need to anticipate Chaldaean
interference when, forsaking their ancient traditions, they penetrated
for the first time into the heart of Syria. Not only was Babylon no
longer supreme there, but the coalition of those cities on which she had
depended for help in subduing the West was partially dissolved, and the
foreign princes who had succeeded to her patrimony were so far conscious
of their weakness, that they voluntarily kept aloof from the countries
in which, previous to their advent, Babylon had held undivided sway. The
Egyptian conquest of Syria had already begun in the days of Agumkakrime,
and it is possible that dread of the Pharaoh was one of the chief causes
which influenced the Cossaeans to return a favourable answer to the
Khani. Thutmosis I., on entering Syria, encountered therefore only the
native levies, and it must be admitted that, in spite of their renowned
courage, they were not likely to prove formidable adversaries in
Egyptian estimation. Not one of the local Syrian dynasties was
sufficiently powerful to collect all the forces of the country around
its chief, so as to oppose a compact body of troops to the attack of
the African armies. The whole country consisted of a collection of
petty states, a complex group of peoples and territories which even the
Egyptians themselves never completely succeeded in disentangling. They
classed the inhabitants, however, under three or four very comprehensive
names--Kharu, Zahi, Lotanu, and Kefatiu--all of which frequently recur
in the inscriptions, but without having always that exactness of meaning
we look for in geographical terms. As was often the case in similar
circumstances, these names were used at first to denote the districts
close to the Egyptian frontier with which the inhabitants of the Delta
had constant intercourse. The Kefatiu seem to have been at the outset
the people of the sea-coast, more especially of the region occupied
later by the Phoenicians, but all the tribes with whom the Phoenicians
came in contact on the Asiatic and European border were before long
included under the same name.*

* The Kefatiu, whose name was first read Kefa, and later
Kefto, were originally identified with the inhabitants of
Cyprus or Crete, and subsequently with those of Cilicia,
although the decree of Canopus locates them in Phoenicia.

Zahi originally comprised that portion of the desert and of the maritime
plain on the north-east of Egypt which