Towards the close of the reign of Amenhotep III. Tushratta despatched to Egypt, Ishtar of Nineveh 'lady of lands, lady of heaven,' in pursuance to her oracle 'to the land that I love I will go.' She was doubtless sent to exercise her powers in Egypt, and Tushratta expresses the hope that the king may revere her tenfold more than on the occasion of a previous visit. He also invokes a hundred thousand years and great joy for his 'brother' and himself. There is a parallel to this in the late popular story where Ramses II. sent one of the images of Khonsu (moon-god and god of healing) to cure a Hittite princess, the sister of his queen, of an evil spirit. The god accompanied by a priest was received with all reverence, the demon was expelled and allowed to depart in peace to the place he desired, and a great feast was celebrated. Indeed, the {72} Hittite chief kept the useful god with him for nearly four years, when, frightened by a vision of the god flying upwards towards Egypt, he restored it to its rightful soil. The very human limitations of the deities render it necessary that some representation or emblem should be employed when their help is required. +In political Treaties and Covenants+ the representative gods of the respective countries are invoked as witnesses, and their curses are expected to fall upon the defaulter. It was generally felt that curses as well as blessings had a very real potency, and the thrilling denunciations at the end of Khammurabi's Code of Laws and contemporary examples from Egypt threaten desolation, hunger, thirst, flaming fire, and the avenging pursuit of the gods. Political treaties are instructive for the light they throw upon the ruling powers. In Esarhaddon's treaty with Baal, king of Tyre (677-6 B.C.), the gods of the latter are Baal-shamen (Baal of heaven), two other specified Baals, Melkart of Tyre, Eshmun and the goddess Astarte. Later, in Hannibal's covenant with Philip of Macedon, the Carthaginian gods are enumerated in two triads, then follow the gods who took part in war, and finally, sun, moon, earth, {73} rivers, harbours (?) and streams. But the most illuminating example is the Egyptian version of the treaty (about 1290), between Ramses II. and the Kheta (Hittites), the two great rival influences over the intervening lands. Here the representative heads of Egypt and the Kheta are respectively the sun-god Re and Sutekh (_i.e._ Set, the Egyptian equivalent of a weather- or storm-god whose native name can only be conjectured). Formerly, we learn, '[the] god prevented hostilities' between the two lands by treaty, and this new pact is made for 're-establishing the relations which Re made and Sutekh made for the land of Egypt with the land of Kheta' to prevent future warfare. The thousand gods male and female both of the Kheta and of Egypt are called to witness. Those of the former are particularly interesting, they comprise the sun-god lord of heaven, the