[Illustration:  384.jpg SOME OF THE OBJECTS CARRIED IN TRIBUTE TO THE SYRIANS]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after Champollion.

Free transit on the main road which ran diagonally through Kharu was ensured by fortresses constructed at strategic points,* and from this time forward Thutmosis was able to bring the whole force of his army to bear upon both Coele-Syria and Naharaim.** He encamped, in the year XXVII., on the table-land separating the Afrin and the Orontes from the Euphrates, and from that centre devastated the district of Uanit,*** which lay to the west of Aleppo; then crossing “the water of Naharaim” in the neighbourhood of Carchemish, he penetrated into the heart of Mitanni.

     * The castle, for instance, near Megiddo, previously
     referred to, which, after having contributed to the siege of
     the town, probably served to keep it in subjection.

** The accounts of the campaigns of Thutmosis III. have been preserved in the Annals in a very mutilated condition, the fragments of which were discovered at different times.  They are nothing but extracts from an official account, made for Amon and his priests.

     *** The province of the Tree Uanu; cf. with this designation
     the epithet “Shad Erini,” “mountain of the cedar tree,”
     which the Assyrians bestowed on the Amanus.

The following year he reappeared in the same region.  Tunipa, which had made an obstinate resistance, was taken, together with its king, and 329 of his nobles were forced to yield themselves prisoners.  Thutmosis “with a joyous heart” was carrying them away captive, when it occurred to him that the district of Zahi, which lay away for the most part from the great military highroads, was a tempting prey teeming with spoil.  The barns were stored with wheat and barley, the cellars were filled with wine, the harvest was not yet gathered in, and the trees bent under the weight of their fruit.  Having pillaged Senzauru on the Orontes,* he made his way to the westwards through the ravine formed by the Ishahr el-Kebir, and descended suddenly on the territory of Arvad.  The towns once more escaped pillage, but Thutmosis destroyed the harvests, plundered the orchards, carried off the cattle, and pitilessly wasted the whole of the maritime plain.

* Senzauru was thought by Ebers to be “the double Tyre.”  Brugsch considered it to be Tyre itself.  It is, I believe, the Sizara of classical writers, the Shaizar of the Arabs, and is mentioned in one of the Tel el-Amarna tablets in connection with Nii.

There was such abundance within the camp that the men were continually getting drunk, and spent their time in anointing themselves with oil, which they could do only in Egypt at the most solemn festivals.  They returned to Syria in the year XXX., and their good fortune again favoured them.  The stubborn Qodshu was harshly dealt with; Simyra and Arvad, which hitherto had held their own, now opened their gates to him; the lords of Upper Lotanu poured in their contributions without delay, and gave up their sons and brothers as hostages.  In the year XXXI., the city of Anamut in Tikhisa, on the shores of Lake Msrana, yielded in its turn;* on the 3rd of Pakhons, the anniversary of his coronation, the Lotanu renewed their homage to him in person.