A dyke running across the Orontes above the town caused the waters to rise and to overflow in a northern direction, so as to form a shallow lake, which acted as an additional protection from the enemy. Qodshu was thus a kind of artificial island, connected with the surrounding country by two flying bridges, which could be opened or shut at pleasure. Once the bridges were raised and the gates closed, the boldest enemy 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.*

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, Nîi, 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 Lotanû 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.

We are at a loss to know whether the various principalities were accustomed to submit to the leadership of a single individual, or whether we are to relegate to the region of popular fancy that Lord of Naharaim of whom the Egyptian scribes made such a hero in their fantastic narratives.*

Carchemish represented in this region the position occupied by Megiddo in relation to Kharû, and by Qodshu among the Amorites; that is to say, it was the citadel and sanctuary of the surrounding country. Whoever could make himself master of it would have the whole country at his feet.

It lay upon the Euphrates, the winding of the river protecting it on its southern and south-eastern sides, while around its northern front ran a deep stream, its defence being further completed by a double ditch across the intervening region. Like Qodshu, it was thus situated in the midst of an artificial island beyond the reach of the battering-ram or the sapper. The encompassing wall, which tended to describe an ellipse, hardly measured two miles in circumference; but the suburbs extending, in the midst of villas and gardens, along the river-banks furnished in time of peace an abode for the surplus population. The wall still rises some five and twenty to thirty feet above the plain. Two mounds divided by a ravine command its north-western side, their summits being occupied by the ruins of two fine buildings—a temple and a palace.* Carchemish was the last stage in a conqueror’s march coming from the south.

For an invader approaching from the east or north it formed his first station. He had before him, in fact, a choice of the three chief fords for crossing the Euphrates. That of Thapsacus, at the bend of the river where it turns eastward to the Arabian plain, lay too far to the south, and it could be reached only after a march through a parched and desolate region where the army would run the risk of perishing from thirst.

For an invader proceeding from Asia Minor, or intending to make his way through the defiles of the Taurus, Samosata offered a convenient fording-place; but this route would compel the general, who had Naharaim or the kingdoms of Chaldæa in view, to make a long detour, and although the Assyrians used it at a later period, at the time of their expeditions to the valleys of the Halys, the Egyptians do not seem ever to have travelled by this road. Carchemish, the place of the third ford, was about equally distant from Thapsacus and Samosata, and lay in a rich and fertile province, which was so well watered that a drought or a famine would not be likely to enter into the expectations of its inhabitants. Hither pilgrims, merchants, soldiers, and all the wandering denizens of the world were accustomed to direct their steps, and the habit once established was perpetuated for centuries. On the left bank of the river, and almost opposite Carchemish, lay the region of Mitânni,* which was already occupied by a people of a different race, who used a language cognate, it would seem, with the imperfectly classified dialects spoken by the tribes of the Upper Tigris and Upper Euphrates.** Harran bordered on Mitânni, and beyond Harran one may recognise, in the vaguely defined Singar, Assur, Arrapkha, and Babel, states that arose out of the dismemberment of the ancient Chaldæan Empire.***

The Carchemish route was, of course, well known to caravans, but armed bodies had rarely occasion to make use of it. It was a far cry from Memphis to Carchemish, and for the Egyptians this town continued to be a limit which they never passed, except incidentally, when they had to chastise some turbulent tribe, or to give some ill-guarded town to the flames.*

It would be a difficult task to define with any approach to accuracy the distribution of the Canaanites, Amorites, and Aramæans, and to indicate the precise points where they came into contact with their rivals of non-Semitic stock. Frontiers between races and languages can never be very easily determined, and this is especially true of the peoples of Syria. They are so broken up and mixed in this region, that even in neighbourhoods where one predominant tribe is concentrated, it is easy to find at every step representatives of all the others. Four or five townships, singled out at random from the middle of a province, would often be found to belong to as many different races, and their respective inhabitants, while living within a distance of a mile or two, would be as great strangers to each other as if they were separated by the breadth of a continent.

It would appear that the breaking up of these populations had not been carried so far in ancient as in modern times, but the confusion must already have been great if we are to judge from the number of different sites where we encounter evidences of people of the same language and blood. The bulk of the Khâti had not yet departed from the Taurus region, but some stray bands of them, carried away by the movement which led to the invasion of the Hyksôs, had settled around Hebron, where the rugged nature of the country served to protect them from their neighbours.*

The Amorites* had their head-quarters Qodshul in Coele-Syria, but one section of them had taken up a position on the shores of the Lake of Tiberias in Galilee, others had established themselves within a short distance of Jaffa** on the Mediterranean, while others had settled in the neighbourhood of the southern Hittites in such numbers that their name in the Hebrew Scriptures was at times employed to designate the western mountainous region about the Dead Sea and the valley of the Jordan. Their presence was also indicated on the table-lands bordering the desert of Damascus, in the districts frequented by Bedouin of the tribe of Terah, Ammon and Moab, on the rivers Yarmuk and Jabbok, and at Edrei and Heshbon.***

The fuller, indeed, our knowledge is of the condition of Syria at the time of the Egyptian conquest, the more we are forced to recognise the mixture of races therein, and their almost infinite subdivisions. The mutual jealousies, however, of these elements of various origin were not so inveterate as to put an obstacle in the way, I will not say of political alliances, but of daily intercourse and frequent contracts. Owing to intermarriages between the tribes, and the continual crossing of the results of such unions, peculiar characteristics were at length eliminated, and a uniform type of face was the result. From north to south one special form of countenance, that which we usually call Semitic, prevailed among them.

The Syrian and Egyptian monuments furnish us everywhere, under different ethnical names, with representations of a broad-shouldered people of high stature, slender-figured in youth, but with a fatal tendency to obesity in old age. Their heads are large, somewhat narrow, and artificially flattened or deformed, like those of several modern tribes in the Lebanon. Their high cheek-bones stand out from their hollow cheeks, and their blue or black eyes are buried under their enormous eyebrows. The lower part of the face is square and somewhat heavy, but it is often concealed by a thick and curly beard. The forehead is rather low and retreating, while the nose has a distinctly aquiline curve. The type is not on the whole so fine as the Egyptian, but it is not so heavy as that of the Chaldæans in the time of Gudea. The Theban artists have represented it in their battle-scenes, and while individualising every soldier or Asiatic prisoner with a happy knack so as to avoid monotony, they have with much intelligence impressed upon all of them the marks of a common parentage.

One feels that the artists must have recognised them as belonging to one common family. They associated with their efforts after true and exact representation a certain caustic humour, which impelled them often to substitute for a portrait a more or less jocose caricature of their adversaries. On the walls of the Pylons, and in places where the majesty of a god restrained them from departing too openly from their official gravity, they contented themselves with exaggerating from panel to panel the contortions and pitiable expressions of the captive chiefs as they followed behind the triumphal chariot of the Pharaoh on his return from his Syrian campaigns.*

Where religious scruples offered no obstacle they abandoned themselves to the inspiration of the moment, and gave themselves freely up to caricature. It is an Amorite or Canaanite—that thick-lipped, flat-nosed slave, with his brutal lower jaw and smooth conical skull—who serves for the handle of a spoon in the museum of the Louvre. The stupefied air with which he trudges under his burden is rendered in the most natural manner, and the flattening to which his forehead had been subjected in infancy is unfeelingly accentuated. The model which served for this object must have been intentionally brutalised and disfigured in order to excite the laughter of Pharaoh’s subjects.*

The idea of uniformity with which we are impressed when examining the faces of these people is confirmed and extended when we come to study their costumes. Men and women—we may say all Syrians according to their condition of life—had a choice between only two or three modes of dress, which, whatever the locality, or whatever the period, seemed never to change. On closer examination slight shades of difference in cut and arrangement may, however, be detected, and it may be affirmed that fashion ran even in ancient Syria through as many capricious evolutions as with ourselves; but these variations, which were evident to the eyes of the people of the time, are not sufficiently striking to enable us to classify the people, or to fix their date. The peasants and the lower class of citizens required no other clothing than a loin-cloth similar to that of the Egyptians,* or a shirt of a yellow or white colour, extending below the knees, and furnished with short sleeves. The opening for the neck was cruciform, and the hem was usually ornamented with coloured needlework or embroidery. The burghers and nobles wore over this a long strip of cloth, which, after passing closely round the hips and chest, was brought up and spread over the shoulders as a sort of cloak. This was not made of the light material used in Egypt, which offered no protection from cold or rain, but was composed of a thick, rough wool, like that employed in Chaldæa, and was commonly adorned with stripes or bands of colour, in addition to spots and other conspicuous designs.

Rich and fashionable folk substituted for this cloth two large shawls—one red and the other blue—in which they dexterously arrayed themselves so as to alternate the colours: a belt of soft leather gathered the folds around the figure. Red morocco buskins, a soft cap, a handkerchief, a kejfîyeh confined by a fillet, and sometimes a wig after the Egyptian fashion, completed the dress.

Beards were almost universal among the men, but the moustache was of rare occurrence. In many of the figures represented on the monuments we find that the head was carefully shaved, while in others the hair was allowed to grow, arranged in curls, frizzed and shining with oil or sweet-smelling pomade, sometimes thrown back behind the ears and falling on the neck in bunches or curly masses, sometimes drawn out in stiff spikes so as to serve as a projecting cover over the face.

The women usually tired their hair in three great masses, of which the thickest was allowed to fall freely down the back; while the other two formed a kind of framework for the face, the ends descending on each side as far as the breast. Some of the women arranged their hair after the Egyptian manner, in a series of numerous small tresses, brought together at the ends so as to form a kind of plat, and terminating in a flower made of metal or enamelled terracotta. A network of glass ornaments, arranged on a semicircle of beads, or on a background of embroidered stuff, was frequently used as a covering for the top of the head.*

The shirt had no sleeves, and the fringed garment which covered it left half of the arm exposed. Children of tender years had their heads shaved, as a head-dress, and rejoiced in no more clothing than the little ones among the Egyptians. With the exception of bracelets, anklets, rings on the fingers, and occasionally necklaces and earrings, the Syrians, both men and women, wore little jewellery. The Chaldæa women furnished them with models of fashion to which they accommodated themselves in the choice of stuffs, colours, cut of their mantles or petticoats, arrangement of the hair, and the use of cosmetics for the eyes and cheeks. In spite of distance, the modes of Babylon reigned supreme. The Syrians would have continued to expose their right shoulder to the weather as long as it pleased the people of the Lower Euphrates to do the same; but as soon as the fashion changed in the latter region, and it became customary to cover the shoulder, and to wrap the upper part of the person in two or three thicknesses of heavy wool, they at once accommodated themselves to the new mode, although it served to restrain the free motion of the body. Among the upper classes, at least, domestic arrangements were modelled upon the fashions observed in the palaces of the nobles of Car-chemish or Assur: the same articles of toilet, the same ranks of servants and scribes, the same luxurious habits, and the same use of perfumes were to be found among both.*

From all that we can gather, in short, from the silence as well as from the misunderstandings of the Egyptian chroniclers, Syria stands before us as a fruitful and civilized country, of which one might be thankful to be a native, in spite of continual wars and frequent revolutions.

The religion of the Syrians was subject to the same influences as their customs; we are, as yet, far from being able to draw a complete picture of their theology, but such knowledge as we do possess recalls the same names and the same elements as are found in the religious systems of Chaldæa. The myths, it is true, are still vague and misty, at least to our modern ideas: the general characteristics of the principal divinities alone stand out, and seem fairly well defined. As with the other Semitic races, the deity in a general sense, the primordial type of the godhead, was called El or Ilû, and his feminine counterpart Ilât, but we find comparatively few cities in which these nearly abstract beings enjoyed the veneration of the faithful.* The gods of Syria, like those of Egypt and of the countries watered by the Euphrates, were feudal princes distributed over the surface of the earth, their number corresponding with that of the independent states. Each nation, each tribe, each city, worshipped its own lord—Adoni** —or its master—Baal*** —and each of these was designated by a special title to distinguish him from neighbouring Baalîm, or masters.

The Baal who ruled at Zebub was styled “Master of Zebub,” or Baal-Zebub;* and the Baal of Hermon, who was an ally of Gad, goddess of fortune, was sometimes called Baal-Hermon, or “Master of Hermon,” sometimes Baal-G-ad, or “Master of Gad;” ** the Baal of Shechem, at the time of the Israelite invasion, was “Master of the Covenant”—Baal-Berîth—doubtless in memory of some agreement which he had concluded with his worshippers in regard to the conditions of their allegiance.***

The prevalent conception of the essence and attributes of these deities was not the same in all their sanctuaries, but the more exalted among them were regarded as personifying the sky in the daytime or at night, the atmosphere, the light,* or the sun, Shamash, as creator and prime mover of the universe; and each declared himself to be king—melek—over the other gods.** Bashuf represented the lightning and the thunderbolt;*** Shalmân, Hadad, and his double Bimmôn held sway over the air like the Babylonian.

Rammânu;* Dagon, patron god of fishermen and husbandmen, seems to have watched over the fruitfulness of the sea and the land.** We are beginning to learn the names of the races whom they specially protected: Rashuf the Amorites, Hadad and Rimmon the Aramæans of Damascus, Dagon the peoples of the coast between Ashkelon and the forest of Carmel. Rashûf is the only one whose appearance is known to us. He possessed the restless temperament usually attributed to the thunder-gods, and was, accordingly, pictured as a soldier armed with javelin and mace, bow and buckler; a gazelle’s head with pointed horns surmounts his helmet, and sometimes, it may be, serves him as a cap.

Each god had for his complement a goddess, who was proclaimed “mistress” of the city, Baalat, or “queen,” Milkat, of heaven, just as the god himself was recognised as “master” or “king.” * As a rule, the goddess was contented with the generic name of Astartê; but to this was often added some epithet, which lent her a distinct personality, and prevented her from being confounded with the Astartês of neighbouring cities, her companions or rivals.**

Thus she would be styled the “good” Astartê, Ashtoreth Naamah, or the “horned” Astartê, Ashtoreth Qarnaîm, because of the lunar crescent which appears on her forehead, as a sort of head-dress.* She was the goddess of good luck, and was called Gad;** she was Anat,*** or Asîti,**** the chaste and the warlike.

The statues sometimes represent her as a sphinx with a woman’s head, but more often as a woman standing on a lion passant, either nude, or encircled round the hips by merely a girdle, her hands filled with flowers or with serpents, her features framed in a mass of heavy tresses—a faithful type of the priestesses who devoted themselves to her service, the Qedeshôt. She was the goddess of love in its animal, or rather in its purely physical, aspect, and in this capacity was styled Qaddishat the Holy, like the hetairæ of her family; Qodshu, the Amorite capital, was consecrated to her service, and she was there associated with Rashuf, the thunder-god.*

But she often comes before us as a warlike Amazon, brandishing a club, lance, or shield, mounted on horseback like a soldier, and wandering through the desert in quest of her prey.* This dual temperament rendered her a goddess of uncertain attributes and of violent contrasts; at times reserved and chaste, at other times shameless and dissolute, but always cruel, always barren, for the countless multitude of her excesses for ever shut her out from motherhood: she conceives without ceasing, but never brings forth children.** The Baalim and Astartês frequented by choice the tops of mountains, such as Lebanon, Carmel, Hermon, or Kasios:*** they dwelt near springs, or hid themselves in the depths of forests.**** They revealed themselves to mortals through the heavenly bodies, and in all the phenomena of nature: the sun was a Baal, the moon was Astartê, and the whole host of heaven was composed of more or less powerful genii, as we find in Chaldæa.

They required that offerings and prayers should be brought to them at the high places,* but they were also pleased—and especially the goddesses—to lodge in trees; tree-trunks, sometimes leafy, sometimes bare and branchless (ashêrah), long continued to be living emblems of the local Astartês among the peoples of Southern Syria. Side by side with these plant-gods we find everywhere, in the inmost recesses of the temples, at cross-roads, and in the open fields, blocks of stone hewn into pillars, isolated boulders, or natural rocks, sometimes of meteoric origin, which were recognised by certain mysterious marks to be the house of the god, the Betyli or Beth-els in which he enclosed a part of his intelligence and vital force.