Revolt, however, now broke out in the north.  Tunip rebelled, as did also the king of Kadesh, who built a “new” fortress to protect his city from attack.  Thothmes at once marched against them by the road along “the coast,” which led him through the country of the Fenkhu or Phoenicians.  First he fell upon the towns of Alkana and utterly destroyed them, and then poured his troops into the neighbouring land of Tunip.  The city of Tunip was taken and burnt, its crops were trodden under-foot, its trees cut down, and its inhabitants carried into slavery.  Then came the turn of Kadesh.  The “new” fortress fell at the first assault, and the whole country was compelled to submit.

The king of Assyria again sent presents to the Pharaoh which the Egyptian court regarded in the light of tribute.  They consisted chiefly of large blocks of “real lapis-lazuli” as well as “lapis-lazuli of Babylon.”  More valuable gifts came from the subject princes of Syria.  Foremost among these was “a king’s daughter all glorious with [a vesture of] gold.”  Then there were four chariots plated with gold and six chariots of gold, iron armour inlaid with gold, a jug of silver, a golden helmet inlaid with lapis-lazuli, wine, honey and balsam, ivory and various kinds of wood, wheat in such quantities that it could not be measured, and the sixty-five slaves who had to be furnished each year as part of the annual tax.

The annals of the next two years are in too mutilated a condition to yield much information.  Moreover, the campaigns carried on in them were mainly in the Soudan.  In B.C. 1461 the record closes.  It was in that year that the account of the Pharaoh’s victories “which he had gained from the 23rd until the (4)2nd year” were engraved upon the wall of the temple. (The inscription has “32nd year,” but as the wars extended beyond the 40th year of the king’s reign this must be a sculptor’s error.) And the chronicle concludes with the brief but expressive words, “Thus hath he done:  may he live for ever!”

Thothmes, indeed, did not live for ever, but he survived the completion of his temple fourteen years.  His death was followed by the revolt of Northern Syria, and the first achievement of his son and successor, Amenophis II., was its suppression.  Ni and Ugarit, the centres of disaffection, were captured and punished, and among the prisoners from Ugarit were 640 “Canaanite” merchants with their slaves.  The name of Canaanite had thus already acquired that secondary meaning of “merchant” which we find in the Old Testament (Is. xxiii. 8; Ezek. xvii. 4).  It is a significant proof of the commercial activity and trading establishments of the Canaanite race throughout the civilized world.  Even a cuneiform tablet from Kappadokia, which is probably of the same age as the tablets of Tel el-Amarna, gives us the name of Kinanim “the Canaanite” as that of a witness to a deed.  It was not always, however, that the Canaanites were so honourably distinguished.