Page:The Hittites - the Story of a Forgotten Empire.djvu/25

Rh They consist for the most part of letters and despatches sent to Khu-n-Aten and his father, Amenophis III., by the governors and rulers of Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia and Babylonia, and they prove that at that time Babylonian was the international language, and the complicated cuneiform system of writing the common means of intercourse, of the educated world. Many of them were transferred by Khu-n-Aten from the royal archives of Thebes to his new city at Tel el-Amarna; the rest were received and stored up after the new city had been built. We learn from them that the Hittites were already pressing southward, and were causing serious alarm to the governors and allies of the Egyptian king. One of the tablets is a despatch from Northern Syria, praying the Egyptian monarch to send assistance against them as soon as possible.

The 'heresy' of Khu-n-Aten brought trouble and disunion into Egypt, and his immediate successors seem to have been forced to retire from Syria. So far from being able to aid their allies, the Egyptian generals found themselves no match for the Hittite armies. Ramses I., the founder of the Nineteenth Dynasty, was compelled to conclude a treaty, defensive and offensive, with the Hittite king Saplel, and thus to recognise that Hittite power was on an equality with that of Egypt.

From this time forward it becomes possible to speak of a Hittite empire. Kadesh was once more in Hittite hands, and the influence formerly enjoyed by Egypt in Palestine and Syria was now enjoyed by its rival. The rude mountaineers of the Taurus had descended into the fertile plains of the south, interrupting the intercourse between Babylonia and Canaan, and superseding the cuneiform characters of Chaldaea by their