country of the Lebanon which lay between the Mediterranean and the middle course of the Orontes.  Kharu ran parallel to Zahi, but comprised the mountain district, and came to include most of the countries which were at first ranged under Upper Lotanu; it was never applied to the region beyond the neighbourhood of Mount Tabor, nor to the trans-Jordanie provinces.  The three names in their wider sense preserved the same relation to each other as before, Zahi lying to the west and north-west of Kharu, and Lower Lotanu to the north of Kharu and north-east of Zahi, but the extension of meaning did not abolish the old conception of their position, and hence arose confusion in the minds of those who employed them; the scribes, for instance, who registered in some far-off Theban temple the victories of the Pharaoh would sometimes write Zahi where they should have inscribed Kharu, and it is a difficult matter for us always to detect their mistakes.  It would be unjust to blame them too severely for their inaccuracies, for what means had they of determining the relative positions of that confusing collection of states with which the Egyptians came in contact as soon as they had set foot on Syrian soil?

A choice of several routes into Asia, possessing unequal advantages, was open to the traveller, but the most direct of them passed through the town of Zalu.  The old entrenchments running from the Ked Sea to the marshes of the Pelusiac branch still protected the isthmus, and beyond these, forming an additional defence, was a canal on the banks of which a fortress was constructed.  This was occupied by the troops who guarded the frontier, and no traveller was allowed to pass without having declared his name and rank, signified the business which took him into Syria or Egypt, and shown the letters with which he was entrusted.*

* The notes of an official living at Zalu in the time of Mineptah are preserved on the back of pls. v., vi. of the Anastasi Papyrus III,; his business was to keep a register of the movements of the comers and goers between Egypt and Syria during a few days of the month Pakhons, in the year III.

It was from Zalu that the Pharaohs set out with their troops, when summoned to Kharu by a hostile confederacy; it was to Zalu they returned triumphant after the campaign, and there, at the gates of the town, they were welcomed by the magnates of the kingdom.  The road ran for some distance over a region which was covered by the inundation of the Nile during six months of the year; it then turned eastward, and for some distance skirted the sea-shore, passing between the Mediterranean and the swamp which writers of the Greek period called the Lake of Sirbonis.*

* The Sirbonian Lake is sometimes half full of water, sometimes almost entirely dry; at the present time it bears the name of Sebkhat Berdawil, from King Baldwin I. of Jerusalem, who on his return from his Egyptian campaign died on its shores, in 1148, before he could reach El-Artsh.

[Illustration:  177.jpg THE FORTRESS AND BRIDGE OF ZALU]