Page 348 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

[1300-123° B>c-1 The Exodus 295
tally clerks with questions, as the cargo piled up on the quay,
great jars of olive oil and wine, crates of the finer painted potteiy
of Greece, sacks of wheat and barley, balks of cedar and pine­
wood, bales of hides and of woolen cloth, stacks of ingots of
copper, and smaller consignments, carefully guarded, of tin or
silver.
The narrow streets and multicolored bazaars of Ascalon were
always full of strangers, and loud with the babble of a score of
tongues. And they were alive with troops. The children used to
cheer their own soldiers, the bodyguard of the prince. There were
not many of them, as their functions were confined to sentry
duty at the palace and customs patrol at the harbor. But they
were all that was left of the proud regiments which had guarded
the little city-state during its days of independence, before the
Egyptians with their overwhelming strength had occupied the
whole of south Canaan twenty years ago. With the troops of
the occupying garrison the children waged a continuing feud,
and the sentries and patrols, often tall thin black Dinkas from the
Sudan with Egyptian officers and sergeants, were continually
exasperated by the catcalling and mudslinging of the agile curly-
headed boys. It was a large Egyptian garrison, not because
Ascalon was important or difficult to hold, but because there
was a large upland area to police. Patrols were continually being
sent into the hills to keep order, and occasionally almost the
whole garrison would be ordered out to deal with bandits in the
mountains or the southern desert.

Before the boys who were bom in 1300 b.c. were in their
teens, the garrison was hurriedly called out one morning to help
deal with trouble in the south. But only7 when they got back a
week later, dusty and with a thirst that all the beer of the taverns
could not quench, did the children, via the barmaids, hear the de­
tails.
The trouble had been in Egypt itself. Up on the edge of
the delta, beyond the Bitter Lakes, were the grazing grounds of
an Amorite tribe which had moved to Egypt many hundreds
0 years ago. They had already been in Egypt even before that
glorious period of Canaanite history7, the time when their princes,
e Hyksos, had conquered and ruled all Egypt. They called