rontiers of Asia itself. Gaza, the key to the military road
which ran along the sea-board of Palestine, fell once more into Egyptian
hands; and the Egyptian troops overran the future Judah, occupying the
districts of Jerusalem and Hebron, and even crossing the Jordan. But no
permanent conquest was effected; Ramses retired again to Egypt, and for
more than two centuries no more Egyptian armies found their way into
Canaan. Gaza and the neighbouring cities became the strongholds of the
Philistine pirates, and effectually barred the road to Asia.

The campaign of Ramses III. in southern Palestine must have taken place
when the Israelites were still in the desert. Between the two invasions
of Egypt by the barbarians of the north, there was no great interval of
time. The Exodus, which had been due in part to the pressure of the
first of them in the reign of Meneptah, was separated by only a few
years from the capture of Hebron by Caleb, which must have occurred
after its evacuation by the Egyptian troops. The great movement which
brought the populations of Asia Minor and the Greek islands upon Canaan
and the Nile, and which began in the age of the Exodus, was over before
the children of Israel had emerged from the wilds of the desert.

In the Old Testament the Amorites are constantly associated with another
people, the Hittites. When Ezekiel ascribes an Amorite parentage to
Jerusalem, he ascribes to it at the same time a Hittite parentage as
well. The same interlocking of Amorite and Hittite that meets us in the
Bible, meets us also on the monuments of Egypt. Here, too, we are told
that Kadesh on the Orontes, the Hittite capital, was "in the land of the
Amorites." It was, in fact, on the shores of the Lake of Homs, in the
midst of the district over which the Amorites claimed rule.

The Hittites were intruders from the north. The Egyptian monuments have
shown us what they were like. Their skin was yellow, their eyes and hair
were black, their faces were beardless. Square and prominent cheeks, a
protrusive nose, with retreating chin and forehead and lozenge-shaped
eyes, gave them a Mongoloid appearance. They were not handsome to look
upon, but the accuracy of their portraiture by the artists of Egypt is
confirmed by their own monuments. The heads represented on the Egyptian
monuments are repeated, feature by feature, in the Hittite sculptures.
Ugly as they were, they were not the caricatures of an enemy, but the
truthful portr