Sir W. M. Flinders (William Matthew Flinders) Petrie
The scheme of taking a fortress by means of smuggling
in soldiers hidden in packages has often recurred
in history; but this taking of Joppa is the oldest
tale of the kind yet known. Following this we
have the wooden horse of Troy. Then comes in
mediaeval times the Arab scheme for taking Edessa,
in 1038 A.D., by a train of five hundred camels bearing
presents for the Autokrator at Constantinople.
The governor of Edessa declined to admit such travellers,
and a bystander, hearing some talking in the baskets
slung on the camels, soon gave the alarm, which led
to the destruction of the whole party; the chief alone,
less hands, ears, and nose, being left to take the
tale back to Bagdad. And in fiction there are
the stories of a lady avenging her husband by introducing
men hidden in skins, and the best known version of
all in the “Arabian Nights,” of Ali Baba
and the thieves.
It appears from the tale that the conference of Tahutia
with the rebel took place between the town and the
Egyptian army, but near the town. Then Tahutia
proposes to go into the town as a pledge of his sincerity,
while the men of the town were to supply his troops
with fodder. But he appears to have remained
talking with the rebel in the tent, until the lucky
chance of the stick turned up. This cleared the
way for a neater management of his plan, by enabling
him to quietly make away with the chief, without exciting
his suspicions beforehand.
The name of the cane of the king is partly illegible;
but we know how many actual sticks and personal objects
have their own names inscribed on them. Nothing
had a real entity to the Egyptian mind without an
individual name belonging to it.
The message sent by the charioteer presupposes that
he was in the secret; and he must therefore have been
an Egyptian who had not heartily joined in the rebellion.
From the conclusion we see that the captives taken
as slaves to Egypt were by no means only prisoners
of war, but were the ordinary civil inhabitants of
the conquered cities, “them of the city, both
small and great.”
The gold dish which the king gave to the tomb of Tahuti
is so splendid that it deserves some notice, especially
as it has never been published in England. It
is circular, about seven inches across, with vertical
sides an inch high. The inside of the bottom bears
a boss and rosette in the centre, a line of swimming
fish around that, and beyond all a chain of lotus
flowers. On the upright edge is an incised inscription,
“Given in praise by the king of Upper and Lower
Egypt, Ra-men-kheper, to the hereditary chief,
the divine father, the beloved by God, filling the
heart of the king in all foreign lands and in the isles
in the midst of the great sea, filling stores with
lazuli, electrum, and gold, keeper of all foreign
lands, keeper of the troops, praised by the good gold
lord of both lands and his ka,—the
royal scribe Tahuti deceased.” This splendid
piece of gold work was therefore given in honour of
Tahuti at his funeral, to be placed in his tomb for
the use of his ka. The weight of it is very
nearly a troy pound, being 5,729 grains or four utens.
The allusion on it to the Mediterranean wars of Tahuti,
“satisfying the king in all foreign lands and
in the isles in the midst of the great sea,”
is just in accord with this tale of the conquest of
Joppa.
