produced a twofold effect. They soothed the anger of the offended party,
and suggested not only a courteous answer, but the sending of still more
valuable gifts. Oriental etiquette, even in those early times, demanded
that the present of a less rich or powerful friend should place the
recipient under the obligation of sending back a gift of still greater
worth. Every one, therefore, whether great or little, was obliged to
regulate his liberality according to the estimation in which he held
himself, or to the opinion which others formed of him, and a personage
of such opulence as the King of Egypt was constrained by the laws of
common civility to display an almost boundless generosity: was he not
free to work the mines of the Divine Land or the diggings of the Upper
Nile; and as for gold, "was it not as the dust of his country"?**

* See the letter of Amenôthes III. to Kallimmasin of
Babylon, where the King of Egypt complains of the inimical
designs which the Babylonian messengers had planned against
him, and of the intrigues they had connected on their return
to their own country; see also the letter from Burnaburiash
to Amenôthes IV., in which he defends himself from the
accusation of having plotted against the King of Egypt at
any time, and recalls the circumstance that his father
Kurigalzu had refused to encourage the rebellion of one of
the Syrian tribes, subjects of Amenôthes III.

** See the letter of Dushratta, King of Mitanni, to the
Pharaoh Amenôthes IV.

He would have desired nothing better than to exhibit such liberality,
had not the repeated calls on his purse at last constrained him to
parsimony; he would have been ruined, and Egypt with him, had he given