There is little room for wonder that, with their Asiatic proclivities and half-Asiatic descent, the later Pharaohs of the eighteenth dynasty should have surrounded themselves with Asiatic officials and courtiers. The conquest of Western Asia by Thothmes III. had brought Asiatic fashions into Egypt. Thothmes himself, on the walls of his temple at Karnak, shows the spirit of an Asiatic rather than of an Egyptian conqueror. The inscriptions engraved upon them differ wholly from those which usually adorn the walls of an Egyptian temple. There are no praises or lists of the gods, no description of the offerings made to them, no interminable catalogue of the empty titles of the Pharaoh; we have, on the contrary, a business-like account of his campaigns, much of it copied from the memoranda of the scribes who accompanied the army on its march. It reads like an inscription on the walls of an Assyrian palace rather than one belonging to an Egyptian temple. It is, in fact, unique, the solitary example of a historical text which the great monuments of Egypt have bequeathed to us. It is, of itself, an eloquent testimony to the influence which Asia had already acquired in the valley of the Nile. The conquests of Thothmes III. placed the northern boundary of the Egyptian empire at the banks of the Euphrates. The kingdoms to the east, including Assyria, offered tribute to the Egyptian monarch, and those of northern Syria and eastern Asia Minor paid him homage. Farther south, Palestine, Phœnicia, and the land of the Amorites, which lay to the north of Palestine, became Egyptian provinces, garrisoned by Egyptian troops and administered by Egyptian officers. Even the country beyond the Jordan, Bashan and the Haurân, formed part of the Egyptian empire. In many cases the native princes were left to manage the affairs of their several states, like the protected princes of modern India, but they were controlled by “commissioners” sent from the valley of the Nile. More frequently their place was taken by Egyptian governors, a very considerable number of whom, however, were of Canaanitish descent. This, indeed, is one of the most remarkable facts connected with the Egyptian empire in Asia; it was governed for the Pharaoh by natives rather than by Egyptians. But this was not all. Under Khu-n-Aten Egypt itself was invaded by the Asiatic stranger. The high places about the court were filled with foreigners whose names proclaim their Canaanitish origin; even the Vizier was called Dudu, the Biblical Dodo, to which the name of David is akin. The adherents of the cult of Aten who gathered round the Pharaoh at Tel el-Amarna seem largely to have belonged to Asia instead of Egypt.