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The first of her kings to attain this sort of imperial position was Shalmaneser I, who early in the thirteenth century B.C. appears to have crushed the last strength of the north Mesopotamian powers of Mitanni and Khani and laid the way open to the west lands.
The northern invaders sundered the Semites of the West from those of the East. The kings of Mitanni held guard over the fords of the Euphrates, and intrigued in Palestine against the Egyptian Pharaohs. But this did not prevent them from marrying into the Pharaoh's family, while their daughters were sent to the harem of the Egyptian king.
This was the kingdom of Aram Naharaim, called Naharina in the Egyptian texts, Mitanni by its own inhabitants. The language of Mitanni was of a very peculiar type, as we learn from the tablets of Tel el-Amarna, one or two of which are written in it.
It was in western Padan that the kingdom of Mitanni was established. Its founders, as we have seen, came from the north. From the river Halys in Asia Minor to Lake Urumiyeh, east of Armenia, there was a multitude of tribes, most of whom seem to have belonged to the same race and to have spoken dialects of the same language.
Mitanni perished like the Hittite empire, and with the rise of the second Assyrian empire the intruding nations of the north found themselves compelled to struggle for bare existence.
Egyptian temples were erected on the banks of the Upper Nile, and Napata, the future capital of Ethiopia, was built at Gebel Barkal, beyond Dongola. In Asia, Mitanni was the first neighbour of Egypt that had maintained its independence.
It is certainly a fine specimen a wonderfully fine specimen." Mr. Peters was recovering slowly. Baxter talked on, to give him time. He directed the other's attention to the Roman coins. He was touching on some aspects of the Princess Gilukhipa of Mitanni, in whom his hearer could scarcely fail to be interested, when the door opened and Beach, the butler, came in, accompanied by Ashe.
Assyria and the Mesopotamian prince of Singar or Shinar had paid tribute to Thothmes III.; so, too, had the Hittite king, and even Babylonia had been forced to acquiesce sullenly in the annexation by Egypt of her old province of Canaan, and to beg for gifts of gold from the Egyptian mines. But Mitanni was too powerful to be attacked.
They had at their disposal a large body of "plunderers," or Beduin from the eastern desert, and Rib-Hadad accuses them of forming secret alliances with the kings of Babylonia, of Mitanni and of the Hittites.
Such a suggestion is no longer so improbable as it seemed to be in 1901, when it was still a tenable theory that the new development of Egyptian art was due to Mesopotamian influence, and came from Mitanni with Queen Tyi, the wife of Amenhotep III. Now that it is certain that Tyi was no Mitannian, but a native Egyptian, that door is closed, and we must suppose either that Egyptian art suddenly and spontaneously awakened to a new style of vision and execution, from which, again, it as suddenly departed, or else that some foreign influence was working strongly upon the rigid Egyptian convention, modifying and vivifying it.
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