*** The name Ammianshi at once recalls those of Ammisatana, Ammiza-dugga, and perhaps Ammurabi, or Khammurabi, of one of the Babylonian dynasties; it contains, with the element Ammi, a final anshi.  Chabas connects it with two Hebrew words Am-nesh, which he does not translate.

Ammianshi himself reigned over the province of Kadima, a word which in Semitic denotes the East.  Finally, the only one of their gods known to us, Hadad, was a Semite deity, who presided over the atmosphere, and whom we find later on ruling over the destinies of Damascus.  Peoples of Semitic speech and religion must, indeed, have already occupied the greater part of that region on the shores of the Mediterranean which we find still in their possession many centuries later, at the time of the Egyptian conquest.

[Illustration:  028.jpg ASIATIC WOMEN FROM THE TOMB OF KHNUMHOTPU]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.

For a time Egypt preferred not to meddle in their affairs.  When, however, the “lords of the sands” grew too insolent, the Pharaoh sent a column of light troops against them, and inflicted on them such a severe punishment, that the remembrance of it kept them within bounds for years.  Offenders banished from Egypt sought refuge with the turbulent kinglets, who were in a perpetual state of unrest between Sinai and the Dead Sea.  Egyptian sailors used to set out to traffic along the seaboard, taking to piracy when hard pressed; Egyptian merchants were accustomed to penetrate by easy stages into the interior.  The accounts they gave of their journeys were not reassuring.  The traveller had first to face the solitudes which confronted him before reaching the Isthmus, and then to avoid as best he might the attacks of the pillaging tribes who inhabited it.

[Illustration:  024.jpg TWO ASIATICS FKOM THE TOMB OF KHNUMHOPTU.]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger

Should he escape these initial perils, the Amu—­an agricultural and settled people inhabiting the fertile region—­would give the stranger but a sorry reception:  he would have to submit to their demands, and the most exorbitant levies of toll did not always preserve caravans from their attacks.* The country seems to have been but thinly populated; tracts now denuded were then covered by large forests in which herds of elephants still roamed,** and wild beasts, including lions and leopards, rendered the route through them dangerous.

     * The merchant who sets out for foreign lands “leaves his
     possessions to his children—­for fear of lions and
     Asiatics.”

     ** Thutmosis III. went elephant-hunting near the Syrian town
     of Nii.

The notion that Syria was a sort of preserve for both big and small game was so strongly implanted in the minds of the Egyptians, that their popular literature was full of it:  the hero of their romances betook himself there for the chase, as a prelude to meeting with the princess whom he was destined to marry,* or, as in the case of Kazarati, chief of Assur, that he might encounter there a monstrous hyena with which to engage in combat.