y had
no resource left but to arm himself with patience and settle down to
a lengthened siege. The invader, fresh from a victory at Megiddo, and
following up his good fortune in a forward movement, had to reckon upon
further and serious resistance at this point, and to prepare himself for
a second conflict. The Amorite chiefs and their allies had the advantage
of a level and firm ground for the evolutions of their chariots during
the attack, while, if they were beaten, the citadel afforded them a
secure rallying-place, whence, having gathered their shattered troops,
they could regain their respective countries, or enter, with the help
of a few devoted men, upon a species of guerilla warfare in which they
excelled.

The road from Damascus led to a point south of Quodshu, while that
from Phonicia came right up to the town itself or to its immediate
neighbourhood. The dyke of Bahr el-Kades served to keep the plain in a
dry condition, and thus secured for numerous towns, among which Hamath
stood out pre-eminently, a prosperous existence. Beyond Hamath, and to
the left, between the Orontes and the sea, lay the commercial kingdom of
Alasia, protected from the invader by bleak mountains.*

* The site of Alasia, Alashia, was determined from the Tel
el-Amarna tablets by Maspero. Niebuhr had placed it to the
west of Cilicia, opposite the island of Eleousa mentioned by
Strabo. Conder connected it with the scriptural Elishah, and
W. Max Millier confounds it with Asi or Cyprus.

On the right, between the Orontes and the Balikh, extended the land of
rivers, Naharaim. Towns had grown up here thickly,--on the sides of the
torrents from the Amanos, along the banks of rivers, near springs or
wells--wherever, in fact, the presence of water made culture possible.
The fragments of the Egyptian chronicles which have come down to us
number these towns by the hundred,* and yet of how many more must the
records have perished with the crumbling Theban walls upon which the
Pharaohs had their names incised! Khalabu was the Aleppo of our own
day,** and grouped around it lay Turmanuna, Tunipa, Zarabu, Nii,
Durbaniti, Nirabu, Sarmata,*** and a score of others which depended upon
it, or upon one of its rivals. The boundaries of this portion of the
Lower Lotanu have come down to us in a singularly indefinite form, and
they must also, moreover, have been subject to continual modifications
from the results of tribal conflicts.