Page 422 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

of new lands and wars and politics that hitherto had been beyond
their experience.
Egypt of course had never been beyond their experience.
They had known of it all their lives, as the oldest and largest and

richest kingdom in the world. In olden days it had been the most
powerful, too, and it had more than once helped Assyria against
her enemies—or the reverse. But now everyone knew that Egypt

was the sick man of the East, finished as a great power, with no
possessions or influence any longer beyond the Isthmus of Suez.
It was a surprise to the Assyrians to find the Lebanese coast full of
Egyptians all the same. There was a flourishing temple of Amon

in Byblos, and Egyptian merchantmen were frequently to be
seen in the harbors, though their officers had bitter tales to tell of
brushes with Philistine pirates (calling themselves customs cut­

ters) off the ports of the former Egyptian province of Canaan.
The Assyrian officers tried to find out what they could of the
political position in Egypt, but it was all very confused. There

was a pharaoh in the delta, at Tanis, claiming to be the ruler of all
Egypt; it was he who had recently sent a crocodile as a present to
Tiglathpileser, “knowing how interested his majesty is in hunting

and in exotic animals.” But the Amon priests at Byblos denied
that Nesubenebded, the usurper of Tanis, ruled more than the
delta, and even that only at the pleasure of his Libyan merce­
naries, descendants of sea rovers who had previously often at­

tacked Egypt. These mercenaries now held in force the oases to
the west of the delta, and could take power in the delta itself
whenever they wished. It would be best, said the Amon priests,

for Tiglathpileser, if he wished to enter into diplomatic relations
with Egypt, to address himself to Hrihor, the high priest of Amon
in Thebes, who spoke for Barneses. The pharaohs of Egypt—at
least the upriver pharaohs—were always called Barneses, and the

present one was the eleventh of the name. But the actual rule
upriver was exercised by the high priest of Amon, whom the
Byblos priests did not hesitate to name with full royal titles.

But whether Hrihor or Barneses or Nesubenebded or the
Libyans were the rulers of Egypt, there was no doubt that they
were powerless outside Egypt. Even just across their eastern
frontier, in Palestine, the Philistines—distant cousins of the