from their training to have been the least likely to have asserted
themselves against the man to whom they owed their elevation, often gave
more trouble than others. The sense of the supreme power of Egypt, which
had been inculcated in them during their exile, seemed to be weakened
after their return to their native country, and to give place to a
sense of their own importance. Their hearts misgave them as the time
approached for them to send their own children as pledges to their
suzerain, and also when called upon to transfer a considerable part of
their revenue to his treasury. They found, moreover, among their own
cities and kinsfolk, those who were adverse to the foreign yoke, and
secretly urged their countrymen to revolt, or else competitors for the
throne who took advantage of the popular discontent to pose as champions
of national independence, and it was difficult for the vassal prince to
counteract the intrigues of these adversaries without openly declaring
himself hostile to his foreign master.**

* Among the Tel el-Amarna tablets there is a letter of a
petty Syrian king, Adadnirari, whose father was enthroned
after a fashion in Nûkhassi by Thûtmosis III.

** Thus, in the Tel el-Amarna correspondence, Zimrida,
governor of Sidon, gives information to Amenôthes III. on
the intrigues which the notables of the town were concocting
against Egyptian authority. Ribaddû relates in one of these
despatches that the notables of Byblos and the women of his
harem were urging him to revolt; later, a letter of Amûnirâ
to the King of Egypt informs us that Ribaddû had been driven
from Byblos by his own brother.

A time quickly came when a vestige of fear alone constrained them to