s taken, now much mutilated, comprised twenty-
four names, which proves the importance of the revolt.

Dapur was the hardest to carry. It crowned the top of a rocky eminence,
and was protected by a double wall, which followed the irregularities of
the hillside. It formed a rallying-point for a large force, which had to
be overcome in the open country before the investment of the town could
be attempted. The siege was at last brought to a conclusion, after
a series of skirmishes, and the town taken by scaling, four Egyptian
princes having been employed in conducting the attack. In the Pharaoh's
IXth year a revolt broke out on the Egyptian frontier, in the Shephelah,
and the king placed himself at the head of his troops to crush it.
Ascalon, in which the peasantry and their families had found, as they
hoped, a safe refuge, opened its gates to the Pharaoh, and its fall
brought about the submission of several neighbouring places. This, it
appears, was the first time since the beginning of the conquests in
Syria that the inhabitants of these regions attempted to take up arms,
and we may well ask what could have induced them thus to renounce their
ancient loyalty. Their defection reduced Egypt for the moment almost to
her natural frontiers. Peace had scarcely been resumed when war again
broke out with fresh violence in Coele-Syria, and one year it reached
even to Naharaim, and raged around Tunipa as in the days of Thutmosis
III. "Pharaoh assembled his foot-soldiers and chariots, and he commanded
his foot-soldiers and his chariots to attack the perverse Khati who were
in the neighbourhood of Tunipa, and he put on his armour and mounted his
chariot, and he waged battle against the town of the perverse Khati at
the head of his foot-soldiers and his chariots, covered with his armour;"
the fortress, however, did not yield till the second attack. Ramses
carried his arms still further afield, and with such results, that,
to judge merely from the triumphal lists engraved on the walls of the
temple of Karnak, the inhabitants on the banks of the Euphrates, those
in Carchemish, Mitanni, Singar, Assyria, and Mannus found themselves
once more at the mercy of the Egyptian battalions. These victories,
however brilliant, were not decisive; if after any one of them the
princes of Assyria and Singar may have sent presents to the Pharaoh, the
Hittites, on the other hand, did not consider themselves beaten, and it
was only after fifteen camp