n power was falling to pieces, and
Palestine was threatened by Hittite invaders from the north. The native
governors were fighting with one another or intriguing with the enemies
of Egypt, while all the time protesting their loyalty to the Pharaoh.
Ebed-Asherah and his son Aziru governed the Amorites in the north, and
the prefect of Phoenicia sends bitter complaints to the Egyptian court
of their hostility to himself and their royal master. Aziru, however,
was an able ruler. He succeeded in clearing himself from the charge of
complicity with the Hittites against whom he had been sent, as well as
in getting the better of his Phoenician rival. The latter disappears
from history, while the Amorites are allowed to settle undisturbed in
Zemar and other cities of inland Phoenicia.

Under Ramses II. of the Nineteenth dynasty, Canaan still yielded a
reluctant obedience to Egypt. In the troubles which had followed the
fall of the Eighteenth dynasty, it had shaken itself free from foreign
authority, but had been reconquered by Seti I., the father of Ramses.
Egyptian authority was re-established even on the eastern side of the
Jordan; but it did not continue for long. Ramses was hardly dead before
Egypt was invaded by Libyans from the west and robber hordes from the
Greek seas, and though the invasion was ultimately beaten back, its
strength had been exhausted in the struggle. The Egyptian empire in
Canaan passed away for ever, and the Canaanites were left free to govern
themselves.

The kingdom of Sihon was one of the results of this ending of Egyptian
rule. The Amorites became a power once more. A few years later Egypt was
again attacked by armed invaders from the north. The assailants poured
into it both by sea and land. Fleets of ships filled with Philistines
and Achaeans and other northern tribes entered the mouths of the Nile,
while a vast army simultaneously attacked it by land. The army, we are
told, had encamped in "the land of the Amorites," and they carried with
them on their farther march recruits from the countries through which
they passed. The Amorite "chief" himself was among those who followed
the barbarians to Egypt, eager for the spoils of the wealthiest country
in the ancient world.

Ramses III. of the Twentieth dynasty was now on the throne. He succeeded
in rolling back the wave of invasion, in gaining a decisive victory over
the combined military and naval forces of the enemy, and in pursuing
them to the f