during the lifetime of Amenothes III., been the most turbulent of
vassals. The smaller states of the Orontes and of the coast about Arvad
had been laid waste by his repeated incursions and troubled by his
intrigues. He had taken and pillaged twenty towns, among which were
Simyra, Sini, Irqata, and Qodshu, and he was already threatening Byblos,
Berytus, and Sidon. It was useless to complain of him, for he always
managed to exculpate himself to the royal messengers. Khai, Dudu,
Amenemaupit had in turn all pronounced him innocent. Pharaoh himself,
after citing him to appear in Egypt to give an explanation of his
conduct, had allowed himself to be won over by his fair speaking, and
had dismissed him uncondemned. Other princes, who lacked his cleverness
and power, tried to imitate him, and from north to south the whole of
Syria could only be compared to some great arena, in which fighting
was continually carried on between one tribe or town and another--Tyre
against Sidon, Sidon against Byblos, Jerusalem against Lachish. All
of them appealed to Khuniatonu, and endeavoured to enlist him on their
side. Their despatches arrived by scores, and the perusal of them at
the present day would lead us to imagine that Egypt had all but lost
her supremacy. The Egyptian ministers, however, were entirely unmoved
by them, and continued to refuse material support to any of the numerous
rivals, except in a few rare cases, where a too prolonged indifference
would have provoked an open revolt in some part of the country.

Khuniatonu died young, about the XVIIIth year of his reign.* He was
buried in the depths of a ravine in the mountain-side to the east of
the town, and his tomb remained unknown till within the last few years.
Although one of his daughters who died before her father had been
interred there, the place seems to have been entirely unprepared for the
reception of the king's body. The funeral chamber and the passages
are scarcely even rough-hewn, and the reception halls show a mere
commencement of decoration.** The other tombs of the locality are
divided into two groups, separated by the ravine reserved for the
burying-place of the royal house. The noble families possessed each
their own tomb on the slopes of the hillside; the common people were
laid to rest in pits lower down, almost on the level of the plain.
The cutting and decoration of all these tombs had been entrusted to a
company of contractors, who had executed them accord