Although the narrative is written from an Egyptian standpoint, the conviction which is ascribed to Zakarbaal finds a parallel in the familiar story of the journey of Osiris, the founder of Egyptian civilisation, from the Delta to Byblos. Even before the Hyksos period Egyptian women named themselves after the Baalath of Byblos {76} whom they identified with Hathor and evidently regarded as an appropriate patroness.[4] The connection between Egypt and the port of Lebanon may have been exceptionally close, but there were Egyptian settlements at Gezer, Megiddo, and the north at an equally early age. Under the conquerors of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the daughters of the small tributaries were taken into the royal harem, and the sons were removed as hostages and safely guarded in Egypt. Some of the latter settled down, others were appointed in due course to the thrones of their fathers, after having received the necessary anointing-oil from the great king. One of the latter recalls in the Amarna letters how he had served the king in Egypt and had stood at the royal gate, and from the grave-stone of a Palestinian soldier at El-Amarna we may see how settlement upon Egyptian soil had led to the acceptance of Egyptian ideas of the other world. [4] A. Erman, _Zeitschrift fur Aegyptische Sprache_, xlii. p. 109. Meanwhile Palestine and Syria were under the direction of Egyptian authorities, to whose presence the Amarna letters frequently allude, and one of the writers quaintly likens the solicitude of a certain official on his behalf to that of a {77} mother or a father. Where there were Egyptians or where princes had been in Egypt, some trace of the national religion may be expected, and it is probable that every military garrison possessed some kind of sanctuary. Moreover, Thutmose III. had dedicated three cities in the Lebanon district to Amon; later, Egyptian gods 'dwelt' in the north at Tunip. A stele, a few miles south of Tell 'Ashtarah (cp. the name Ishtar) in Bashan represents Sety I. offering a libation to Amon, and the pure Egyptian workmanship points to a strong foreign influence in the locality. Ramses II. set up a statue of his majesty in Tunip, and a city in South Lebanon was called after his name. Still descending, we read that cities were set apart for Amon-Re in the reign of Ramses III., and this king built in Canaan 'a mysterious house like the horizon of heavens which is in the sky' (_i.e._ the abode of the sun-god), with a great statue of 'Amon-of-Ramses-ruler-of-Heliopolis,' to which the natives brought tribute, 'for it was divine.'