natural Egyptian expansion into a neighbouring fertile territory, which
at last lay open, and was claimed by no other imperial power, while the
weak Kassites ruled Babylon, and the independence of Assyria was in
embryo. But the earlier Egyptian armies seem to have gone forth to Syria
simply to ravage and levy blackmail. They avoided all fenced places, and
returned to the Nile leaving no one to hold the ravaged territory. No
Pharaoh before the successor of Queen Hatshepsut made Palestine and
Phoenicia his own. It was Thothmes III who first reduced such
strongholds as Megiddo, and occupied the Syrian towns up to Arvad on the
shore and almost to Kadesh inland--he who by means of a few forts,
garrisoned perhaps by Egyptian or Nubian troops and certainly in some
instances by mercenaries drawn from Mediterranean islands and coasts, so
kept the fear of himself in the minds of native chiefs that they paid
regular tribute to his collectors and enforced the peace of Egypt on all
and sundry Hebrews and Amorites who might try to raid from east or
north.

In upper Syria, however, he and his successors appear to have attempted
little more than Thothmes I had done, that is to say, they made
periodical armed progresses through the fertile parts, here and there
taking a town, but for the most part taking only blackmail. Some strong
places, such as Kadesh, it is probable they never entered at all. Their
raids, however, were frequent and effective enough for all Syria to come
to be regarded by surrounding kings and kinglets as an Egyptian sphere
of influence within which it was best to acknowledge Pharaoh's rights
and to placate him by timely presents. So thought and acted the kings of
Mitanni across Euphrates, the kings of Hatti beyond Taurus, and the
distant Iranians of the Kassite dynasty in Babylonia.

Until the latter years of Thothmes' third successor, Amenhetep III, who