Zahi originally comprised that portion of the desert and of the maritime plain on the north-east of Egypt which was coasted by the fleets, or traversed by the armies of Egypt, as they passed to and fro between Syria and the banks of the Nile. This region had been ravaged by Ahmosis during his raid upon Sharuhana, the year after the fall of Avaris. To the south-east of Zahi lay Kharû; it included the greater part of Mount Seir, whose wadys, thinly dotted over with oases, were inhabited by tribes of more or less stationary habits. The approaches to it were protected by a few towns, or rather fortified villages, built in the neighbourhood of springs, and surrounded by cultivated fields and poverty-stricken gardens; but the bulk of the people lived in tents or in caves on the mountain-sides. The Egyptians constantly confounded those Khauri, whom the Hebrews in after-times found scattered among the children of Edom, with the other tribes of Bedouin marauders, and designated them vaguely as Shaûsû. Lotanû lay beyond, to the north of Kharû and to the north-east of Zahi, among the hills which separate the “Shephelah” from the Jordan.*

As it was more remote from the isthmus, and formed the Egyptian horizon in that direction, all the new countries with which the Egyptians became acquainted beyond its northern limits were by degrees included under the one name of Lotanû, and this term was extended to comprise successively the entire valley of the Jordan, then that of the Orontes, and finally even that of the Euphrates. Lotanû became thenceforth a vague and fluctuating term, which the Egyptians applied indiscriminately to widely differing Asiatic nations, and to which they added another indefinite epithet when they desired to use it in a more limited sense: that part of Syria nearest to Egypt being in this case qualified as Upper Lotanû, while the towns and kingdoms further north were described as being in Lower Lotanû. In the same way the terms Zahi and Kharû were extended to cover other and more northerly regions. Zahi was applied to the coast as far as the mouth of the Nahr el-Kebir and to the country of the Lebanon which lay between the Mediterranean and the middle course of the Orontes. Kharû ran parallel to Zahi, but comprised the mountain district, and came to include most of the countries which were at first ranged under Upper Lotanû; it was never applied to the region beyond the neighbourhood of Mount Tabor, nor to the trans-Jordanie provinces. The three names in their wider sense preserved the same relation to each other as before, Zahi lying to the west and north-west of Kharû, and Lower Lotanû to the north of Kharû and north-east of Zahi, but the extension of meaning did not abolish the old conception of their position, and hence arose confusion in the minds of those who employed them; the scribes, for instance, who registered in some far-off Theban temple the victories of the Pharaoh would sometimes write Zahi where they should have inscribed Kharû, and it is a difficult matter for us always to detect their mistakes. It would be unjust to blame them too severely for their inaccuracies, for what means had they of determining the relative positions of that confusing collection of states with which the Egyptians came in contact as soon as they had set foot on Syrian soil?

A choice of several routes into Asia, possessing unequal advantages, was open to the traveller, but the most direct of them passed through the town of Zalû. The old entrenchments running from the Ked Sea to the marshes of the Pelusiac branch still protected the isthmus, and beyond these, forming an additional defence, was a canal on the banks of which a fortress was constructed. This was occupied by the troops who guarded the frontier, and no traveller was allowed to pass without having declared his name and rank, signified the business which took him into Syria or Egypt, and shown the letters with which he was entrusted.*

It was from Zalû that the Pharaohs set out with their troops, when summoned to Kharû by a hostile confederacy; it was to Zalû they returned triumphant after the campaign, and there, at the gates of the town, they were welcomed by the magnates of the kingdom. The road ran for some distance over a region which was covered by the inundation of the Nile during six months of the year; it then turned eastward, and for some distance skirted the sea-shore, passing between the Mediterranean and the swamp which writers of the Greek period called the Lake of Sirbonis.*

This stage of the journey was beset with difficulties, for the Sirbonian Lake did not always present the same aspect, and its margins were constantly shifting. When the canals which connected it with the open sea happened to become obstructed, the sheet of water subsided from evaporation, leaving in many places merely an expanse of shifting mud, often concealed under the sand which the wind brought up from the desert. Travellers ran imminent risk of sinking in this quagmire, and the Greek historians tell of large armies being almost entirely swallowed up in it. About halfway along the length of the lake rose the solitary hill of Mount Casios; beyond this the sea-coast widened till it became a vast slightly undulating plain, covered with scanty herbage, and dotted over with wells containing an abundant supply of water, which, however, was brackish and disagreeable to drink.

Beyond these lay a grove of palms, a brick prison, and a cluster of miserable houses, bounded by a broad wady, usually dry. The bed of the torrent often served as the boundary between Africa and Asia, and the town was for many years merely a convict prison, where ordinary criminals, condemned to mutilation and exile, were confined; indeed, the Greeks assure us that it owed its name of Rhinocolûra to the number of noseless convicts who were to be seen there.*

At this point the coast turns in a north-easterly direction, and is flanked with high sand-hills, behind which the caravans pursue their way, obtaining merely occasional glimpses of the sea. Here and there, under the shelter of a tower or a half-ruined fortress, the traveller would have found wells of indifferent water, till on reaching the confines of Syria he arrived at the fortified village of Raphia, standing like a sentinel to guard the approach to Egypt. Beyond Raphia vegetation becomes more abundant, groups of sycamores and mimosas and clusters of date-palms appear on the horizon, villages surrounded with fields and orchards are seen on all sides, while the bed of a river, blocked with gravel and fallen rocks, winds its way between the last fringes of the desert and the fruitful Shephelah;* on the further bank of the river lay the suburbs of Gaza, and, but a few hundred yards beyond, Gaza itself came into view among the trees standing on its wall-crowned hill.**

The Egyptians, on their march from the Nile valley, were wont to stop at this spot to recover from their fatigues; it was their first halting-place beyond the frontier, and the news which would reach them here prepared them in some measure for what awaited them further on. The army itself, the “troop of Râ,” was drawn from four great races, the most distinguished of which came, of course, from the banks of the Nile: the Amû, born of Sokhît, the lioness-headed goddess, were classed in the second rank; the Nahsi, or negroes of Ethiopia, were placed in the third; while the Timihû, or Libyans, with the white tribes of the north, brought up the rear. The Syrians belonged to the second of these families, that next in order to the Egyptians, and the name of Amu, which for centuries had been given them, met so satisfactorily all political, literary, or commercial requirements, that the administrators of the Pharaohs never troubled themselves to discover the various elements concealed beneath the term. We are, however, able at the present time to distinguish among them several groups of peoples and languages, all belonging to the same family, but possessing distinctive characteristics. The kinsfolk of the Hebrews, the children of Ishmael and Edom, the Moabites and Ammonites, who were all qualified as Shaûsû, had spread over the region to the south and east of the Dead Sea, partly in the desert, and partly on the confines of the cultivated land. The Canaanites were not only in possession of the coast from Gaza to a point beyond the Nahr el-Kebir, but they also occupied almost the whole valley of the Jordan, besides that of the Litâny, and perhaps that of the Upper Orontes.* There were Aramaean settlements at Damascus, in the plains of the Lower Orontes, and in Naharaim.**

The country beyond 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 Khâti, were at this time slowly forsaking the mountain region, and spreading by degrees over the country between the Afrîn 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.**

Not only were the royal cities fenced with walls, but many of the surrounding villages were fortified, while the watch-towers, or migdols* built at the bends of the roads, at the fords over the rivers, and at the openings of the ravines, all testified to the insecurity of the times and the aptitude for self-defence shown by the inhabitants.

The aspect of these migdols, or forts, must have appeared strange to the first Egyptians who beheld them. These strongholds bore no resemblance to the large square or oblong enclosures to which they were accustomed, and which in their eyes represented the highest skill of the engineer. In Syria, however, the positions suitable for the construction of fortresses hardly ever lent themselves to a symmetrical plan. The usual sites had to be adapted in each case to suit the particular configuration of the ground.

It was usually a mere wall of stone or dried brick, with towers at intervals; the wall measuring from nine to twelve feet thick at the base, and from thirty to thirty-six feet high, thus rendering an assault by means of portable ladders, nearly impracticable.*

The gateway had the appearance of a fortress in itself. It was composed of three large blocks of masonry, forming a re-entering face, considerably higher than the adjacent curtains, and pierced near the top with square openings furnished with mantlets, so as to give both a front and flank view of the assailants. The wooden doors in the receded face were covered with metal and raw hides, thus affording a protection against axe or fire.*

The building was strong enough not only to defy the bands of adventurers who roamed the country, but was able to resist for an indefinite time the operations of a regular siege. Sometimes, however, the inhabitants when constructing their defences did not confine themselves to this rudimentary plan, but threw up earthworks round the selected site. On the most exposed side they raised an advance wall, not exceeding twelve or fifteen feet in height, at the left extremity of which the entrance was so placed that the assailants, in endeavouring to force their way through, were obliged to expose an unprotected flank to the defenders. By this arrangement it was necessary to break through two lines of fortification before the place could be entered. Supposing the enemy to have overcome these first obstacles, they would find themselves at their next point of attack confronted with a citadel which contained, in addition to the sanctuary of the principal god, the palace of the sovereign himself. This also had a double enclosing wall and massively built gates, which could be forced only at the expense of fresh losses, unless the cowardice or treason of the garrison made the assault an easy one.*

Of these bulwarks of Canaanite civilization, which had been thrown up by hundreds on the route of the invading hosts, not a trace is to be seen to-day. They may have been razed to the ground during one of those destructive revolutions to which the country was often exposed, or their remains may lie hidden underneath the heaps of ruins which thirty centuries of change have raised over them.*

The records of victories graven on the walls of the Theban temples furnish, it is true, a general conception of their appearance, but the notions of them which we should obtain from this source would be of a very confused character had not one of the last of the conquering Pharaohs, Ramses III., taken it into his head to have one built at Thebes itself, to contain within it, in addition to his funerary chapel, accommodation for the attendants assigned to the conduct of his worship. In the Greek and Roman period a portion of this fortress was demolished, but the external wall of defence still exists on the eastern side, together with the gate, which is commanded on the right by a projection of the enclosing-wall, and flanked by two guard-houses, rectangular in shape, and having roofs which jut out about a yard beyond the wall of support. Having passed through these obstacles, we find ourselves face to face with a migdol of cut stone, nearly square in form, with two projecting wings, the court between their loop-holed walls being made to contract gradually from the point of approach by a series of abutments. A careful examination of the place, indeed, reveals more than one arrangement which the limited knowledge of the Egyptians would hardly permit us to expect. We discover, for instance, that the main body of the building is made to rest upon a sloping sub-structure which rises to a height of some sixteen feet.

This served two purposes: it increased, in the first place, the strength of the defence against sapping; and in the second, it caused the weapons launched by the enemy to rebound with violence from its inclined surface, thus serving to keep the assailants at a distance. The whole structure has an imposing look, and it must be admitted that the royal architects charged with carrying out their sovereign’s idea brought to their task an attention to detail for which the people from whom the plan was borrowed had no capacity, and at the same time preserved the arrangements of their model so faithfully that we can readily realise what it must have been. Transport this migdol of Ramses III. into Asia, plant it upon one of those hills which the Canaanites were accustomed to select as a site for their fortifications, spread out at its base some score of low and miserable hovels, and we have before us an improvised pattern of a village which recalls in a striking manner Zerîn or Beîtîn, or any other small modern town which gathers the dwellings of its fellahin round some central stone building—whether it be a hostelry for benighted travellers, or an ancient castle of the Crusading age.

There were on the littoral, to the north of Gaza, two large walled towns, Ascalon and Joppa, in whose roadsteads merchant vessels were accustomed to take hasty refuge in tempestuous weather.* There were to be found on the plains also, and on the lower slopes of the mountains, a number of similar fortresses and villages, such as Iurza, Migdol, Lachish, Ajalon, Shocho, Adora, Aphukîn, Keilah, Gezer, and Ono; and, in the neighbourhood of the roads which led to the fords of the Jordan, Gibeah, Beth-Anoth, and finally Urusalim, our Jerusalem.** A tolerably dense population of active and industrious husbandmen maintained themselves upon the soil.

The plough which they employed was like that used by the Egyptians and Babylonians, being nothing but a large hoe to which a couple of oxen were harnessed.* The scarcity of rain, except in certain seasons, and the tendency of the rivers to run low, contributed to make the cultivators of the soil experts in irrigation and agriculture. Almost the only remains of these people which have come down ti us consist of indestructible wells and cisterns, or wine and oil presses hollowed out of the rock.**

Fields of wheat and barley extended along the flats of the valleys, broken in upon here and there by orchards, in which the white and pink almond, the apple, the fig, the pomegranate, and the olive flourished side by side.

Jerusalem, possibly in part to be attributed to the reign of Solomon, are the only instances to which anything like a certain date may be assigned. But these are long posterior to the XVIIIth dynasty. Good judges, however, attribute some of these monuments to a very distant period: the masonry of the wells of Beersheba is very ancient, if not as it is at present, at least as it was when it was repaired in the time of the Cæsars; the olive and wine presses hewn in the rock do not all date back to the Roman empire, but many belong to a still earlier period, and modern descriptions correspond with what we know of such presses from the Bible.

If the slopes of the valley rose too precipitously for cultivation, stone dykes were employed to collect the falling earth, and thus to transform the sides of the hills into a series of terraces rising one above the other. Here the vines, planted in lines or in trellises, blended their clusters with the fruits of the orchard-trees. It was, indeed, a land of milk and honey, and its topographical nomenclature in the Egyptian geographical lists reflects as in a mirror the agricultural pursuits of its ancient inhabitants: one village, for instance, is called Aubila, “the meadow;” while others bear such names as Ganutu, “the gardens;” Magraphut, “the mounds;” and Karman, “the vineyard.” The further we proceed towards the north, we find, with a diminishing aridity, the hillsides covered with richer crops, and the valleys decked out with a more luxuriant and warmly coloured vegetation. Shechem lies in an actual amphitheatre of verdure, which is irrigated by countless unfailing streams; rushing brooks babble on every side, and the vapour given off by them morning and evening covers the entire landscape with a luminous haze, where the outline of each object becomes blurred, and quivers in a manner to which we are accustomed in our Western lands.* Towns grew and multiplied upon this rich and loamy soil, but as these lay outside the usual track of the invading hosts—which preferred to follow the more rugged but shorter route leading straight to Carmel across the plain—the records of the conquerors only casually mention a few of them, such as Bîtshaîlu, Birkana, and Dutîna.**

Beyond Ono reddish-coloured sandy clay took the place of the dark and compact loam: oaks began to appear, sparsely at first, but afterwards forming vast forests, which the peasants of our own days have thinned and reduced to a considerable extent. The stunted trunks of these trees are knotted and twisted, and the tallest of them do not exceed some thirty feet in height, while many of them may be regarded as nothing more imposing than large bushes.* Muddy rivers, infested with crocodiles, flowed slowly through the shady woods, spreading out their waters here and there in pestilential swamps. On reaching the seaboard, their exit was impeded by the sands which they brought down with them, and the banks which were thus formed caused the waters to accumulate in lagoons extending behind the dunes. For miles the road led through thickets, interrupted here and there by marshy places and clumps of thorny shrubs. Bands of Shaûsû were accustomed to make this route dangerous, and even the bravest heroes shrank from venturing alone along this route. Towards Aluna the way began to ascend Mount Carmel by a narrow and giddy track cut in the rocky side of the precipice.**

Beyond the Mount, it led by a rapid descent into a plain covered with corn and verdure, and extending in a width of some thirty miles, by a series of undulations, to the foot of Tabor, where it came to an end. Two side ranges running almost parallel—little Hermon and Glilboa—disposed in a line from east to west, and united by an almost imperceptibly rising ground, serve rather to connect the plain of Megiddo with the valley of the Jordan than to separate them. A single river, the Kishon, cuts the route diagonally—or, to speak more correctly, a single river-bed, which is almost waterless for nine months of the year, and becomes swollen only during the winter rains with the numerous torrents bursting from the hillsides. As the flood approaches the sea it becomes of more manageable proportions, and finally distributes its waters among the desolate lagoons formed behind the sand-banks of the open and wind-swept bay, towered over by the sacred summit of Carmel.*

No corner of the world has been the scene of more sanguinary engagements, or has witnessed century after century so many armies crossing its borders and coming into conflict with one another. Every military leader who, after leaving Africa, was able to seize Gaza and Ascalon, became at once master of Southern Syria. He might, it is true, experience some local resistance, and come into conflict with bands or isolated outposts of the enemy, but as a rule he had no need to anticipate a battle before he reached the banks of the Kishon.

Here, behind a screen of woods and mountain, the enemy would concentrate his forces and prepare resolutely to meet the attack. If the invader succeeded in overcoming resistance at this point, the country lay open to him as far as the Orontes; nay, often even to the Euphrates. The position was too important for its defence to have been neglected. A range of forts, Ibleâm, Taanach, and Megiddo,* drawn like a barrier across the line of advance, protected its southern face, and beyond these a series of strongholds and villages followed one another at intervals in the bends of the valleys or on the heights, such as Shunem, Kasuna, Anaharath, the two Aphuls, Cana, and other places which we find mentioned on the triumphal lists, but of which, up to the present, the sites have not been fixed.

From this point the conqueror had a choice of three routes. One ran in an oblique direction to the west, and struck the Mediterranean near Acre, leaving on the left the promontory of Carmel, with the sacred town, Rosh-Qodshu, planted on its slope.

Acre was the first port where a fleet could find safe anchorage after leaving the mouths of the Nile, and whoever was able to make himself master of it had in his hands the key of Syria, for it stood in the same commanding position with regard to the coast as that held by Megiddo in respect of the interior. Its houses were built closely together on a spit of rock which projected boldly into the sea, while fringes of reefs formed for it a kind of natural breakwater, behind which ships could find a safe harbourage from the attacks of pirates or the perils of bad weather. From this point the hills come so near the shore that one is sometimes obliged to wade along the beach to avoid a projecting spur, and sometimes to climb a zig-zag path in order to cross a headland. In more than one place the rock has been hollowed into a series of rough steps, giving it the appearance of a vast ladder.* Below this precipitous path the waves dash with fury, and when the wind sets towards the land every thud causes the rocky wall to tremble, and detaches fragments from its surface. The majority of the towns, such as Aksapu (Ecdippa), Mashal, Lubina, Ushu-Shakhan, lay back from the sea on the mountain ridges, out of the reach of pirates; several, however, were built on the shore, under the shelter of some promontory, and the inhabitants of these derived a miserable subsistence from fishing and the chase. Beyond the Tyrian Ladder Phoenician territory began. The country was served throughout its entire length, from town to town, by the coast road, which turning at length to the right, and passing through the defile formed by the Nahr-el-Kebîr, entered the region of the middle Orontes.

The second of the roads leading from Megiddo described an almost symmetrical curve eastwards, crossing the Jordan at Beth-shan, then the Jab-bok, and finally reaching Damascus after having skirted at some distance the last of the basaltic ramparts of the Haurân. Here extended a vast but badly watered pasture-land, which attracted the Bedouin from every side, and scattered over it were a number of walled towns, such as Hamath, Magato, Ashtaroth, and Ono-Eepha.*

Probably Damascus was already at this period the dominant authority over the region watered by these two rivers, as well as over the villages nestling in the gorges of Hermon,—Abila, Helbôn of the vineyards, and Tabrûd,—but it had not yet acquired its renown for riches and power. Protected by the Anti-Lebanon range from its turbulent neighbours, it led a sort of vegetative existence apart from invading hosts, forgotten and hushed to sleep, as it were, in the shade of its gardens.

The third road from Megiddo took the shortest way possible. After crossing the Kishon almost at right angles to its course, it ascended by a series of steep inclines to arid plains, fringed or intersected by green and flourishing valleys, which afforded sites for numerous towns,—Pahira, Merom near Lake Huleh, Qart-Nizanu, Beerotu, and Lauîsa, situated in the marshy district at the head-waters of the Jordan.* From this point forward the land begins to fall, and taking a hollow shape, is known as Coele-Syria, with its luxuriant vegetation spread between the two ranges of the Lebanon. It was inhabited then, as at the time of the Babylonian conquest, by the Amorites, who probably included Damascus also in their domain.**

Their capital, the sacred Qodshu, was situated on the left bank of the Orontes, about five miles from the lake which for a long time bore its name, Bahr-el-Kades.* It crowned one of those barren oblong eminences which are so frequently met with in Syria. A muddy stream, the Tannur, flowed, at some distance away, around its base, and, emptying itself into the Orontes at a point a little to the north, formed a natural defence for the town on the west. Its encompassing walls, slightly elliptic in form, were strengthened by towers, and surrounded by two concentric ditches which kept the sapper at a distance.