for only a few years or be prolonged to as many centuries.  I am within the mark, I think, in assuming that Phonician adventurers, or possibly even the regular trading ships of Tyre and Sidon, had established relations with the semi-barbarous chiefs of Botica as early as the XIIth century before our era, that is, at the time when the power of Thebes was fading away under the weak rule of the pontiffs of Amon and the Tanite Pharaohs.

The Phoenicians were too much absorbed in their commercial pursuits to aspire to the inheritance which Egypt was letting slip through her fingers.  Their numbers were not more than sufficient to supply men for their ships, and they were often obliged to have recourse to their allies or to mercenary tribes—­the Leleges or Carians—­in order to provide crews for their vessels or garrisons for their trading posts; it was impossible, therefore, for them to think of raising armies fit to conquer or keep in check the rulers on the Orontes or in Naharaim.  They left this to the races of the interior—­the Amorites and Hittites—­and to their restless ambition.  The Hittite power, however, had never recovered from the terrible blow inflicted on it at the time of the Asianic invasion.

[Illustration:  128.jpg AZAZ—­ONE OF THIS TUMULI ON THE ANCIENT HITTITE PLAIN]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by M. Barthelemy.

The confederacy of feudal chiefs, which had been brought momentarily together by Sapalulu and his successors, was shattered by the violence of the shock, and the elements of which it was composed were engaged henceforward in struggles with each other.  At this time the entire plain between the Amanus and the Euphrates was covered with rich cities, of which the sites are represented to-day by only a few wretched villages or by heaps of ruins.  Arabian and Byzantine remains sometimes crown the summit of the latter, but as soon as we reach the lower strata we find in more or less abundance the ruins of buildings of the Greek or Persian period, and beneath these those belonging to a still earlier time.  The history of Syria lies buried in such sites, and is waiting only for a patient and wealthy explorer to bring it to light.* The Khati proper were settled to the south of the Taurus in the basin of the Sajur, but they were divided into several petty states, of which that which possessed Carchemish was the most important, and exercised a practical hegemony over the others.  Its chiefs alone had the right to call themselves kings of the Khati.  The Patinu, who were their immediate neighbours on the west, stretched right up to the Mediterranean above the plains of Naharairn and beyond the Orontes; they had absorbed, it would seem, the provinces of the ancient Alasia.  Aramaeans occupied the region to the south of the Patinu between the two Lebanon ranges, embracing the districts of Hamath and Qobah.**

* The results of the excavations at Zinjirli are evidence of what historical material we may hope to find in these tumuli.  See the account of the earlier results in P. von Luschan, Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli, 1893.

     ** The Aramaeans are mentioned by Tiglath-pileser I. as
     situated between the Balikh, the Euphrates, and the Sajur.