turies. 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.