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[paragraph continues] Knossos. To this period also belongs the magnificent polychrome pottery called Kamáres ware. Another catastrophe took place: the first palace of Knossos was ruined, and the great second palace built in its place: and the period known as Middle Minoan III began. It was distinguished by an intense realism in art, speaking clearly of a rapid deterioration in taste. In this period we find the pictographic writing clearly developed, with a hieratic or cursive script derived from it, adapted for writing with pen and ink. The Middle Minoan period came to an end about 1600 B.C.

Late Minoan I shows a continuation of the taste for realism. Its pottery is distinguished from that of the preceding period by the convention that its designs as a rule are painted dark on a light background: in Middle Minoan III they are painted light on a dark background. Linear writing is now developed. The palace of Phaestos is rebuilt. Fine frescoes and admirable sculptured vases in steatite are found in this period, to which also belong the oldest remains at Mycenae, namely the famous gold deposits in the shaft tombs. In Late Minoan II the naturalistic figures become conventionalized, and a degeneration in art sets in which continues into Late Minoan III. The foreign imports found at Tell el-Amarna and thus of the time of Ikhnaton, are all of Late Minoan III; this affords a valuable hint for dating this phase of development.

Now while some of the earlier periods shade into one another, like the colours of a rainbow, so that it is difficult to tell where the one ends and the next begins, this is not the case of the latest periods, the changes in which have evidently been produced by violence. The chief manifestation is the destruction of Knossos, which took place, apparently as a result of invasion from the mainland, at the very end of the period known as Late Minoan II: that is to say about 1400 B.C. The inferior style called Late Minoan III—the style which till recent years we had been accustomed to call Mycenaean—succeeded at once and without any intermediate transition to the style of Late Minoan II immediately after this raid. It was evidently the degraded style that had developed in the mainland among the successful invaders, founded upon (or, rather, degenerated from) works of art which had spread by way of trade to the adjacent lands, in the flourishing days of Cretan civilization.

We have seen that in Egyptian tombs of about 1500 B.C. there are to be seen paintings of apparently Cretan messengers and merchants, called by the name of Keftiu, bearing Cretan goods: and in addition we find the actual tangible goods themselves, deposited with the Egyptian dead. In Palestine and elsewhere occasional scraps of

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the 'palace' styles come to light. But the early specimens of Cretan art found in these regions are all exotic, just as (to quote a parallel often cited in illustration) the specimens of Chinese or Japanese porcelain exhibited in London drawing-rooms are exotic; and they affect but little the inferior native arts of the places where they are found. It is not till we reach the beginning of Late Minoan III, after the sack of Knossos, that we find Minoan culture actually taking root in the eastern lands of the Mediterranean, such as Cyprus and the adjacent coasts of Asia Minor and Syria. We can hardly dissociate this phenomenon from the sack of Knossos. The very limitations of the area over which the 'Mycenaean' art has been found are enough to show that its distribution was not a result of peaceful trade. Thus, the Hittite domination of Central and Western Asia Minor was still strong enough to prevent foreign settlers from establishing themselves in those provinces: in consequence Mycenaean civilization is there absent. The spread of the debased Cretan culture over Southern Asia Minor, Cyprus, and North Syria, between 1400 and 1200 B.C. must have been due to the movements of peoples, one incident in which was the sack of Knossos 1: and this is true, whether those who carried the Cretan art were refugees from Crete, or were the conquerors of Crete seeking yet further lands to spoil.

In short, the sack of Knossos and the breaking of the Cretan power was an episode—it may be, was the crucial and causative episode—in a general disturbance which the fourteenth to the twelfth centuries B.C. witnessed over the whole Eastern Mediterranean basin. The mutual relations of the different communities were as delicately poised as in modern Europe: any abnormal motion in one part of the system tended to upset the balance of the whole. Egypt was internally in a ferment, thanks to the eccentricities of the crazy dilettante Ikhnaton, and was thus unable to protect her foreign possessions; the nomads of Arabia, the Sutu and Habiru, were pressing from the South and East on the Palestinian and Syrian towns; the dispossessed Cretans were crowding to the neighbouring lands on the north; the might of the Hittites, themselves destined to fall to pieces not long afterwards, blocked progress northward: it is little wonder that disorders of various kinds resulted from the consequent congestion.

It is just in this time of confusion that we begin to hear, vaguely at first, of a number of little nationalities—people never definitely

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assigned to any particular place, but appearing now here, now there, fighting sometimes with, sometimes against, the Egyptians and their allies. And what gives these tribelets their surpassing interest is the greatness of the names they bear. The unsatisfying and contemptuous allusions of the Egyptian scribes record for us the 'day of small things' of people destined to revolutionize the world.

We first meet these tribes in the Tell el-Amarna letters. The king of Alašia (Cyprus) complains that his coasts are being raided by the Lukku, who yearly plunder one small town after another. 1 That indefatigable correspondent, Rib-Addi, in two letters, complains that one Biḫura has sent people of the Sutu to his town and slain certain Sherdan men—apparently Egyptian mercenaries in the town guard. 2 In a mutilated passage in another letter Rib-Addi mentions the Sherdan again, in connexion with an attempt on his own life. Then Abi-Milki reports 3 that 'the king of Danuna is dead, and his brother has become king after him, and his land is at peace'. It is almost the only word of peace in the whole dreary Tell el-Amarna record.

[figure]

Rk[w]

[figure]

Drdnw

[figure]

M[ȝ]św

[figure]

Mȝwnw or irwnw

[figure]

Pdśw

[figure]

Ḳrḳš

This was in 1333 B.C. On the side of Ramessu fought mercenaries called Šȝrḍȝhȝ (

[figure]

) no doubt the

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[paragraph continues] Sherdan of whom we have heard already in the Tell el-Amarna letters. These people were evidently ready to sell their services to whomsoever paid for them, for we find them later operating against their former Egyptian masters.

About thirty years later, when Merneptah was on the throne, there was a revolt of the Libyans, and with many allies from the 'Peoples of the Sea' they proceeded to attack Egypt. Though the Philistines do not actually appear among the names of the allies, the history of this invasion is one of the most important in the origines of that remarkable people. The details are recorded in four inscriptions set up by the king after his victory over the invaders, one of which inscriptions is the famous 'Israel' stela.

The first inscription is that of the temple of Karnak, a translation of which will be found in Breasted's Ancient Records, vol. iii, p. 241. This inscription begins with a list of the allied enemies:

[figure]

ȝkw[ȝ]šw

[figure]

Tršw

[figure]

Rkw

[figure]

Šrdnw

[figure]

Škršw

[paragraph continues] The beginning of the inscription is lost, but the list is probably complete, as in the sequel, where the allied tribes are referred to more than once, no other names are mentioned.

Merneptah, after extolling his own valour and the military preparations he had made, tells us how he had received news that

[figure]

(Maraiwi or something similar) 'the miserable chief of Libya', with his allies aforesaid, had come with his family to the western boundary of Egypt. Enraged like a lion, he assembled his officers and to them expressed his opinion of the invaders in a way that leaves nothing to the imagination. 'They spend their time going about and fighting to fill their bellies day by day: they come to Egypt to seek the needs of their mouths: their chief is like a dog, without courage . . . .' Some of the vigorous old king's expressions have been bowdlerised by the hand of Time, which has

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deprived us of a course of the inscribed masonry of the temple but notwithstanding we have an admirable description of restless sea-rovers, engaged in constant plunder and piracy. Then Merneptah, strengthened by a vision of his patron Ptah which appeared to him in the night, led out his warriors, defeated the Libyans—whose 'vile fallen chief' justified Merneptah's opinion of him by fleeing, and, in the words of the official report of the Egyptian general to his master, 'he passed in safety by favour of the night . . . all the gods overthrew him for the sake of Egypt: his boasting is made void: his curses have come to roost: no one knows if he be alive or dead, and even if he lives he will never rule again. They have put in his place a brother of his who fights him whenever he sees him'. The list of slain and captives is much mutilated, but is of some importance. For the slain were reckoned by cutting off and counting the phalli of circumcised, the hands of uncircumcised victims. 1 From the classification we see that at the time of the victory of Merneptah, the Libyans were circumcised, while the Shardanu and Shekelesh and Ekwesh, as we may provisionally vocalize the names, were not circumcised. The inscription ends with the flamboyant speech of Merneptah to his court, and their reply, over which we need not linger. Nor do the other inscriptions relating to the event add anything of importance for our present purpose.

About a hundred years later we meet some of these tribes again, on the walls of the great fortified temple of Medinet Habu near Thebes, which Ramessu III, the last of the great kings of Egypt, built to celebrate the events of his reign. These events are recorded in sculptured scenes, interpreted and explained by long hieroglyphic inscriptions. It is deplorable that the latter are less informing than they might have been: we grudge bitterly the precious space wasted in grovelling compliments to the majesty of the victorious monarch, and we would have gladly dispensed with the obscure and would-be poetical style which the writer of the inscription affected. 2

Ramessu III came to the throne about 1200 B.C. 3 Another Libyan invasion menaced the land in his fifth year, but the energetic monarch, who had already been careful to organize the military resources of Egypt, was successful in beating it back. War-galleys

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from the northern countries, especially the Purasati and the Zakkala, accompanied the invading Libyans; but this latter element in the assault was only a foretaste of the yet more formidable attack which they were destined to make on Egypt three years later—that is to say, roughly about 1192 B.C.

The inscription describing this war is engraved on the second pylon of the temple of Medinet Habu. Omitting a dreary encomium of the Pharaoh, with which it opens, and a long hymn of triumph with which it ends, we may confine our attention to the historical events recorded in the hieroglyphs, and pictured in the representations of battles that accompany them. The inscription records how the Northerners were disturbed, and proceeded to move eastward and southward, swamping in turn the land of the Hittites, Carchemish, Arvad, Cyprus, Syria, and other places in the sane region. We are thus to picture a great southward march through Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine. Or, rather, we are to imagine a double advance, by land and by sea: the landward march, which included two-wheeled ox-carts for the women and children, as the accompanying picture indicates; and a sea expedition, in which no doubt the spare stores would be carried more easily than on the rough Syrian roads. Clearly they were tribes accustomed to sea-faring who thus ventured on the stormy Mediterranean; clearly too, it was no mere military expedition, but a migration of wanderers accompanied by their families and seeking a new home. 1

The principal elements in the great coalition are the following:

[figure]

Šrdnw

[figure]

Duynw

[figure]

Prśtw

[figure]

Tȝkrw

[figure]

W[ȝ]ššw of the Sea

as well as the Škršȝw, of which we have heard in previous documents.

'With hearts confident and full of plans', as the inscription says, they advanced by land and by sea to Egypt. But Ramessu was ready to 'trap them like wild-fowl'. He strengthened his Syrian

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frontier, and at the same time fortified the harbours or river mouths 'with warships, galleys, and barges'. The actual battles are not described, though they are pictured in the accompanying cartoons: but the successful issue of these military preparations is graphically recorded. 'Those who reached my boundary,' says the king, 'their seed is not: their heart and their soul are finished for ever and ever. As for those who had assembled before them on the sea . . . they were dragged, overturned, and laid low upon the beach: slain and made heaps from end to end of their galleys, while all their things were cast upon the water.'

The scenes in which the land and naval engagements are represented are of great importance, in that they are contemporary records of the general appearance of the invaders and of their equipment. The naval battle, the earliest of which any pictorial record remains, is graphically portrayed. We see the Egyptian archers sweeping the crews of the invading vessels almost out of existence, and then closing in and finishing the work with their swords; one of the northerners’ vessels is capsized and those of its crew who swim to land are taken captive by the Egyptians waiting on the shore. In later scenes we see the prisoners paraded before the king, and the tale of the victims—counted by enumerating the hands chopped off the bodies.

The passage in the great Harris Papyrus, which also contains a record of the reign of Ramessu III, 1 adds very little to the information afforded us by the Medinet Habu inscription. The 'Danaiuna' are there spoken of as islanders. We are told that the Purasati and the Zakkala were 'made ashes', while the Shekelesh (called in the Harris Papyrus Shardani, who thus once more appear against Egypt) and the Washasha were settled in strongholds and bound. From all these people the king claims to have levied taxes in clothing and in grain.

As we have seen, the march of the coalition had been successful until their arrival in Egypt. The Hittites and North Syrians had been so crippled by them that Ramessu took the opportunity to extend the frontier of Egyptian territory northward. We need not follow this campaign, which does not directly concern us: but it has this indirect bearing on the subject, that the twofold ravaging of Syria, before and after the great victory of Ramessu, left it weakened and opened the door for the colonization of its coast-lands by the beaten remnant of the invading army.

Ramessu III died in or about 1167 B.C., and the conquered tribes

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began to recover their lost ground. For that powerful monarch was succeeded by a series of weak ghost-kings who disgraced the great name of Ramessu which, one and all, they bore. More and more did they become puppets in the hands of the priesthood, who cared for nothing but enriching the treasures of their temples. The frontier of Egypt was neglected. Less than a hundred years after the crushing defeat of the coalition, the situation was strangely reversed, as one of the most remarkable documents that have come down to us from antiquity allows us to see. This document is the famous Golénischeff papyrus, now at St. Petersburg. But before we proceed to an examination of its contents we must review the Egyptian materials, which we have now briefly set forth, a little more closely.

The names of the tribes, with some doubtful exceptions, are easily equated to those of peoples living in Asia Minor. We may gather a list of them out of the various authorities which have been set out above, adding to the Egyptian consonant-skeleton a provisional vocalization, and remembering that r and l are interchangeable in Egyptian:

Tell el-Amarna

Ramessu II

Merneptah

Ramessu III

c. 1400 B.C.

1333 B.C.

c. 1300 B.C.

c. 1198 B.C.

Lukku

Sherdanu

Danunu

Dardanu

Masa

Mawuna or Yaruna (?)

Pidasa

Kelekesh

Ekwesh

10.

Turisha

11.

Shekelesh

12.

Pulasati

13.

Zakkala

14.

Washasha

An X denotes 'present in', a - 'absent from' the lists. The majority of these fourteen names too closely resemble names known from classical sources for the resemblance to be accidental. It will be found that almost every one of these names can be easily identified with the name of the coast dwellers of Asia Minor; and vice versa, with one significant exception, the coast-land regions of Asia Minor are all to be found in recognizable forms in the Egyptian lists. The -sha or -shu termination is to be neglected as an ethnic formative.

Thus, beginning with the Hellespont, the Troas is represented in the Turisha, who have been correctly identified with the future Tyrrhenians (Tursci) as are the Pulasati with the future Philistines.

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[paragraph continues] Dardanus in the Troad is represented by the Dardanu. They are the carriers of the Trojan traditions to Italy. 1 Mysia is represented by the Masa, Lydia by the Sherdanu from the town of Sardis. These are the future Sardinians. And the more inland region of Maeonia is echoed in the Mawuna, if that be the correct reading. We now come to a gap: the Carians, at the S.V. corner of Asia Minor, do not appear in any recognizable form in the list, except that the North Carian town of Pedasus seems to be echoed by the Pidasa. To this hiatus we shall return presently. The Lycians are conspicuous as the Lukku.

The name of the sea-coast region of Pamphylia is clearly a later appellation, expressive of the variety of tribes and nationalities which has always characterized the Levant coast. The inland Pisidian town of Sagalassus finds its echo in the Shekelesh. The Cilicians are represented by the Kelekesh, and this brings us to the corner between Asia Minor and North Syria.

The only names not represented in the foregoing analysis are the Danunu, Ekwesh, and the three tribes which first appear in the Ramessu III invasion, the Pulasati, Zakkala, and Washasha. The first two of these, it is generally agreed, are to be equated to the Danaoi and the Achaeans 2—the first appearance in historic record of these historic names. The latter do not appear in the Ramessu III lists: there were no Achaeans in the migration from Asia Minor. The Pulasati are unquestionably to be equated to the future Philistines, north of whom we find later the Zakkala settled on the Palestinian coast. The Washasha remain obscure, both in origin and fate; but a suggestion will be made presently regarding them. They can hardly have been the ancestors of the Indo-European Oscans.

The various lines of evidence which have been set forth in the preceding pages indicate Crete or its neighbourhood as the probable land of origin of this group of tribes. They may be recapitulated:

(1) The Philistines, or a branch of them, are sometimes called Cherethites or Cretans.

(2) They are said to come from Caphtor, a name more like Keftiu than anything else, which certainly denotes a place where the Cretan civilization was dominant.

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(3) The hieratic school-tablet mentions 'Akašou' as a Keftian name: it is also Philistine [Achish].

To this may be added the important fact that the Phaestos disk, the inscription on which will be considered later in this book, shows us among its signs a head with a plumed head-dress, very similar to that shown on the Philistine captives represented at Medinet Habu.

We must not, however, forget the fact at which we paused for a moment, that thrice the Philistine guard of the Hebrew kings are spoken of as the Carians; and that the Carians are not otherwise represented in the lists of Egyptian invaders. We are probably not to confine our search for the origin of the Zakkala-Philistine-Washasha league to Crete alone: the neighbouring strip of mainland coast probably supplied its contingent to the sea-pirates. The connexion of Caria with Crete was traditional to the time of Strabo; 'the most generally received account is that the Carians, then called Leleges, were governed by Minos, and occupied the islands; then removing to the continent, they obtained possession of a large tract of sea-coast and of the interior, by driving out the former occupiers, who were for the greater part Leleges and Pelasgi.' 1 Further, he quotes Alcaeus's expression, 'shaking a Carian crest,' which is suggestive of the plumed head-dress of the Philistines. Again, speaking of the city Caunus, on the shore opposite Rhodes, he tells us that its inhabitants 'speak the same language as the Carians, came from Crete, and retained their own laws and customs' 2—which, however, Herodotus 3 contradicts. Herodotus indeed (loc. cit.) gives us the same tradition as Strabo regarding the origin of the Carians: they

'had come from the islands to the continent. For being subjects of Minos, and anciently called Leleges, they occupied the islands without paying any tribute, so far as I can find by inquiring into the remotest times; but whenever Minos required them, they manned his ships; and as Minos subdued an extensive territory, and was successful in war, the Carians were by far the most famous of all nations in those times. They also introduced three inventions which the Greeks have adopted; of fastening crests on helmets, putting devices on shields, and putting handles on shields. . . . After a long time the Dorians and Ionians drove the Carians out of the islands and so they came to the continent. This is the account that the Cretans give of the Carians, but the Carians do not admit its correctness, considering themselves to be autochthonous inhabitants of the continent . . . and in testimony of this they show an ancient temple of Zeus Carios at Mylasa.'

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If then by the Pulasati we are to fill in the hiatus in the list of Asia Minor coast-dwellers, the most reasonable explanation of the name is after all the old theory that it is to be equated with Pelasgi. And if the worshippers of Zeus Carios settled in Palestine, they might be expected to bring their god with them and to erect a temple to him. Now we read in 1 Samuel vii, that the Philistines came up against the Israelites who were holding a religious ceremony in Mizpah; that they were beaten back by a thunderstorm, and chased in panic from Mizpah to a place called Beth-Car (v. 11). We may suppose that the chase stopped at Beth-Car because it was within Philistine territory; but unfortunately all the efforts to identify this place, not otherwise known, have proved futile. Very likely it was not an inhabited town or village at all, but a sanctuary: it was raised on a conspicuous height (for the chase stopped under Beth-Car): and the name means House of Car, 1 as Beth-Dagon means House or Temple of Dagon. This obscure incident, therefore, affords one more link to the chain.

If the Cretans and the Carians together were represented by Zakkala-Pulasati-Washasha league, we might expect to find some elements from the two important islands of Rhodes and Carpathos, which lie like the piers of a bridge between Crete and the Carian mainland. And I think we may, without comparisons too far-fetched, actually find such elements. Strabo tells us 2 that a former name of Rhodes was Ophiussa: and we can hardly avoid at least seeing the similarity between this name and that of the Washasha. 3 And as for Carpathos, which Homer calls Crapathos, is it too bold to hear in this classical name an echo of the pre-Hellenic word, whatever it may have been, which the Egyptians corrupted to Keftiu, and the Hebrews to Caphtor? 4

What then are we to make of the name of the Zakkala or Zakkara? This has hitherto proved a crux. Petrie identifies it with Zakro in Crete 5; but as has several times been pointed out regarding this identification, we do not know how old the name Zakro may be. As we have seen that all the other tribes take their name

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from the coasts of Asia Minor, it is probable that the Zakkala are the Cretan contingents to the coalition: and it may be that in their name we are to see the interpretation of the mysterious Casluhim of the Table of Nations 1 (‏כסלחים‎ being a mistake for ‏סכל׳‎). The most frequently suggested identification, with the Teucrians (assigned by Strabo on the authority of Callinus to a Cretan origin), is perhaps the most satisfactory as yet put forward; notwithstanding the just criticism of W. Max Müller 2 that the double k and the vowel of the first syllable are difficulties not to be lightly evaded. Clerinont-Ganneau 3 would equate them to a Nabatean Arab tribe, the Δαχαρηνοί, mentioned by Stephanus of Byzantium; but, as Weill 4 points out, it is highly improbable that one of the allied tribes should have been Semitic in origin; if the similarity of names be more than an accident, it is more likely that the Arabs should have borrowed it.

The conclusion indicated therefore is that the Philistines were a people composed of several septs, derived from Crete and the southwest corner of Asia Minor. Their civilization, probably, was derived from Crete, and though there was a large Carian element in their composition, they may fairly be said to have been the people who imported with them to Palestine the memories and traditions of the great days of Minos.

CHAPTER II

[figure]

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CHAPTER II

THE HISTORY OF THE PHILISTINES

I. The Adventures of Wen-Amon among them

The Golénischeff papyrus 1 was found in 1891 at El-Khibeh in Upper Egypt. It is the personal report of the adventures of an Egyptian messenger to Lebanon, sent on an important semi-religious, semi-diplomatic mission. The naïveté of the style makes it one of the most vivid and convincing narratives that the ancient East affords.

Ramessu III is nominally on the throne, and the papyrus is dated in his fifth year. The real authority at Thebes is, however, Hrihor, the high priest of Amon, who is ultimately to usurp the sovereignty and become the founder of the Twenty-first Dynasty. In Lower Egypt, the Tanite noble Nesubenebded, in Greek Smendes, has control of the Delta. Egypt is in truth a house divided against itself.

On the sixteenth day of the eleventh month of the fifth year of Ramessu, one Wen-Amon was dispatched from Thebes to fetch timber for the barge called User-het, the great august sacred barge of Amon-Ra, king of the gods. Who Wen-Amon may have been, we do not certainly know; he states that he had a religious office, but it is not clear what this was. It speaks eloquently for the rotten state of Egypt at the time, however, that no better messenger could be found than this obviously incompetent person—a sort of Egyptian prototype of the Rev. Robert Spalding! With him was an image of Amon, which he looked upon as a kind of fetish, letters of credit or of introduction, and the wherewithal to purchase the timber.

Sailing down the Nile, Wen-Amon in due time reached Tanis, and presented himself at the court of Nesubenebded, who with his wife Tentamon, received the messenger of Amon-Ra with fitting courtesy. He handed over his letters, which (being themselves unable to decipher them) they caused to be read: and they said, 'Yea, yea,

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[paragraph continues] I will do all that our lord Amon-Ra saith.' Wen-Amon tarried at Tanis till a fortnight had elapsed from his first setting out from Thebes; and then his hosts put him in charge of a certain Mengebti, captain of a ship about to sail to Syria. This was rather casual; evidently Mengebti's vessel was an ordinary trading ship, whereas we might have expected (and as appears later the Syrians did expect) that one charged with an important special message should be sent in a special ship. At this point the thoughtless Wen-Amon made his first blunder. He forgot all about reclaiming his letters of introduction from Nesubenebded, and so laid up for himself the troubles even now in store for the helpless tourist who tries to land at Beirut without a passport. Like the delightful pilgrimage of the mediaeval Dominican Felix Fabri, the modernness of this narrative of antiquity is not one of its least attractions.

On the first day of the twelfth month Mengebti's ship set sail. After a journey of unrecorded length the ship put in at Dor, probably the modern Tantura on the southern coast of the promontory of Carmel. Dor was inhabited by Zakkala (a very important piece of information) and they had a king named Badyra. We are amazed to read that, apparently as soon as the ship entered the harbour, this hospitable monarch sent to Wen-Amon 'much bread, a jar of wine, and a joint of beef'. I verily believe that this was a tale got up by some bakhshish-hunting huckster. The simpleminded tourist of modern days is imposed upon by similar magnificent fables.

There are few who have travelled much by Levant steamers without having lost something by theft. Sufferers may claim Wen-Amon as a companion in misfortune. As soon as the vessel touched at Dor, some vessels of gold, four vessels and a purse of silver—in all 5 deben or about 1 1/5 lb. of gold and 31 deben or about 7½ lb. of silver—were stolen by a man of the ship, who decamped. This was all the more serious, because, as appears later, these valuables were actually the money with which Wen-Amon had been entrusted for the purchase of the timber.

So Wen-Amon did exactly what he would have done in the twentieth century AḌ. He went the following morning and interviewed the governor, Badyra. There was no Egyptian consul at the time, so he was obliged to conduct the interview in person. 'I have been robbed in thy harbour,' he says, 'and thou, being king, art he who should judge, and search for my money. The money indeed belongs to Amon-Ra, and Nesubenebded, and Hrihor my lord: it also belongs to Warati, and Makamaru, and Zakar-Baal prince of Byblos'

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[paragraph continues] —the last three being evidently the names of the merchants who had been intended to receive the money. The account of Abraham's negotiations with the Hittites is not more modern than the king's reply. We can feel absolutely certain that he said exactly the words which Wen-Amon puts in his mouth: 'Thy honour and excellency! Behold, I know nothing of this complaint of thine. If the thief were of my land, and boarded the ship to steal thy treasure, I would even repay it from mine own treasury till they found who the thief was. But the thief belongs to thy ship (so I have no responsibility). Howbeit, wait a few days and I will seek for him.' Wen-Amon had to be content with this assurance. Probably nothing was done after he had been bowed out from the governor's presence: in any case, nine days elapsed without news of the missing property. At the end of the time Wen-Amon gave up hope, and made up his mind to do the best he could without the money. He still had his image of Amon-Ra, and he had a child-like belief that the foreigners would share the reverent awe with which he himself regarded it. So he sought permission of the king of Dor to depart.

Here comes a lacuna much to be deplored. A sadly broken fragment helps to fill it up, but consecutive sense is unattainable. 'He said unto me "Silence!" . . . and they went away and sought their thieves . . . and I went away from Tyre as dawn was breaking . . . Zakar-Baal, prince of Byblos. . . there I found 30 deben of silver and took it . . . your silver is deposited with me . . . I will take it . . . they went away . . . I came to . . . the harbour of Byblos and . . . to Amon, and I put his goods in it. The prince of Byblos sent a messenger to me . . . my harbour. I sent him a message . . .' These, with a few other stray words, are all that can be made out. It seems as though Wen-Amon tried to recoup himself for his loss by appropriating the silver of some one else. At any rate, the fragment leaves Wen-Amon at his destination, the harbour of Byblos. Then the continuous text begins again. Apparently Zakar-Baal has sent a message to him to begone and to find a ship going to Egypt in which he could sail. Why Zakar-Baal was so inhospitable does not appear. Indeed daily, for nineteen days, he kept sending a similar message to the Egyptian, who seems to have done nothing one way or another. At last Wen-Amon found a ship about to sail for Egypt, and made arrangements to go as a passenger in her, despairing of ever carrying out his mission. He put his luggage on board and then waited for the darkness of night to come on board with his image of Amon, being for some reason anxious that none but himself should see this talisman.

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But now a strange thing happened. One of the young men of Zakar-Baal's entourage was seized with a prophetic ecstasy—the first occurrence of this phenomenon on record—and in his frenzy cried, Bring up the god! Bring up Amon's messenger that has him! Send him, and let him go.' Obedient to the prophetic message Zakar-Baal sent down to the harbour to summon the Egyptian. The latter was much annoyed, and protested, not unreasonably, at this sudden change of attitude. Indeed he suspected a ruse to let the ship go off; with his belongings, and leave him defenceless at the mercy of the Byblites. The only effect of his protest was an additional order to 'hold up' the ship as well.

In the morning he presented himself to Zakar-Baal. After the sacrifice had been made in the castle by the sea-shore where the prince dwelt, Wen-Amon was brought into his presence. He was 'sitting in his upper chamber, leaning his back against a window, while the waves of the great Syrian sea beat on the shore behind him'. To adapt a passage in one of Mr. Rudyard Kipling's best-known stories, we can imagine the scene, but we cannot imagine Wen-Amon imagining it: the eye-witness speaks in every word of the picturesque description.

The interview was not pleasant for the Egyptian. It made so deep an impression upon him, that to our great gain he was able when writing his report to reproduce it almost verbatim, as follows:

'Amon's favour upon thee,' said Wen-Amon.

'How long is it since thou hast left the land of Amon?' demanded Zakar-Baal, apparently without returning his visitor's salutation. 'Five months and one day,' said Wen-Amon.

(This answer shows how much of the document we have lost. We cannot account for more than the fourteen days spent between Thebes and Tanis, nine days at Dor, nineteen days at Byblos—six weeks in all-plus the time spent in the voyage, which at the very outside could scarcely have been more than another six weeks.)

'Well then, if thou art a true man, where are thy credentials?'

We remember that Wen-Amon had left them with the prince of Tanis, and he said so. Then was Zakar-Baal very wroth. 'What! There is no writing in thy hand? And where is the ship that Nesubenebded gave thee? Where are its crew of Syrians? For sure, he would never have put thee in charge of this (incompetent Egyptian) who would have drowned thee—and then where would they have sought their god and thee?'

This is the obvious sense, though injured by a slight lacuna. Nothing more clearly shows how the reputation of Egypt had sunk

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in the interval since the exploits of Ramessu III. Zakar-Baal speaks of Mengebti and his Egyptian crew with much the same contempt as Capt. Davis in Stevenson's Ebb-tide speaks of a crew of Kanakas. Wen-Amon ventured on a mild protest. 'Nesubenebded has no Syrian crews: all his ships are manned with Egyptians.'

'There are twenty ships in my harbour,' said Zakar-Baal sharply, and ten thousand ships in Sidon—' The exaggeration and the aposiopesis vividly mirror the vehemence of the speaker. He was evidently going on to say that these ships, though Egyptian, were all manned by Syrians. But, seeing that Wen-Amon was, as he expresses it, 'silent in that supreme moment' he broke off, and abruptly asked—

'Now, what is thy business here?'

We are to remember that Wen-Amon had come to buy timber, but had lost his money. We cannot say anything about whether he had actually recovered the money or its equivalent, because of the unfortunate gap in the document already noticed. However, it would appear that he had at the moment no ready cash, for he tried the effect of a little bluff. 'I have come for the timber of the great august barge of Amon-Ra, king of the gods. Thy father gave it, as did thy grandfather, and thou wilt do so too.'

But Zakar-Baal was not impressed. 'True,' said he, 'they gave the timber, but they were paid for it: I will do so too, if I be paid likewise.' And then we are interested to learn that he had his father's account-books brought in, and showed his visitor the records of large sums that had been paid for timber. 'See now,' continued Zakar-Baal in a speech rather difficult to construe intelligibly, 'had I and my property been under the king of Egypt, he would not have sent money, but would have sent a command. These transactions of my father's were not the payment of tribute due. I am not thy servant nor the servant of him that sent thee. All I have to do is to speak, and the logs of Lebanon lie cut on the shore of the sea. But where are the sails and the cordage thou hast brought to transport the logs? . . . Egypt is the mother of all equipments and all civilization; how then have they made thee come in this hole-and-corner way?' He is evidently still dissatisfied with this soi-disant envoy, coming in a common passenger ship without passport or credentials.

Then Wen-Amon played his trump card. He produced the image of Amon. 'No hole-and-corner journey is this, O guilty one!' said he. 'Amon owns every ship on the sea, and owns Lebanon which thou hast claimed as thine own. Amon has sent me, and Hrihor my lord has made me come, bearing this great god. And yet, though thou didst

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well know that he was here, thou hadst kept him waiting twenty-nine days in the harbour. 1 Former kings have sent money to thy fathers, but not life and health: if thou do the bidding of Amon, he will send thee life and health. Wish not for thyself a thing belonging to Amon-Ra.'

These histrionics, however, did not impress Zakar-Baal any more than the previous speech. Clearly Wen-Amon saw in his face that the lord of Byblos was not overawed by the image of his god, and that he wanted something more tangible than vague promises of life and health. So at length he asked for his scribe to be brought him that he might write a letter to Tanis, praying for a consignment of goods on account. The letter was written, the messenger dispatched, and in about seven weeks returned with a miscellaneous cargo of gold, silver, linen, 500 rolls of papyrus (this is important), hides, rope, lentils, and fish. A little present for Wen-Amon himself was sent as well by the lady Tentamon. Then the business-like prince rejoiced, we are told, and gave the word for the felling of the trees. And at last, some eight months after Wen-Amon's departure from Thebes, the timber lay on the shore ready for delivery.