the Aramaean territory, including the slopes of the
Amanos and the deep valleys of the Taurus, was inhabited by peoples of
various origin; the most powerful of these, the Khati, were at this time
slowly forsaking the mountain region, and spreading by degrees over the
country between the Afrin and the Euphrates.*

The Canaanites were the most numerous of all these groups, and had
they been able to amalgamate under a single king, or even to organize
a lasting confederacy, it would have been impossible for the Egyptian
armies to have broken through the barrier thus raised between them and
the rest of Asia; but, unfortunately, so far from showing the slightest
tendency towards unity or concentration, the Canaanites were more
hopelessly divided than any of the surrounding nations. Their mountains
contained nearly as many states as there were valleys, while in the
plains each town represented a separate government, and was built on a
spot carefully selected for purposes of defence. The land, indeed, was
chequered with these petty states, and so closely were they crowded
together, that a horseman, travelling at leisure, could easily pass
through two or three of them in a day's journey.**

* Thutmosis III. shows that, at any rate, they were
established in these regions about the XVIth century B.C.
The Egyptian pronunciation of their name is _Khiti_, with
the feminine _Khitait, Khitit_; but the Tel el-Amarna texts
employ the vocalisation _Khati, Khate_, which must be more
correct than that of the Egyptians, The form _Khiti_ seems
to me to be explicable by an error of popular etymology.
Egyptian ethnical appellations in _iti_ formed their plural
by _-atiu, -atee, -ati, -ate_, so that if _Khate, Khati_,
were taken for a plural, it would naturally have suggested
to the scribes the form _Khiti_ for the singular.

** Thutmosis III., speaking to his soldiers, tells them that
all the chiefs the projecting spur of some mountain, or on a
solitary and more or less irregularly shaped eminence in the
midst of a plain, and the means of defence in the country
are shut up in Megiddo, so that "to take it is to take a
thousand cities:" this is evidently a hyperbole in the mouth
of the conqueror, but the exaggeration itself shows how
numerous were the chiefs and consequently the small states
in Central and Southern Syria.

Not only were the r