* Mitanni is mentioned on several Egyptian monuments; but its importance was not recognised until after the discovery of the Tel el-Amarna tablets and of its situation. The fact that a letter from the Prince of Mitanni is stated in a Hieratic docket to have come from Naharaim has been used as a proof that the countries were identical; I have shown that the docket proves only that Mitanni formed a part of Naharaim. It extended over the province of Edessa and Harran, stretching out towards the sources of the Tigris. Niebuhr places it on the southern slope of the Masios, in Mygdonia; Th. Reinach connects it with the Mationi, and asks whether this was not the region occupied by this people before their emigration towards the Caspian. ** Several of the Tel el-Amarna tablets are couched in this language. *** These names were recognised from the first in the inscriptions of Thutmosis III. and in those of other Pharaohs of the XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties. The Carchemish route was, of course, well known to caravans, but armed bodies had rarely occasion to make use of it. It was a far cry from Memphis to Carchemish, and for the Egyptians this town continued to be a limit which they never passed, except incidentally, when they had to chastise some turbulent tribe, or to give some ill-guarded town to the flames.* * A certain number of towns mentioned in the lists of Thutmosis III. were situated beyond the Euphrates, and they belonged some to Mitanni and some to the regions further away. [Illustration: 215.jpg THE HEADS OF THREE AMORITE CAPTIVES] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph. It would be a difficult task to define with any approach to accuracy the distribution of the Canaanites, Amorites, and Aramaeans, and to indicate the precise points where they came into contact with their rivals of non-Semitic stock. Frontiers between races and languages can never be very easily determined, and this is especially true of the peoples of Syria. They are so broken up and mixed in this region, that even in neighbourhoods where one predominant tribe is concentrated, it is easy to find at every step representatives of all the others. Four or five townships, singled out at random from the middle of a province, would often be found to belong to as many different races, and their respective inhabitants, while living within a distance of a mile or two, would be as great strangers to each other as if they were separated by the breadth of a continent. [Illustration: 216.jpg MIXTURE OF SYRIAN RACES] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.