Page 232 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

[1580-1510 B-C-] The Resistance Movement 193

Napata by the cataract, he marched back to the third cataract,
near Kerma, and halted there for some time while his troops
raised a fortress for the garrison and governor who were to hold
the newly conquered province for him. At the same time he or­
dered five reliefs commemorating his campaign to be carved on

the cliff wall nearby.
When he returned to Thebes before the inundation,
Thothmes had tasted victory and found it sweet. The young
men of the army, and even the older veterans, men and officers of
the 1580 class, had gained confidence in their leader. They re­

sponded eagerly when, a few years later, he led them in the
other direction, towards Canaan.
Palestine was, in theory at least, subject to Egypt. Since
the sack of the great Hyksos fortress in south Palestine forty years
ago, the land had been broken up into a large number of small
principalities, each prince building himself a mighty stone castle

and intriguing for Egyptian support against the other princes,
warring against them (or against Egypt) whenever he thought
he could get away with it. True to Hyksos tradition, the princes
were strong in chariotry, but they had devised new techniques

of fortification to counteract the new weapon of attack. Their
fortresses were built with a gateway that would only allow one
chariot at a time to pass, and with a sloping glacis at the base
of the wall which prevented the chariots from driving close in
under the wall to discharge their spears.
The pharaohs had imposed tribute on these vassal princes,

but payment of the tribute had been highly sporadic and the
princes so unruly that there was ample excuse for Thothmes to
interfere. He, however, saw farther than Palestine. Originally the
principalities there had been thought of by his grandfather as

buffer states against the Amorites of the north, but of late the
Hurrians on the upper Euphrates, and their Mitanni princes and
charioteers, had been making their presence felt farther south in
Syria and had raided the territory of the northernmost of Egypt’s
Canaanite vassals.

Thothmes embarked on a second long-range campaign, and
marched straight through the Canaanite principalities into Syria.
He met no opposition, the princes retreating to their fortresses