n the industries or
manners of the primitive natives: those of them only who were close to
the frontiers of Egypt came under her subtle charm and felt the power
of her attraction, but this slight influence never penetrated beyond
the provinces lying nearest to the Dead Sea. The remaining populations
looked rather to Chaldaea, and received, though at a distance, the
continuous impress of the kingdoms of the Euphrates. The tradition which
attributes to Sargon of Agade, and to his son Istaramsin, the subjection
of the people of the Amanos and the Orontes, probably contains but a
slight element of truth; but if, while awaiting further information, we
hesitate to believe that the armies of these princes ever crossed the
Lebanon or landed in Cyprus, we must yet admit the very early advent
of their civilization in those western countries which are regarded as
having been under their rule. More than three thousand years before
our era, the Asiatics who figure on the tomb of Khnumhotpu clothed
themselves according to the fashions of Uru and Lagash, and affected
long robes of striped and spotted stuffs. We may well ask if they had
also borrowed the cuneiform syllabary for the purposes of their official
correspondence,* and if the professional scribe with his stylus and clay
tablet was to be found in their cities. The Babylonian courtiers were,
no doubt, more familiar visitors among them than the Memphite nobles,
while the Babylonian kings sent regularly to Syria for statuary stone,
precious metals, and the timber required in the building of
their monuments: Urbau and Gudea, as well as their successors and
contemporaries, received large convoys of materials from the Amanos, and
if the forests of Lebanon were more rarely utilised, it was not because
their existence was unknown, but because distance rendered their
approach more difficult and transport more costly. The Mediterranean
marches were, in their language, classed as a whole under one
denomination--Martu, Amurru,** the West--but there were distinctive
names for each of the provinces into which they were divided.

* The most ancient cuneiform tablets of Syrian origin are
not older than the XVIth century before our era; they
contain the official, correspondence of the native princes
with the Pharaohs Amenothes III. and IV. of the XVIIIth
dynasty, as will be seen later on in this volume; they were
discovered in the ruins of one of the palaces at Te