of artisans, and for ensuring that steps taken against them should be more effectual and less cruel.  Any criminal attempting to evade the laws of his country, and taking refuge in that of the other party to the agreement, was to be expelled without delay and consigned to the officers of his lord; any fugitive not a criminal, any subject carried off or detained by force, any able artisan quitting either territory to take up permanent residence in the other, was to be conducted to the frontier, but his act of folly was not to expose him to judicial condemnation.  “He who shall thus act, his fault shall not be brought up against him; his house shall not be touched, nor his wife, nor his children; he shall not have his throat cut, nor shall his eyes be touched, nor his mouth, nor his feet; no criminal accusation shall be made against him.”

This treaty is the most ancient of all those of which the text has come down to us; its principal conditions were—­perfect equality and reciprocity between the contracting sovereigns, an offensive and defensive alliance, and the extradition of criminals and refugees.  The original was drawn up in Chaldaean script by the scribes of Khatusaru, probably on the model of former conventions between the Pharaohs and the Asiatic courts, and to this the Egyptian ministers had added a few clauses relative to the pardon of emigrants delivered up by one or other of the contracting parties.  When, therefore, Tartisubu arrived in the city of Eamses, the acceptance of the treaty was merely a matter of form, and peace was virtually concluded.  It did not confer on the conqueror the advantages which we might have expected from his successful campaigns:  it enjoined, on the contrary, the definite renunciation of those countries, Mitanni, Naharaim, Alasia, and Amurru, over which Thutmosis III. and his immediate successors had formerly exercised an effective sovereignty.  Sixteen years of victories had left matters in the same state as they were after the expedition of Harmhabi, and, like his predecessor, Ramses was able to retain merely those Asiatic provinces which were within the immediate influence of Egypt, such as the Phoenician coast proper, Kharu, Persea beyond Jordan, the oases of the Arabian desert, and the peninsula of Sinai.*

* The Anastasi Papyrus I. mentions a place called Zaru of Sesostris, in the neighbourhood of Aleppo, in a part of Syria which was not in Egyptian territory:  the frontier in this locality must have passed between Arvad and Byblos on the coast, and between Qodshu and Hazor from Merom inland.  Egyptian rule on the other side of the Jordan seems to be proved by the monument discovered a few years ago in the Hauran, and known under the name of the “Stone of Job” by the Bedawin of the neighbourhood.

This apparently unsatisfactory result, after such supreme efforts, was, however, upon closer examination, not so disappointing.  For more than half a century