Page 364 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

[1300-123° B-c*] The Exodus 3“

Hebron. But it seemed that the coastal plain was outside Joshua’s
plans. Even when he returned there was no war, though the
peace between the plains and the hills was uneasy. Joshua had
enough to do, holding and organizing his new dominion.
Once it became clear that the new state on either side of
Jordan had no immediate designs on the Canaanite cities of the
coast, normal intercourse was rapidly resumed. Canaanite mer­
chants visited the markets of the upland cities, and young men
of the hills came down to the ports to look for work and to
savor the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the seaport towns.
The men born in 1300 b.c., when Rameses II had just come
to the throne and the long-ago Hittite war was brewing, were
now sixty years old and had retired from active work. But they
kept a close eye on the businesses and shops and warehouses of
their sons and grandsons, and on the course of events in the
world outside. Egypt was wealthy and peaceful. Rameses II had
been on the throne for sixty years and seemed a permanent in­
stitution. The revolutions of over a hundred years ago, which had
brought his grandfather to the throne, were long forgotten.
Returning travelers from Egypt told of the colossal temples
which Rameses was building, and in particular of the rock-cut
temple of Abu Simbel near the Sudanese frontier, hewn nearly
two hundred feet into the living rock, with four seated statues of
the pharaoh, each over sixty feet high, flanking the entrance, and
with the walls within covered with reliefs of the events of
pharaoh’s life, including the battle of Cadesh.
Looking in the other direction, the old men of Ascalon saw
trouble in the distance. Tukulti-Ninurta of Assyria clearly in­
tended to build an empire. While still holding Carchemish and
the old Mitanni country as buffer states against the Hittites, he
had now turned south, and during these years news came that he
had captured great Babylon itself and taken prisoner its Kassite
king, Kastilias. Opinions were divided as to whether he could
hold Babylonia, whose people were not accustomed to being
any man’s vassals. And ancient Elam, still farther to the south
and east, had of late been growing once more in strength and
might well dispute the rule of the land of the Twin Rivers.
The Hittites were unlikely to dispute Carchemish, though it