Egypt and the Near East
We often hear about the Mitanni, Assyrians, Hittites...but who were these peoples really? What were their customs? How did they come into contact with Pharaonic Egypt and how did they develop relations with the Kings of the Two Lands? To all this we will try to give an organic answer, drawing from the most reliable sources as far as we know to date.
PREMISE
A few years ago Arthur Weigall, Chief Inspector of Egyptian Antiquities, wrote:
"The Egyptologist who does not regard Egypt as a living reality, however much effort he makes, will be at a far greater disadvantage than he realizes. If you avoid Egypt, even if you have great intellectual ability and years of study behind you, you will still remain an ignoramus."
Even today these words prove to be true, and to know the Egypt of yesteryear makes it necessary to know the modern Egypt. No civilization boasts such a long continuity in history. Even today south of Cairo, peasant life unfolds with the same rhythms as it once did. The hunched farmer hoeing the soil, the girl spucking grain, the young man following the ox-drawn plow are the same as those who appear in the tombs of 4,000 years ago, a remote time that we too often try to evaluate with our mentality, which makes it incomprehensible to us how a people could have lived solely in function of death; worshipping gods with the heads of animals or even more insects or cockroaches.
Yet that of Ancient Egypt was a world full of humor, of cheerful people with such a zest for life that they could not even conceive that life itself could somehow end, with stories of love and hate, pain and pleasure, trials and failures. A people, a land and a history that never left anyone indifferent. But if it is indispensable to know the Egypt of today, those who approach this civilization cannot help but take an interest in those peoples who interacted with it, sometimes contributing greatly to its development.
Every foreigner who has been able to reside on the throne of Egypt at any time has tried in every way to become "Egyptian" himself by adapting to the customs and manners of this extraordinary civilization, and so the peoples who have grown up alongside him have always been fascinated and influenced by it. Egypt has always tolerated the migrations of entire ethnic groups, especially in the Delta who often integrated with the local population by adapting their deities to those of the Egyptian pantheon, resulting in formidable syncretisms in which it is often complex to disentangle. The relationship with neighboring peoples soon became a real subjugation in political and often military terms. From those peoples Egypt began to collect tribute, to import raw materials, and under Tuthmosis III, during the New Kingdom, it reached the height of its area of influence, reaching as far as the kingdom of Mitanni. It was never a full-fledged military conquest; after all, it would have absorbed too much energy to keep the quarrelsome kings, haughty princes, and tribal leaders always ready to rise up against one another. Instead, Tuthmosis III organized the systematic exploitation of mines and quarries, set up military garrisons near the caravan routes to enable the security of these vital roads, so that the goods and tribute imposed would arrive at home.
As was the Egyptian style, the Syro-Palestinian area was divided into three major territorial districts placed under the responsibility of 3 royal-appointed commissars: to the north was the state of Amurru, between the seaports of Ugarit and Byblo.
One constituency, the most central, included Qadesh and the Beqa'a valley, Damascus, Hauran, the northern part of Transjordan, and the Antiliban mountains. It was apparently called Upi and the commissioner resided in Kumido, now Kamid e-loz.
Finally, the southern constituency, the one closest to Egypt's actual borders, was Canaan, which included all of Palestine almost all the way to Beirut. The Egyptian commissioner had his residence in Gaza. In addition to these high functionaries, defined as, "...the mouth of the king, the eyes of the Horus, the companion of the king ... the one who is on the water, on the land and in every foreign country," a host of administrative officials devoted to the complex Egyptian administration and, of course, military leaders operated in that area. It is curious to note that few terms existed in the local languages to define the complex and multiple roles of the capillary Egyptian bureaucratic machine, a clear sign of an objective difficulty for those peoples to understand this type of organization.
However, as far as it emerges from the documentation in our possession and as far as we do not know precisely the nature of the relations between local princes and Egyptian commissars, it is highly probable that the former liked to place the expenses related to the defense of the territory on their "brother," the pharaoh, and that they made use of this "friendship" to instill fear and respect in their neighbors. Apparently this was working as no major military interventions are attested, nor any requests for help in this regard from the subjugated states, at least until the crisis that began from the second half of Amenhotep III's reign, so much so that it suggests an actual military presence in those areas of only representation or little more.
But new ferments were emerging throughout the Syro-Palestinian area that went on to fuel the never dormant nationalism of those peoples and upset the balance that the great Tuthmosis III had managed to create to Egypt's advantage. A new power was appearing on the horizon in distant lands that would reduce the Egyptian sphere of influence thanks to the skillful policies of shrewd and wily rulers.
In the next articles I will discuss these peoples, the relationships that bound or divided them, how they coalesced with each other and divided themselves in relation to the Egyptian presence on their lands. But also how they lived, their customs, their religion so that we get as accurate a picture as possible of what was happening in the Near East.
