[25>]
THE LISTS OF THE PLACES IN NORTHERN
SYRIA AND PALESTINE CONQUERED
BY THOTHMES III.By
THE REV. H. G. TOMKINS
THE following are the lists of the places in Northern Syria and Palestine conquered by Thothmes III. of the Eighteenth Egyptian Dynasty, and engraved on the walls of his temple at Karnak, as given in Mariette’s Karnak (plates 20, 21, 25, 26) and in his Listes Geographiques, etc. (1875), and described in his Itineraire de la Haute Égypte. The identifications proposed for the names contained in them embody the results of many years’ study and consultation with Prof Sayce, Prof. Maspero, and other scholars. Some of the identifications go back to Mariette, others are due to Maspero, Brugsch, Lenormant, Conder, and Nöldeke. Since Mariette and Brugsch first worked at them our knowledge of the equivalences between the sounds of the ancient Egyptian language and of the Semitic dialects has become more exact. The first copies of the names, moreover, have been corrected and recorrected. A considerable proportion of the identifications proposed [<25-26>] in the following pages may therefore be regarded as definitively acquired by science.
The copies of the names originally made for Mariette by Vassalli have been since revised by Mr. Golénischeff in the Zeitsckrift für Aegyptische Sprache, 1882, pp. 145 sq., and by Prof. Maspero in the Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l’Archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes, vii. 2, 3, 1886, pp. 94 et seq. Last winter the Palestine list was further collated with the original by Mr. Wilbour and Prof. Sayce, who have found, among other things, that the third name ought to be Kh(a)zai, and not “Khaai,” as was previously read.
In examining the North Syrian list I have derived great assistance from Rey’s Mémoire sur le Nord de la Syrie (1873), and Carte de la Montagne des Ansariés, Burton and Drake’s Unexplored Syria (1872), Neubauer’s Géographie du Talmud (1868), Sachau’s Reise in Syrien und Mesopotamien (1883), and the Carte du Liban of the French War Office (1862). For the Palestine list reference should be made to Prof. Maspero’s “Names of the List of Thothmes III. which may be assigned to Judæa,” in the Transactions of the Victoria Institute for 1888 (vol. xxii.), and his List of Galilee, Trans. of Victoria Institute for 1886 (vol. xx.) The names amount in all to 355, the last five of which are destroyed. The first 119 are described as belonging to “the Upper Rutennu,” which, an analysis of them shows, must denote Palestine. But [<26-27>] a careful study of them also shows that in order to increase the number of the Pharaoh’s conquests and fill the surface of the wall, the same name or names have been sometimes repeated, while at other times such descriptive terms as “the country,” “the meadow,” “the tilled land,” or “the spring,” have been reckoned as separate geographical titles. The lists seem to have been compiled from the memoranda made by the scribes who accompanied the king on his military expeditions ; this will account for the repetition of the same name under slightly different forms.
The discovery of the Tel el-Amarna tablets has informed us that in the age of the Eighteenth Dynasty the Babylonian language and, system of writing were known and used throughout Western Asia. This raises the presumption that some at least of the names in the lists were originally written in cuneiform, a presumption which is confirmed by an analysis of No. 284 in the North Syrian list.1 There is no need of drawing attention to the light shed by the names not only upon the early geography of Syria and Palestine, but also upon the history and languages of the Hittites and the Canaanites.
The lists are engraved in more than one place. They occupy the wall of the southern pylon built by Thothmes III. at Karnak, and also the northern wall at the western end of the temple. In transliterating the names the vowels have been [<27-28>] represented only where they occur in the hieroglyphic original, the outstretched arm being denoted by â. Variant spellings are given in many cases, and it must be remembered that r and l in ancient Egyptian are expressed by the same characters. The determinative of “country” is denoted by the double obelus (‡), and the single upright line which signifies “one” in the hieroglyphics, as well as the sign of the plural, is represented by a dash (—). Lost characters are represented by brackets [ ].
Sachau’s Reise are referred to as “Sachau,” Porter’s Syria and Palestine (1875) as “Porter,” and the geographical references in the Palestine list are to the great map of the Palestine Exploration Fund.2
It will be understood that I give the suggested identifications with different degrees of reserve. Many are ascertained with certainty. It would be impossible within our limits to define the shades of probability in others. And of course I am only giving my contribution as the result of many years of study, but with no assumption of authority.
It is right to mention that I have from time to time communicated the results of these studies to the Society of Biblical Archlæology in 1883, 1885, and 1887; and also at the Bath meeting of the British Association in two papers, since published in the Babylonian and Oriental Record vol. iii.
[<28-29>]
LIST OF THE PLACES IN NORTHERN SYRIA
CONQUERED BY THOTHMES III.
TR-MAN-NA. Trmanin, north-east of Dana. Comp.
Tr-b, No. 190.
126. R-GABA. Now Rehab, east of Trmanin. Comp.
Rugia of the Middle Ages, now Riha.
127. TUNIPA. An important place, identified by Ndldeke
with Tennib or Tinnab, south of Ezzax. The
Dunip of the Tel el-Amarna tablets, in danger from
the Hittites. A Hittite town in the time of
R~meses II.
128. Erased, except a at the end.
129. Erased.
130. ZAR-BU 4. Zirbe, or Zerbi, south-west of Aleppo.
131. SHPKHASHA. Perhaps es-S3flkh, between Aleppo
and Riha (see Sachau, 102); with suffix-s/ia, as in
No. 143.132. N’i, or NnA 4. Aif important city, described by
Thothrnes III. as situated in Nahrina (Mitanni), on
or near the Euphrates. Perhaps the Ninus Vetus
1[No. 110 in the Palestine list seems conclusively to point to the same fact—ED.]
2[In my own references ‘‘D.” means Dümichen’s Historische Inschriften, and “W.” the edition of the Tel el-Amarna tablets in the Berlin Museum, published by Winckler and Abel: Mittheilungen aus der orientalischen Sammlungen, Parts 1-3.—ED.]