Hitherto the Hittites had not been engaged in the struggle.  Attacked at a disadvantage, unprepared, they had left their subject allies to make such resistance as they might find possible, and had reserved themselves for the defence of their own country.  Mautenar had, no doubt, made the best preparations of which circumstances admitted—­he had organized his forces in three bodies, “on foot, on horseback, and in chariots.”  At the head of them, he gave battle to the invaders so soon as they attacked him in his own proper country, and a desperate fight followed, in which the Egyptians, however, prevailed at last.  The Hittites received a “great overthrow.”  The song of triumph composed for Seti on the occasion declared:  “Pharaoh is a jackal which rushes leaping through the Hittite land; he is a grim lion exploring the hidden ways of all regions; he is a powerful bull with a pair of sharpened horns.  He has struck down the Asiatics; he has thrown to the ground the Khita; he has slain their princes; he has overwhelmed them in their own blood; he has passed among them as a flame of fire; he has brought them to nought.”

The victory thus gained was followed by a treaty of peace.  Mautenar and Seti agreed to be henceforth friends and allies, Southern Syria being restored to Egypt, and Northern Syria remaining under the dominion of the Hittites, probably as far as the sources of the Orontes river.  A line of communication must, however, have been left open between Egypt and Mesopotamia, for Seti still exercised authority over the Nairi, and received tribute from their chiefs.  He was also, by the terms of the treaty, at liberty to make war on the nations of the Upper Syrian coast, for we find him reducing the Tahai, who bordered on Cilicia, without any disturbance of his relations with Mautenar.  The second act in the war between the Egyptians and the Hittites thus terminated with an advantage to the Egyptians, who recovered most of their Asiatic possessions, and had, besides, the prestige of a great victory.

The third act was deferred for a space of some thirty-five years, and fell into the reign of Ramesses II., Seti’s son and successor.  Before giving an account of it, we must briefly touch the other wars of Seti, to show how great a warrior he was, and mention one further fact in his warlike policy indicative of the commencement of Egypt’s decline as a military power.  Seti, then, had no sooner concluded his peace with the great power of the North, than he turned his arms against the West and South, invading, first of all, “the blue-eyed, fair-skinned nation of the Tahennu,” who inhabited the North African coast from the borders of Egypt to about Cyrene, and engaging in a sharp contest with them.  The Tahennu were a wild, uncivilized people, dwelling in caves, and having no other arms besides bows and arrows.  For dress they wore a long cloak or tunic, open in front; and they are distinguished on the Egyptian monuments by wearing two ostrich feathers and having