Before we turned from Egypt to summarize the information, afforded by recent discoveries, upon the history of Western Asia under the kings of the Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods, we noted that the Asiatic empire of Egypt was regained by the reactionary kings of the XIXth Dynasty, after its temporary loss owing to the vagaries of Akhunaten.  Palestine remained Egyptian throughout the period of the judges until the foundation of the kingdom of Judah.  With the decline of military spirit in Egypt and the increasing power of the priesthood, authority over Asia became less and less a reality.  Tribute was no longer paid, and the tribes wrangled without a restraining hand, during the reigns of the successors of Ramses III.  By the time of the priest-kings of Thebes (the XXIst Dynasty) the authority of the Pharaohs had ceased to be exercised in Syria.  Egypt was itself divided into two kingdoms, the one ruled by Northern descendants of the Ramessids at Tanis, the other by the priestly monarchs at Thebes, who reigned by right of inheritance as a result of the marriage of the daughter of Ramses with the high priest Amenhetep, father of Herhor, the first priest-king.  The Thebans fortified Gebelen in the South and el-Hebi in the North against attack, and evidently their relations with the Tanites were not always friendly.

In Syria nothing of the imperial power remained.  The prestige of the god Amen of Thebes, however, was still very great.  We see this clearly from a very interesting papyrus of the reign of Herhor, published in 1899 by Mr. Golenischeff, which describes the adventures of Uenuamen, an envoy sent (about 1050 B.C.) to Phoenicia to bring wood from the mountains of Lebanon for the construction of a great festival bark of the god Amen at Thebes.  In the course of his mission he was very badly treated (We cannot well imagine Thothmes III or Amenhetep III tolerating ill-treatment of their envoy!) and eventually shipwrecked on the coast of the land of Alashiya or Cyprus.  He tells us in the papyrus, which seems to be the official report of his mission, that, having been given letters of credence to the Prince of Byblos from the King of Tanis, “to whom Amen had given charge of his North-land,” he at length reached Phoenicia, and after much discussion and argument was able to prevail upon the prince to have the wood which he wanted brought down from Lebanon to the seashore.

Here, however, a difficulty presented itself,—­the harbour was filled with the piratical ships of the Cretan Tjakaray, who refused to allow Uenuamen to return to Egypt.  They said, ’Seize him; let no ship of his go unto the land of Egypt!’ “Then,” says Uenuamen in the papyrus, “I sat down and wept.  The scribe of the prince came out unto me; he said unto me, ‘What ail-eth thee?’ I replied, ’Seest thou not the birds which fly, which fly back unto Egypt?  Look at them, they go unto the cool canal, and how long do I remain abandoned here?  Seest thou not those