Page 370 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

[1230-1160 B.C.] The Sack of Troy 317

addition to Atreus and his Achaeans, there had been Etruscans
and Philistines from Asia Minor, and Sikels and Sardinians from
their new settlements in the west. It had been a great host that
advanced, by sea and by land, against the Nile delta. And they
had captured many towns and taken rich booty, before
Merenptah, who was king in Egypt, could assemble an army to
oppose them. It had doubtless been foolhardy to meet a profes­
sional army like that of Egypt in pitched battle, said Atreus,
but the king of Libya had been overconfident and had paid the
penalty. He had lost his army—and even his plumed helmet—
and had had to flee with all speed back to his own kingdom. The
freebooter companies, what was left of them, had escaped
aboard their ships, to which their share of the booty had already
been transferred, and had sailed off on an expedition of their
own. Rumor had it that there might well be openings for mer­
cenaries up on the Levant coast, as there so often had been be­
fore. A few years back a collection of desert tribes of the
interior had come down from the hills and captured the coastal
plain and the ports of southern Canaan, and the rulers of
north Canaan and the refugees from the south were said to be
raising a force to win back the lost provinces.
This had indeed proved to be the case, and there had been a
number of brisk and satisfactory combined operations against the
Israelite hillmen, who really had no idea how to defend a coastal
town and who couldn’t run a fighting galley to save their
lives. So the Canaanites had got their coastland back again, with
their ports of Ascalon and Gaza, though admittedly Merenptah
of Egypt had taken advantage of the war to send an army up the
coast to assert his overlordship over Israelite and Canaanite alike.
But he had been satisfied with a nominal tribute and had with­
drawn to Egypt.
At this point Atreus had drawn his share of pay and booty
and sailed for home, together with the rest of the European free­
booters. But the Philistines had stayed on in Canaan, ostensibly
to garrison the newly rewon cities against a renewal of the war
by the Israelites. “But,” said Atreus with a chuckle, “it would
really quite surprise me if the Canaanites ever again have very
much say in the government of their country. For the Philistine

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