unknown. I shall try to estimate summarily the
bearing of some of this evidence and to deduce general inferences about the relations
of Egypt to the near Asiatic lands. I could wish that I had had time to produce
a discourse better worth your attention as Egyptologists, and also to collect other
illustrations than the few which I have hastily scraped together; and finally, that
I were more of an Egyptologist myself. My excuse for addressing you on this subject
at all must be my connection with some of those explorations in Syria about which I have
just spoken.
Before dealing with the Egyptian Empire in particular, I should like to say a word
in general on the meaning or meanings of this term "Empire" as applied to the results
of ancient conquests. It must imply some degree of suzerainty acknowledged by the
inhabitants of an alien land; but what degree or degrees ? Broadly there seem to be
three degrees of such suzerainty, to all of which the word empire is actually applied by
historians of antiquity.
(1) In the highest degree Empire meant territorial dominion, secured by permanent
occupation by the forces of the imperial power and exclusive administration by its direct
representatives. In full development it entailed also enrolment of all subjects not only
in the military forces of the ruling power, but also in its civic body; but this further
development was not dreamed of in the ancient world before Alexander the Great and not
even partially realized until the third century of the Roman Empire. (2) In the second
1 This lecture was delivered on March 11, 1913, not from a manuscript but from short notes; nor
did I then suppose that it was to be published in full. In writing it out from my notes some months
later, I have had to shorten it by omitting most of what was said about the Hittites. It is not
worth while to repeat this part without the photographic illustrations of Carchemish, shown during the
delivery, but not allowed to be published till the official account of the excavations is issued by the
British Museum. D. G. H.
10 EGYPTIAN EMPIRE IN ASIA
degree Empire meant permanent tributary allegiance, secured neither

tion of the alien lands nor by direct administration but by the fear o
a few garrisons and agents and the prestige of the conqueror could kee
of indirect administrators and native subjects. (3) In the third degree Empire meant
little more than a sphere of exclusive influence, from which tribute was expected, but,
not being secured by garrisons or representatives of the conquering power, tended to be
intermittent and to be yielded only to the occasional pressure of raids or the fear of them.
Of these three degrees of "Empire" we may exclude the first from consideration
altogether in speaking of the Asiatic dominion of Egypt at any period before the Ptolemaic.
It is just possible that the definitive possession of South Syria, i.e. of Palestine proper up
to about the latitude of Acre, obtained by Thothmes III, lost by Amenhetep IV's stuccessor,
but regained by Seti I and kept till at any rate the end of the reign of Rameses II,
amounted to territorial occupation. But though a few local governors, mentioned in
the Amarna Letters, under Amenhetep III and IV bore Egyptian names (a fact which,
of course, is quite compatible with their having been Syrians), and certain lands in
Palestine became Egyptian royal and priestly appanages, the administration seems in
the main to have been left to indirect native representatives, intimidated by some
garrisons and occasional agents-the former at least having been apparently mercenary
aliens for the most part, when not mere levies of the native princes. That is to say that
even in Palestine the Egyptian Empire of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties
was of the second degree. So far as our knowledge goes, territorial Empire of the first
degree, even in that less developed form, which did not include the subject's participation
in the citizenship of the imperial people, was not known in West Asia till the Later
Assyrian Kingdom. The earlier Mesopotamian "Empires," Sumerian, Babylonian and
Assyrian, had indeed hardly risen above the third degree, i.e. had amounted to little
more than spheres of exclusive influence. In introducing therefore at any rate the
second degree, the Pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty may be credited with advanced
imperial ideas, although their advance did not lead them to a conception of territorial
empire, as we understand it.
Egyptian Empire in Asia was originally an immediate consequence, perhaps an effect,
of the expulsion of the Hyksos power from the Nile Valley. There is no reason to suppose
that, apart from occasional expeditions sent to work Sinaitic mines by Pharaohs of the
Old and Middle Kingdoms and occasional raids upon the nearest Arabian Bedawins, the
Aamu, in the interest of the mining settlements, official Egyptian forces ever entered
Asia prior to the reign of Aahmes I. The story of the Egyptian Sanehat's residence at
Hebron in the time of Amnenemhat I is inconsistent with anything short of the complete
independence of South Palestine at that epoch.
The subsequent subjection of Egypt to the Hyksos meant, of course, Asiatic Empire
in Egypt, precluding all possibility of Egyptian Empire in Asia. With the ebb of this
wave, which, whatever it was in particular, was in general part of the great flow from
the East which brought the Canaanites to Syria, the road into Asia lay open at last,
and though the raid which we find the first Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty pushing
across Carmel about 1582 B.C. may not have been exactly retaliatory, it was doubtless
induced to some degree by the suction of that receding flood. If nothing else, the
Egyptians must have learned from the Hyksos what to expect in Syria and how to
get it.
EGYPTIAN EMPIRE IN ASIA 11
These early appearances of the Egyptians under Aahmes I and Tho

west Asia were preliminaries to the establishment of dominion, but d
create anything which could be called Empire even of the lowest deg
were mere summer raids, such as have been the vogue in Asia since time immemorial.
We hear nothing of the capture of strong places such as Gaza, Ascalon or Megiddo which
lay on the path of the armies, but merely of the harrying of the Shasu Bedawins of the
Tih, and of the Rutennu in the Galilean hills, and of blackmail levied on Phoenician
towns as far north as Arvad, and on inland tribes still farther north even to Naharina,
the Aleppo country: but much of the " tribute" was probably sent from a distance to
forestall incursions, which eventually were not made.
It is not till well on in the reign of Thothmes III that Egyptian Empire was
instituted over any part of Asia as a permanent political condition. With the capture of
Gaza, Megiddo and the other strong places of Palestine, the incorporation of the southern-
most part of Syria, including most of Phoenicia, was complete by the Pharaoh's thirtieth
year. We hear of new chiefs appointed to rule the land, but have no reason to suppose
these to have been Egyptians born; nor can we be sure how much military occupation
there was. A century later some of the Amarna Letters from Palestine complain of the
withdrawal of troops which used to be in garrison there, and since the abandonment of
strong places, which had been taken by Thothmes' armies after painful sieges, is unlikely,
we may reasonably presume that some of these withdrawn garrisons had been planted in
Palestine in the days of the original conqueror. It was therefore Empire of the second
degree-a province administered indirectly by native governors appointed by Pharaoh,
whose allegiance was stiffened by the presence of some garrisons and direct agents of
the ruling power. If we are to draw a northern boundary to this imperial province, it
would seem to leave the Mediterranean coast north of Arvad, to bend southwards to the
watershed between the Orontes and the Jordan and to fade away into the eastern desert
some distance to the south of Damascus.
Above this line Thothmes constituted by the end of his reign a second imperial
province, but, so far as I can venture to infer from the evidence available, it was Empire
only of the third degree, that is it was an exclusive Egyptian " sphere of influence," where
any other armies than Pharaoh's knew they raided at certain peril of his chastisement,
while his own armies traversed it freely, and levied contributions on country and town.
Other sstrong powers of Western Asia respected his exclusive rights-the Kassites of
Babylonia (Karduniyas), the Mitanni, who, pending the rise of Asshur to independence,
had the chief rank in north Mesopotamia, and the Hatti growing in strength beyond
Taurus but still, as a unified organization, confined to Cappadocia, despite the memory
of some southward excursions. Egyptian forces made periodic raids in terrorem through
different parts of this north Syrian province, not merely into north Phoenicia (Zahi)
and the lower valley of the Orontes, but to Naharina and to the Sajur Valley, on
whose slopes a modern village still preserves the venerable name Tunip, which the
Egyptian annalists knew. A definite northern frontier can hardly be assigned to this
vague "province" which may have included even Cilicia. If Thothmes actually pushed
as far north-eastward as Carchemish, he probably went no farther, but left the modern
districts of Aintab and Marash, which made the best part of ancient Commagene, to
native, perhaps Hittite, chieftains, whose allegiance was attested by propitiatory
offerings and secured by the pacific intentions of which the Cappadocian Hatti sent
him proof. But I repeat that northwards from Kadesh, which Thothmes seems not
to have meddled with before his forty-second year, and then merely to have blackmailed,
the Egyptian position seems to me to have been imperial only in the third degree, not
secured by either permanent garrisons or even indirect representatives in the governorate.
North middle, and north Syria were not more incorporated in the Egyptian dominion
than, say, Afghanistan is in the British. I will state presently a reason based on
Syrian exploration for thus reducing to narrow limits what others (for example so
sound an authority as Mr H. R. Hall) have held to have been a wider Egyptian
Empire of a higher degree, in the time of Thothmnes III.
Such as it was, this somewhat ill-defined and loosely knit empire survived intact
through the reigns of three successors of Thothmes, and gathered strength by the mere
influence of use and wont. Under Amenhetep III Syria seems to have lain quiescent
from end to end; we hear of no Egyptian raids into any part, but on the contrary of
unimpeded relations between the Nile and Mesopotamia and of much peaceful intercourse
illustrated by the initiation of an attempt to assimilate the Syrians to the Egyptians
through education of the princely youth of the former on the Nile. Such attempts
have often been repeated by imperial powers since. Rome tried them; the Ottoman
power has tried them; France has tried them; we and Russia try them still. None
has met with much success. The young bear, once returned to his native hills, remembers
some of the tricks which his captors have taught him, but remembers them with no
sort of gratitude.
Certainly the experiment bore little fruit for Amenhetep's successor. From the
first years of the reign of Akhenaten the decline of the Asiatic Empire of Egypt
began. Thanks to the Amarna Letters we can follow the foreign relations of Egypt in
this period more closely than in almost any other. But that story of cities falling away
one after another because Amenhetep IV no longer maintained garrisons or even sent
an occasional expeditionary force; of native governors, after vain appeals, electing for
his enemies; of new powers growing unchecked in the north and centre, is well known
to you. Perhaps however the decline is laid too much to the charge of Akhenaten
himself, and too little to that of his predecessors. It is more surprising that an empire
so weakly organized, so dependent on mercenary swords and indirect representatives,
should have survived four reigns than that it should have collapsed in the fifth.
Egypt won and held her Asiatic dominion only in an interval between the collapse
of elder Asiatic powers and the rise of younger ones. When Thothmes III marched
through Syria there was none stronger than the weak Kassite monarchy, and the
inconsiderable power of Mitanni to dispute his path. The Hatti, who had ruined the
elder Dynasty of Babylon, had retired to Cappadocia and were not yet ready to emerge
again. Assyria was growing but not yet grown. The Aramaean wave of Arabian
Semites was only beginning to flow northward and westward. A hundred years later
the Hatti had found a strong dynasty to lead south again; Assyria was become a power
prepared to dispute the west with them, and had made a mighty effort under Shalmaneser I
to cut their southward path: the Aramaeans had coalesced into a settled state about
Damascus. Each of these powers was more strongly planted in Asia than Egypt at
her strongest, and swiftly and inevitably the Egyptian fell back into Africa. By the
time Horemheb sat on the throne of the Pharaohs, the former foreign empire of Egypt
had reverted to Asiatic hands. It was not, of course, lost for ever. The next Dynasty of
Pharaohs would regain all the provinces that their predecessors had h
the second degree, i.e. Palestine and south Phoenicia, and would re-asse
claim in the south of the northern province. But it would be an interm
momentary revival. If that can be said of the Asiatic Empire of Seti I
still more truly may it be said of occasional later excursions made by
into Palestine from'the tenth to the eighth centuries. In fact what su
Osorkon I, Shabaka and Tirhakah did in Asia can hardly be said to have created an
Empire of any degree. What finally the first Ptolemies did there we need not take
into account to-day: for, although all that they seized and held in Syria and of Asia
Minor became constituted Empire of the first degree, it was really not Egyptian but
Greek Empire taken and held not directly from the Egyptian land, but from the
Greeks' element, the sea. If we try to estimate what Egyptian Empire meant, what
effect it had on its lords and subjects, it is the Empire of the Eighteenth Dynasty
which has to be considered.
What effects of it do we trace on the culture of Egypt and on the culture of We
Asia respectively? On the first a very considerable effect; on the second so little that
on present evidence, we have hardly any choice but to presume the Empire to have be
only in very small measure administered or garrisoned by Egyptians even in south Sy
while in the northern "province" there can hardly have been any permanent Egyptian
element whatever.
In Egypt, as all students of Egyptology agree, the greatest change in culture took
place in the latter part of the reign of Thothmes III. Fabrics, forms, decoration, which
had been developing evenly and continuously since the Old Kingdom, suddenly felt a new
influence and either advanced or declined per saltum. New ones appeared, and in their
company there was a rush of foreign products, many of which can be ascribed with
certainty and some with probability, to a Syrian origin, while others again were due to
importation or to influence from the East Mediterranean (or "Aegean") culture. Non-
Egyptian names become frequent on monuments, and non-Egyptian ideas begin to
germinate in Egyptian soil. The social apparatus grows quickly to an unprecedented
height of luxury, while at the same time we note a social development which in the history
of nations has often been concomitant with a sudden increase of wealth, and is always
significant of it, namely, a rapidly growing use of mercenary alien, rather than native,
soldiery to uphold national interests. That the root and fostering influence of these
changes is to be sought in the imperial expansion resultant on Thothmes' Asiatic conquests
admits of no question. What the Egyptians had learned and seen in Asia, what their
raiding armies had brought back, what came to the Nile as tribute from native princes
and indirect representatives in Syria, what came from further Asia and the Aegean in
the course of trade along roads long closed-all these novelties combined to affect
Egyptian culture rapidly and profoundly.
Upon Syria, on the other hand, so far as we can tell from the exploration of sites
which were important throughout the period of the Eighteenth Dynasty, no comparable
reciprocal influence was exerted at that time by Egypt. Several such sites in the
Philistine country have been examined, chiefly by the enterprise of the Palestine
Exploration Fund. Of these Gezer is the most informing, because its results have been
by far the most completely published; but Tells' Hesy, Mutesellim, Zakaria and others
have also much to tell us. At all, and especially at Gezer, a great number of objects
Journ. of Egypt. Arch. I. B
manufactured in Egypt, or, if manufactured in Syria, of obviously Egyp

come to light, but an almost infinitesimal proportion of these can be ref
so early as that of the Eighteenth Dynasty, or even that of the Ninet
bulk seems due to mtuch later influence exerted from the Nile, most active
to the seventh centuries B.C. At the same time, when we look at other
be expected to be of local manufacture, such as the pottery especially,
apparatus, the figurines of deities and the like, one observes little or
Eighteenth Dynasty Egyptian influence.
The same result has to be recorded of the German and Austrian excavations in the
Carmel region, at Taanach and Megiddo. Hardly anything-at the last site indeed
practically nothing-has been found, to attest the presence of Egyptians or local action
of Egyptian cultural influence during the Eighteenth Dynasty. As we pass up from
Palestine into mid and northern Syria we seem soon to leave even such faint traces
behind altogether. Mid Syria, including Phoenicia, it is true, has been so little excavated
by scientific explorers that one nmust speak of its earlier strata with all reserve: but
what objects of Egyptian character have come into the hands of the numerous dealers
in its coast towns are almost all of the later period, and I have not heard of any early
Egyptian stuff having been found by the French excavators of the presumed site of
Kadesh, south of the Lake of Horns. Farther north much more thorough explorations
have been carried out on three sites at least, namely those at Sinjerli, excavated in 1894
and published by Von Luschan, Koldewey and others: that at Sakjegozu, excavated in
1911-12 and published by Garstang and others; and finally and most important
that at Jerablus or Carchemish, which has been in process of exploration since 1912
at the instance of the British Museum under the successive direction of myself and
Messrs Thompson and Woolley and is still in hand. Of all these three it may be said
broadly that none has yielded evidence of close contact with the Egypt of the Eighteenth
Dynasty. Egyptian objects virtually cease to be found below strata of the tenth, or
perhaps even the ninth century. Every class of native remains of earlier periods-pottery,
bronzes, terracottas, sculptures, seals-is innocent of obvious Egyptian influence.
Take the last mentioned class, the seals, not merely from these three sites but from
North Syria in general-the so-called South Hittite sphragistic class. It forms a very
numerous family of cylinders or stamps ranging over a long period from before the
Eighteenth Dynasty down to the Persian period. In the seal class, if in any class of
antiquities, one would naturally look for traces of the influence of so active and prolific a
sphragistic art as the Egyptian; and in that class one duly finds it. But at what epoch ?
Only in products of the eleventh and later centuries, not before. Cylinders and other seals
found with cremation burials, assignable to a period from the ninth to the seventh century,
show it; still more do those found with the inhumation burials of the succeeding and last
"Hittite" (or Perso-Hittite) period, when the use of a compost material had been introduced
from the south with sigillistic motives strongly Nilotic, and with the true scarab form.
Previous to this period scaraboid seals occur more and more rarely till, before 1000 B.C.,
they vanish, leaving the earlier North Syrian strata to show seals which in fabric, form
and engraved subject owe much to Mesopotamian and Cappadocian art, but nothing to
Egyptian.
How are we to explain this one-sided cultural action of the Eighteenth Dynasty
Empire ? Egyptian culture at the opening of the imperial period was undoubtedly much
more highly developed, much more potent than Syrian culture. Its influence might have
been expected to leave a wider and deeper mark on Syria than was left by any reciprocal
Syrian influence on Egypt. Yet, on the contrary, it has left much less mark. The one
explanation I can suggest is that far fewer agents of Egyptian culture were active in
Syria, than agents of Syrian culture in Egypt-that is to say, while numbers of Asiatics
flocked to and resided in Egypt under the Eighteenth Dynasty, very few Egyptians stayed
in their Syrian Empire, and those few were not of the commercial class. We must
conclude that after the first conquest the Egyptians were content to hold per alios, and
were not to be seduced by the possession of foreign territories from their traditional home-
keeping particularism, and their distaste for foreign adventure or trade.
In fact the cultural effect of the Eighteenth Dynasty Empire particularly illustrates
what I venture to propound as a historical generalisation-that, at all periods, Egyptian
culture remained without influence on the general progress of the world, unless agents
from without visited Egypt to learn of it on the spot. The Egyptians themselves did
nothing to disseminate it abroad. They were not adventurers, they were not traders.
They had not the instincts of an imperial people. The periods during which we find the
influence of Egyptian culture spread wide and far afield are four in history, separated
by other periods more or less long, during which it seems to have shrunk back to tihe
Nile. The four are the Late Minoan (sixteenth and fifteenth centuries B.C.), the Later
Assyrian (tenth to seventh centuries), and the Ptolemaic and Roman periods (together third
century B.C. to sixth century A.D.). In the whole or part of two of these Egypt was
subject to external powers; in one dominated by a foreign dynasty with intitmate
Mediterranean relations. In the fourth and earliest of the periods we do not know the
political conditions; but certainly Egypt, though she had Asiatic Empire then, had none
over Crete and neither troops nor agents in Cyprus. Nevertheless these two islands
between them have yielded more Egyptian Eighteenth Dynastyv objects than all Syria.
There could hardly be a better illustration of my contention that Egyptian civilization did
not follow the flag.
It has been the fashion, since the discovery of many Egyptian and Egyptianizing
objects in Aegean strata, whether in the islands or on the Greek mainland, to discredit the
previously accepted maxim that the Egyptians were a closely exclusive and home-keeping
people: and narratives of Egyptian travellers and the diplomatic correspondence between
Egypt and Asiatic localities have been adduced to support a correction of the old idea.
I venture, however, to think the old idea is still sound and good, and that the new
Aegean evidence confirms, not corrects, it. For while, as I have maintained already,
the diplomatic correspondence in question does not prove the residence of actual Egyptians
abroad, and the narratives in question, if they indicate anything, indicate that foreign
travel was a very rare and uncongenial occupation for an Egyptian, the Egyptian objects
found on Aegean sites were almost certainly brought thither not by Egyptians but by
Aegeans trading with foreign settlements in northern Egypt. If so they illustrate,
rather than traverse, the view that, whenever Egyptian culture passed the limits of the
Nile Valley in antiquity, it was by the agency of foreigners. Trading adventurers or
invaders from without had to go to its home-land, and themselves ignite a torch at that
bright flame of civilization which from first to last the native Egyptian was fain to hide
under his bushel.
The failure of the Eighteenth Dynasty to maintain its imperial hold on West Asia
was, I have said, inevitable. So soon as a power of any strength appeared in Asia
itself, Egypt could not but obey an order to quit. This may appear, however, a hard
saying and I must offer a little more justification, which may, I think, be obtained by
looking not at Eighteenth Dynasty Empire alone but at the whole history of both
Egyptian Empire in Asia and Asiatic Empire in Egypt.
From first to last that history exemplifies one empirical law that Egypt has never been
able long to retain anything in Asia, or any alien to retain Egypt, saving and excepting
when one or the other has held command also of the Levant Sea. Exceptional instances
prove the rule. The first durable empire established over foreign lands by Egypt was that
of the earlier Ptolemies, whose fleets were predominant over the whole Levant as far north
as the Cyclades, and as far west as the mouth of the Adriatic; and their empire endured
just so long as their sea-power. With the increase of the Rhodian navy it ceased in Asia
Minor: with the appearance of Roman fleets it ceased in Syria also. On the other hand
the first durable empire established by an alien power in Egypt was that of Rome, not
won until she had taken command of the Levant after the suppression of the Pirates of
Crete and Cilicia, and never again lost until she and her successor, Byzantiutm, ceased
to rule the sea.
The best illustrations on the other side, the best examples of the rule itself, a
to be found in the history of Asiatic Empire over Egypt. The overwhelming mig
of Assyria failed to keep its African conquests for more than the space of a sing
generation. It occupied Egypt before it had completely reduced Tyre, and, when t
mistress of the Levant trade finally submitted to Ashurbanipal, the Assyrian apparen
did nothing to enlist her or the Phoenician navies in his own service. The result was t
Psammetichus and the national party in Egypt remained free to open negotiations wit
the enemies of Assyria oversea and, with the co-operation of Gyges of Lydia, to impo
shiploads of fighting men from Asia Minor, with whose assistance the Assyrians were forced
back out of the Nile Valley after an occupation of very few years.
The New Babylonian Kingdom never obtained a footing in Egypt at all; but its
Persian successors, who, from their first appearance on the Mediterranean coast, cour
and made use of the Phoenicians, succeeded in capturing the realm of the Pharaohs at th
first attempt, and in maintaining themselves there without difficulty for about half
century. But the moment that Phoenician sea-supremacy was seriously challenged by a
new and independent maritime power, that of the Greeks, trouble began for the Persian
in Egypt. The history of the first Psammetichus repeated itself. The national par
called in Greeks again and again and finally, after half a century more, with their aid
expelled the Asiatic masters once more. Nor, so long as the Greek navies continue
active and dominant in the Levant, could the Persians regain their footing, despite ma
attempts, in which, from the time of Artaxerxes Mnemon onwards, they themselves us
Greeks to fight the Egyptian's Greeks. Only when the rising and aggressive power
Philip of Macedon had weakened the Greek states and forced them to look to their ow
houses, and at the same time Persian gold was become a dominant factor in Gre
politics, could Asiatic rule be re-established over Egypt, to endure to the coming
Alexander less than twenty years later.
I think, therefore, that I am stating nothing but obvious truth when I say th
the fall of the Eighteenth Dynasty Empire in the face of the first strong Asiatic pow
which should challenge its tenure, was inevitable. The power which actually did
determine its fall was, of course, that of the Hatti. Once this came
retirement of the Egyptians began. There is some sign that Thothmne
the sea for his conquests and his communications, but little or none that any of his
successors imitated him. Since men of Dor, the Tchakaray, appear in Egyptian service
at this time, it is possible that their ships, as well as those of Phoenicians to the north, plied
awhile in the service of Egypt: but in the time of Amenhetep IV these cities fell awvay
one after another to Hatti or Aramaean allegiance. Though the first Pharaohs of the
Nineteenth Dynasty recovered them for the moment they could not keep them against
a consolidated Hatti power. We find Arvad, for example, helping the enemy of
Rameses at Kadesh. Whatever the immediate issue of this battle, it is clear, as has often
been pointed out, that Rameses' speedy withdrawal after it and the tone and content of
the treaty made in his twentieth year with the Hatti King, indicate that its ultimate
result was the abandonment of Egyptian Empire over any part of Syria except south
Palestine; and even this last province had gone the way of the rest by the time of
Rameses III. Thereafter, although Pharaoh Necho would pass up through Syria even
to Carchemish, and hold it in fee for some four years, there will be no Egyptian Empire,
but only Egyptian raids and Egyptian intrigues, to be considered in Asia, till after the
conquest of Alexander.
D. G. HOGARTH.

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Egyptian Empire in Asia

EGYPTIAN EMPIRE IN ASIA1

I HAVE been asked to deliver the first of a series of popular lectur

degree Empire meant permanent tributary allegiance, secured neither

These early appearances of the Egyptians under Aahmes I and Tho

manufactured in Egypt, or, if manufactured in Syria, of obviously Egyp

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