heir festal
garments every day,--perfumed oil is on their heads and new wigs;--they
stand at their doors, their hands full of bunches of flowers,--green
branches from the village of Pihathor,--garlands of Pahuru,--on the day
when Pharaoh makes his entry.--Joy then reigns and spreads, and nothing
can stay it,--O Usirmari-sotpuniri, thou who art Montu in the two
lands,--Ramses-Miamun, the god." The town acted as an advance post,
from whence the king could keep watch against all intriguing
adversaries,--whether on the banks of the Orontes or the coast of the
Mediterranean.

* An allusion to the foundation of this residence occurs in
an inscription at Abu Simbel, dated in his XXVth year.

Nothing appeared for the moment to threaten the peace of the empire.
The Asiatic vassals had raised no disturbance on hearing of the king's
accession, and Mautallu continued to observe the conditions of
the treaty which he had signed with Seti. Two military expeditions
undertaken beyond the isthmus in the IInd and IVth years of the new
sovereign were accomplished almost without fighting. He repressed by the
way the marauding Shausu, and on reaching the Nahr el-Kelb, which then
formed the northern frontier of his empire, he inscribed at the turn
of the road, on the rocks which overhang the mouth of the river, two
triumphal stelae in which he related his successes.* Towards the end
of his IVth year a rebellion broke out among the Khati, which caused a
rupture of relations between the two kingdoms and led to some irregular
fighting. Khatusaru, a younger brother of Maurusaru, murdered the latter
and made himself king in his stead.** It is not certain whether the
Egyptians took up arms against him, or whether he judged it wise to
oppose them in order to divert the attention of his subjects from his
crime.

* The stelae are all in a very bad condition; in the last of
them the date is no longer legible.

** In the _Treaty of Harrises II. with the Prince of Khati_,
the writer is content to use a discreet euphemism, and
states that Mautallu succumbed "to his destiny." The name of
the Prince of the Khati is found later on under the form
Khatusharu, in that of a chief defeated by Tiglath-pileser
I. in the country of Kummukh, though this name has generally
been read Khatukhi.

At all events, he convoked his Syrian vassals and collected his
mercenaries; the whole of Naharaim, Khalupu, Carche