However this may be, the important place occupied by the Hittites in creating the Canaan which the Israelites invaded is now clear. While the larger bands of Hittite raiders settled in the north, where they prepared the way for the Hittite king himself with his regular army, and where Hittite power became so firmly established that even the great Ramses could not dislodge it, smaller companies of condottieri made their way to the extreme south of Palestine, hiring their services to the rival governors and princes and seizing a town or district for themselves when the opportunity offered. So long as the tribute was paid, and its subjects were not too troublesome, the Egyptian Government looked on with equanimity while the states of Canaan were practically ruled by the leaders of foreign mercenaries who transferred their services from one paymaster to another with the most perfect impartiality. What is most curious is that the Imperial Government recognized the legal position not only of the Hittite or Amorite mercenaries, but even of organized bands of Bedâwîn and outlaws. As for the Bedâwîn, it had companies of them in its own pay, like the Egyptian Government in more recent times, and the governor of Gebal complains that the Egyptian commissioner Pa-Hor had sent some of the latter to murder his garrison of Serdani or Sardinians, who were themselves mercenaries in the Egyptian army. That bodies of outlaws should have been subsidized by the native princes with the permission, or at least the connivance, of the Egyptian court may seem surprising. But after all it is only what we find happening in later times when the king of Gath similarly enrolled David and his band of outlaws into his bodyguard without any remonstrance on the part of the other Philistine “lords.” Still it is startling to find one of the Pharaoh’s governors coolly announcing that he and his soldiers and chariots, together with his brothers, his “cut-throats” and his Bedâwîn, are ready to join the royal troops, at the very time when another governor is piteously begging the great king to “save” him “out of the hands of the cut-throats and Bedâwîn.” Here is a strange picture of Canaanitish life in the days when as yet the Israelite was not in the land. The fact is, the Canaanites were an unwarlike people. Inland, they were agriculturists; on the sea-coast they were traders. And, like other trading communities, they were disinclined to fight, preferring to entrust the protection of themselves and their property to a paid soldiery, while at the same time their wealth made them a tempting prize to the assailant. It is true that they maintained a native militia, as we have learned from one of the cuneiform tablets discovered at Taanach, but it was upon a small scale, and apparently so long as the person on the roll could produce the one or two men for whom he was responsible he was not himself obliged to serve. It was again a case of paying others to fight instead of themselves.