from Babylonian cuneiform. The fact is an indication of the conquest
that Asia was already beginning to make over her Egyptian conquerors.
But the annals themselves are a further and still more convincing proof
of Asiatic influence. To cover the walls of a temple with the history of
campaigns in a foreign land, and an account of the tribute brought to
the Pharaoh, was wholly contrary to Egyptian ideas. From the Egyptian
point of view the decoration of the sacred edifice should have been
theological only. The only subjects represented on it, so custom and
belief had ruled, ought to be the gods, and the stereotyped phrases
describing their attributes, their deeds, and their festivals. To
substitute for this the records of secular history was Assyrian and not
Egyptian. Indeed the very conception of annalistic chronicling, in which
the history of a reign was given briefly year by year and campaign by
campaign, belonged to the kingdoms of the Tigris and Euphrates, not to
that of the Nile. It was a new thing in Egypt, and flourished there only
during the short period of Asiatic influence. The Egyptian cared
comparatively little for history, and made use of papyrus when he wished
to record it. Unfortunately for us the annals of Thothmes III. remain
the solitary monument of Egyptian chronicling on stone.

The twenty-second year of his reign (B.C. 1481) was that in which the
Egyptian Pharaoh made his first determined effort to subdue Canaan. Gaza
was occupied without much difficulty, and in the following year, on the
fifth day of the month Pakhons, he set out from it, and eleven days
later encamped at Ihem. There he learned that the confederated
Canaanitish army, under the command of the king of Kadesh on the
Orontes, was awaiting his attack at Megiddo. Not only were the various
nations of Palestine represented in it, but contingents had come from
Naharaim on the banks of the Euphrates, as well as from the Gulf of
Antioch. For a while Thothmes hesitated whether to march against them by