along the lower course and at the mouth of the Orontes. But his further
suggestion that the term is used by Sargon for the whole stretch of
country between the sea and the Euphrates is hardly probable. For
the geographical references need not be treated as exhaustive, but as
confined to the more important districts through which the expedition
passed. The district of Ibla which is also mentioned by Narâm-Sin and
Gudea, lay probably to the north of Iarmuti, perhaps on the southern
slopes of Taurus. It, too, we may regard as a district of restricted
extent rather than as a general geographical term for the extreme north
of Syria.

(1) Thureau-Dangin, _Les inscriptions de Sumer de d'Akkad_,
p. 108 f., Statue B, col. v. 1. 28; Germ. ed., p. 68 f.

It is significant that Sargon does not allude to any battle when
describing this expedition, nor does he claim to have devastated the
western countries.(1) Indeed, most of these early expeditions to the
west appear to have been inspired by motives of commercial enterprise
rather than of conquest. But increase of wealth was naturally followed
by political expansion, and Egypt's dream of an Asiatic empire was
realized by Pharaohs of the XVIIIth Dynasty. The fact that Babylonian
should then have been adopted as the medium of official intercourse in
Syria points to the closeness of the commercial ties which had already
united the Euphrates Valley with the west. Egyptian control had passed
from Canaan at the time of the Hebrew settlement, which was indeed a
comparatively late episode in the early history of Syria. Whether or not
we identify the Khabiri with the Hebrews, the character of the latter's
incursion is strikingly illustrated by some of the Tell el-Amarna
letters. We see a nomad folk pressing in upon settled peoples and
gaining a foothold here and there.(2)