feebleness of their character or to the turbulence of their barons that we must ascribe the poor part they played in the revolutions of the Eastern world at this time.  The establishment of a strong military power on their southern frontier was certain, moreover, to be anything but pleasing to them; if they preferred not to risk everything by entering into a great struggle with the invaders, they could, without compromising themselves too much, harass them with sudden attacks, and intrigue in an underhand way against them to their own profit.  Pharaoh’s generals were accustomed to punish, one after the other, these bands of invading tribes, and the sculptors duly recorded their names on a pylon at Thebes among those of the conquered nations, but these disasters had little effect in restraining the Hittites.  They continued, in spite of them, to march southward, and the letters from the Egyptian governors record their progress year after year.  They had a hand in all the plots which were being hatched among the Syrians, and all the disaffected who wished to be free from foreign oppression—­such as Abdashirti and his son Aziru—­addressed themselves to them for help in the way of chariots and men.*

* Aziru defends himself in one of his letters against the accusation of having received four messengers from the King of the Khati, while he refused to receive those from Egypt.  The complicity of Aziru with the Khati is denounced in an appeal from the inhabitants of Tunipa.  In a mutilated letter, an unknown person calls attention to the negotiations which a petty-Syrian prince had entered into with the King of the Khati.

Even inthe time of Amenofches III. they had endeavoured to reap profit from the discords of Mitanni, and had asserted their supremacy over it.  Dushratta, however, was able to defeat one of their chiefs.  Repulsed on this side, they fell back upon that part of Naharaim lying between the Euphrates and Orontes, and made themselves masters of one town after another in spite of the despairing appeals of the conquered to the Theban king.  From the accession of Khuniatonu, they set to work to annex the countries of Nukhassi, Nii, Tunipa, and Zinzauru:  they looked with covetous eyes upon Phoenicia, and were already menacing Coele-Syria.  The religious confusion in Egypt under Tutankhamon and Ai left them a free field for their ambitions, and when Harmhabi ventured to cross to the east of the isthmus, he found them definitely installed in the region stretching from the Mediterranean and the Lebanon to the Euphrates.  Their then reigning prince, Sapalulu, appeared to have been the founder of a new dynasty:  he united the forces of the country in a solid body, and was within a little of making a single state out of all Northern Syria.*

* Sapalulu has the same name as that wo meet with later on in the country of Patin, in the time of Salmanasar III., viz.  Sapalulme.  It is known to us only from a treaty with the Khati, which makes him coeval with Ramses I.:  it was with him probably that Harmhabi had to deal in his Syrian campaigns.  The limit of his empire towards the south is gathered in a measure from what we know of the wars of Seti I. with the Khati.