of the poem of Pentauirit mentions, among the
countries confederate with the Khati, all Naharaim; that is
to say, the country on either side of the Euphrates,
embracing Mitanni and the principalities named in the Amarna
correspondence, and in addition some provinces whose sites
have not yet been discovered, but which may be placed
without much risk of error to the north of the Taurus.

The latter prince was obliged to capture Qodshu, and to conquer the
people of the Lebanon. Had he sufficient forces at his disposal to
triumph over them, or only enough to hold his ground? Both hypotheses
could have been answered in the affirmative if each one of these great
powers, confiding in its own resources, had attacked him separately.
The Amorites, the people of Zahi, Alasia, and Naharaim, together with
recruits from Hittite tribes, would then have put him in a position
to resist, and even to carry off victory with a high hand in the final
struggle. But an alliance between Assyria or Babylon and Thebes was
always possible. There had been such things before, in the time of
Thut-mosis IV. and in that of Amenothes III., but they were lukewarm
agreements, and their effect was not much to boast of, for the two
parties to the covenant had then no common enemy to deal with, and their
mutual interests were not, therefore, bound up with their united action.
The circumstances were very different now. The rapid growth of a nascent
kingdom, the restless spirit of its people, its trespasses on domains in
which the older powers had been accustomed to hold the upper hand,--did
not all this tend to transform the convention, more commercial than
military, with which up to this time they had been content, into an
offensive and defensive treaty? If they decided to act in concert, how
could Sapalulu or his successors, seeing that he was obliged to defend
himself on two frontiers at the same moment, muster sufficient resources
to withstand the double assault? The Hittites, as we know them more
especially from the hieroglyphic inscriptions, might be regarded as the
lords only of Northern Syria, and their power be measured merely by the
extent of territory which they occupied to the south of the Taurus and
on the two banks of the Middle Euphrates. But this does not by any means
represent the real facts. This was but the half of their empire; the
rest extended to the westward and northward, beyond the mountains into
that re