LETTERS FROM ASIATIC VASSALS.

Four-fifths of the number of letters consist of reports and communications from Egyptian governors, military commanders, magistrates, and other officials in Western Asia. The form of address from these subordinates to the Pharaoh is naturally very different from “Royal Brother,” and in hurried announcements it is often contracted. Written in full the long formula runs:

“To the king, my lord, my gods, my sun, the sun of heaven; Yitia, prefect of Askelon is thy servant, the dust at thy feet, the servant of thy horses. At the feet of the king my lord seven times and again seven times I prostrate myself upon my back and upon my breast.”

The importance of these letters, however, consists in the substance of what they report and in what they tell us as to the doings of the writers. They are the data by reason of which the Tell el Amarna archives constitute a unique store of historical material for the study of the history of civilisation.

Warlike expeditions among the vassal chiefs were the order of the day. Most dangerous of all the chiefs was Aziru, prefect of the land of the Amorites, whose territory included the district north of Damascus and part of the valley of the Orontes. In the hope of founding an independent kingdom, Aziru had swiftly seized on the dominions of all the chiefs on his northern boundary, and in this action his admirable understanding with the Egyptian officials afforded him invaluable help. The town of Tunip sent a truly pathetic letter to Pharaoh from which we learn that Aziru had already taken Nii, was besieging Simyra in Phoenicia, and at the same time, by the aid of his creatures at Court, had succeeded in preventing the king from reinstating a prince of Tunip who had been sent into Egypt as a hostage. This prince, a certain Yadi Addu, had already been released and was on his way home when the allies of Aziru caused him to be recalled.

“If, however, we have to mourn,” so the complaint proceeds, “the king himself will soon have to mourn over those things which Aziru has committed against us, for next he will turn his hand against his lord. But Tunip, thy city, weeps; her tears flow; nowhere is there help for us.”

The most bitter complaints against Aziru and his father Abd-Ashera come from Rib-Addì of Gebal. His utterances rival the Lamentations of Jeremiah both in volume and in monotonous pathos. One of these many letters, the contents of which are often stereotyped enough, is also noticeable for its revelation of the connection of Rib-Addì, who must already have been an elderly man, with Amanappa:

“To Amanappa, my father; Rib-Addì, thy son! At my father’s feet I fall. Again and again I asked thee, ’Canst thou not rescue me from the hand of Abd-Ashera? All the Habiri are on his side; the princes will hear no remonstrances, but are in alliance with him; thereby is he become mighty.’ But thou hast answered me, ’Send thy messenger with me to Court, and then will I, if nothing be said against it (i.e., by the king), send him again and again with royal troops to thee till the Pidati march forth to secure thy life.’ Then I answered thee, ’I will not delay to send the man, but nothing of this must come to the ears of Abd-Ashera, for [Yanhamu has] taken [silver] from his hand.’ (As much as to say that if Abd-Ashera gives Yanhamu a hint, the messenger will never get beyond Lower Egypt.) But thou hast said, ’Fear not, but send a ship to the Yarimuta, and money and garments will come to thee thence.’ Now, behold, the troops which thou hast given me have fled, because thou hast neglected me, while I have obeyed thee. He hath spoken with the official (Yanhamu?) nine times [in vain]. Behold, thou art delaying with regard to this offence as with the others. What then can save me? If I receive no troops I shall forsake my city, and flee, doing that which seems good to me to preserve my life.”

Yanhamu’s bias against Rib-Addì is made evident in many other letters which the poor wretch addressed to the Court:

“If I should make a treaty with Abd-Ashera as did Yap-Addì and Zimrida, then I should be safe. Furthermore, since Simyra is indeed lost to me, and Yanhamu hath received Bit-Arti, he ought to send me provision of grain that I may defend the king’s city for him. Thou, oh king, speak to Yanhamu; ’Behold, Rib-Addì is in thy hand, and all injury done to him falls on thee.’ "

This desire was not complied with, for the Phoenician vassal was at length robbed of all his cities and possessions, so that even the callous Egyptian Government felt obliged at last to send a threatening embassy to Aziru, the son of Abd-Ashera, and the real author of the difficulties in Gebal. At the same time the surrender was demanded of certain “enemies of the king,” who were in all probability principal adherents of Aziru. When the messenger Hani arrived with this note, Aziru, evidently warned in good time, had promptly vanished over the hills, and none of the royal commands could be carried out. He pretends to have settled down in Tunip, which he must previously have seized, but at once returned home on hearing of Hani’s arrival. Unfortunately it was too late. The cunning Amorite brought forward one excuse after another. “Even if thy actions be just, yet if thou dissemble in thy letters at thy pleasure, the king must at length come to think that thou liest in every case,” is a passage in the letter brought by Hani. Aziru replies in a tone of injured innocence:

“To the great king, my lord, my god, my sun; Aziru, thy servant. Seven times and again seven times, &c. Oh, lord, I am indeed thy servant; and only when prostrate on the ground before the king, my lord, can I speak what I have to say. But hearken not, O lord, to the foes who slander me before thee. I remain thy servant for ever.”

This trusty vassal added to his other known faults the peculiarity of conspiring readily with the Hittite foes of the Court. His insolence helped him successfully out of these awkward difficulties also whenever the matter came under discussion. When preparing fresh raids he did not hesitate to invent news of Hittite invasions which he was bound to resist, and all territory which he then took from his co-vassals would, according to his own account, otherwise certainly have fallen into the hands of the enemy. But as the result was always the same i.e., to the advantage of Aziru alone the opinion began to prevail in Egyptian councils that this restless vassal should be summoned to Court and tried. For many years Aziru succeeded in evading these fatal and dangerous, or at best very costly orders. But finally he was forced to obey, and with heavy heart and well-filled treasure chests set off for Egypt. Apparently he relied on his principal ally Dudu, whom in his letters he always addresses as “father”; but this pleasant alliance did not avail to protect the disturber of the peace from provisional arrest. The last letter in the Aziru series, which had obviously been confiscated and subsequently found its way back into the archives, is a letter of condolence from the adherents or sons of Aziru to their imprisoned chief. Nevertheless, the political activity of the Amorite chief seemed to many Syrian, and especially to Phoenician princes as on the whole for the good of the land, and, therefore, to be supported. His appearance put the longed-for end to a far less endurable condition of things. Two communications from Akizzi, the headman of the city of Katna, near Damascus, exhibit the difference clearly. When Akizzi sent his first communication to Nimmuria every petty chief went raiding on his own account: Teuwatta of Lapana, Dasha, Arzawia and all the rest of them. These vanished with the entrance of Aziru upon the scene, though the change was by no means welcome to Akizzi. In the Lebanon things were no better. Here Namyauza was struggling with the headmen of Puzruna and Khalunni. “They began hostilities together with Biridashwi against me and said: ‘Come, let us kill Namyauza.’ But I escaped.” This promiscuous warfare raged most fiercely in the south. Here a certain Labaya tried to play the part taken by Aziru in the north. But fortune was less favourable to Labaya. Probably he failed to induce his undisciplined officers to act in unison, and the unhappy man’s sole achievement seems to have been the welding of his foes into a compact body against himself. He lost his territory, kept up the struggle a little longer as a freebooter, was taken captive at Megiddo, escaped again on the eve of being shipped to Egypt, and fell in battle or died a natural death after at length meeting apparently with some success in Judaea.

Jerusalem was under a royal “Uweu,” a term perhaps best rendered “captain,” named Abdikheba. A neighbouring prefect, Shuwardata, asserted occasionally that he had entered into conspiracies with Labaya, and Abdikheba in fact complained of hostilities on all sides. Milki-El and his father-in-law Tagi, chiefs in the Philistian plain near Gath, were his principal opponents. They recruited troops from among the Habiri in the hope that Abdikheba, finding himself practically blockaded, would weary of the struggle and abandon the field. He was evidently very nearly driven to this when he wrote:

“Infamous things have been wrought against me. To see it would draw tears from the eyes of the king, so do my foes press me. Shall the royal cities fall a prey to the Habiri? If the Pidati do not come in the course of this year, let the king send messengers to fetch me and all my brethren that we may die in the presence of the king, our lord.”

By the Habiri we must here understand no other than the Hebrews, who were therefore already to be found in the “Promised Land,” but had not yet firmly established themselves there. They swarmed in the Lebanon, where Namyauza had formally enlisted one of their hordes; and yet it seems as if they already held Shechem and Mount Ephraim as free tribal property. At any rate, no letter thence to the king has been discovered, although there is one mention of the city Shakmi (Shechem). The genuinely ancient passages in the scriptural accounts of the conquest in the Book of Joshua, and still more the valuable fragments in the first chapter of Judges, are fairly in accordance with what we here learn from the tablets.

Abdikheba’s letters may be considered along with those of Milki-El and Tagi, of whom Yanhamu, the powerful official, had just made an example. Their voices take up the chorus of complaint:

Abdikheba. “Lo! Milki-El and Tagi have done as follows.... Thus,
as the king liveth, hath Milki-El committed treachery against me.
Send Yanhamu that he may see what is done in the king’s land.”

Milki-el. “The king, my lord, shall know the deed done by Yanhamu after I had been dismissed by the king. Lo, he took three thousand talents from me and said to me, ’Give me thy wife and thy sons that I may slay them.’ May my lord, the king, remember this deed and send us chariots to bring us away.”

Tagi. “Am I not a servant of the king? But my brother is full of wounds so that I can send no message by him to the king. Ask the rabisu (a title of Yanhamu) whether my brother is not full of wounds. But we turn our eyes to thee, to know whether we may rise to heaven or creep into the earth; our heads remain in thy hand. Behold, I shall try to make my way to the king by the hand of the surgeons.”

Milki-el. “I have received the king’s message. Let him send the
Pidati to protect his servant, and grains of myrrh gum for
healing.”

As already pointed out, the blame for such occurrences belongs in the first place to the Egyptian system of government. How little the petty princes could expect, whether of good or evil, from their suzerain is shown by glaring examples. King Burnaburiash complained that a Babylonian trading company established by his ambassador in the Canaanite city of Khinaton had, immediately after the ambassador’s departure, been attacked and utterly plundered. The principals were killed, and the rest some of them mutilated were sent into slavery. “Canaan is thy land; thou art king of it,” continues Burnaburiash. “It was in thy land that I suffered this injury; therefore restrain the doers of it. Replace the stolen gold, and slay the murderers of my subjects to avenge their blood.” Whether this was done was extremely doubtful, for part of the plunder had in all probability already sufficed to secure a safe retreat for the brigands, who, furthermore, were officials from some of whom letters have been found. The natural consequence was that the ambassadors themselves were attacked. Their caravan with gifts for Napkhuria was robbed twice in succession, and they themselves were held to ransom. The Egyptian Government nevertheless remained outrageously slack as ever, as we may see from the following safe conduct granted on behalf of the Canaanite miscreants: “To the princes in the land of Canaan, the vassals of my brother. Akiya, my messenger, I send to the King of Egypt my brother. Bring him safe and quickly to Egypt. Let no violence befall him.”

Prefects of Canaanite ports were naturally in most active communication with Egypt. On some of the shrewder minds among these men it had dawned that it pleased and amused the king to have immediate news of messages by sea and land from far and near communicated in their letters. Abi-milki of Tyre had carried this practice farthest, and he was also admirably skilful in lodging complaints by the way. We owe to this worthy one of the choicest pieces in the whole collection, the elegant pæan of a place-hunter of more than three thousand years ago. It will be noticed that some of his rhetorical expressions repeatedly recall those of the Hebrew Psalter in the same way as do phrases in the letter of Tagi already quoted. In fact, the Bible critic has much to learn from the tablets as a whole. After the formal beginning, Abi-milki launches out as follows:

“My lord the king is the Sun-God, rising each day over the earth according to the will of his gracious father, the heavenly Sun-God (Aten). His words give life and prosperity. To all lands his might giveth peace. Like the (Phoenician) god Ram-man, so he thunders down from heaven, and the earth trembles before him. Behold, thy servant writeth as soon as he has good news to send the king. And the fear of my lord, the king, fell upon the whole land till the messenger made known the good news from the king my lord. When I heard through him the command of the king to me, ’Be at the disposal of my high officials,’ then thy servant answered his lord, ‘It is already done.’ On my breast and on my back write I down for myself the commands of the king. Verily, he who hearkeneth to the king his lord, and serveth him with love, the Sun-God riseth over him, and a good word from the mouth of his lord giveth him life. If he heed not the commands of his lord his city will fall, his house will perish, and his name will be known no more for ever in all lands. But he who followeth his lord as a faithful servant, his city is prosperous, his house is secure, and his name shall endure for ever.”

The letter continues for some time in the same strain, but at the end the courtier bethinks him of his office of informer, and adds hastily:

“Furthermore, Zimrida, the prefect of Sidon, sends a report every day to Aziru, Abd-Ashera’s son. Every word that comes from Egypt he telleth to him. I, however, tell it to my lord, that it may serve thee, oh my lord!”

Two princes, Adad-nirari of Nukhashi and another whose name is now illegible, apparently take a higher rank than their neighbours. Nukhashi is often named in these tablets as well as in Egyptian inscriptions, and it must have been situated on the north-east slope of the Lebanon range. We have also letters from the towns of Biruta (Beyrout), Hashab, Hazi, Kumidi, Kadesh on the Orontes, Sidon, Akko, Rubiza, Megiddo, Hazor, Gezer, Gaza, Lachish, Shamhuna, Mushihuma, Dubu, and others, while there are many more so mutilated that their origin can no longer be determined.

These letters, though by no means all of them containing important contributions to the history of political intrigue, are often of interest from the light they throw on manners and customs. A few further extracts are therefore given here.

“To the king my lord, my gods, my sun; Yabitiri is thy servant, the dust of thy feet, &c. And a faithful servant of the king am I. I look hither, and I look thither, but it is not light; then I look to the king my lord, then there is light. A brick may be removed from its firm bed, but I move not away from the king’s feet. Let my lord the king ask Yanhamu, his rabisu. While I was still young he brought me to Egypt, and I served my lord the king and stood at the gate of the palace. And to-day, let my lord the king ask his rabisu, I guard the gates of Gaza and of Joppa. I am also attached to the Pidati of my lord the king; whither they go thither do I go with them, as even now. On my neck rests the yoke of my lord the king, and I bear it.”

The following tablet from the neighbourhood of the Jordan promises good results as the reward of future research for geographical details:

“To Yanhamu, my lord: Mut-Addì is thy servant at thy feet. I told thee before, and it is so indeed; Ayab hath fled in secret, as did also previously the king of Bihishi before the commissioners of the king his lord. Is Ayab now in Bihishi? [He is there] truly as the lord king liveth, truly as he liveth. For two months he has been there. Behold, Benenima is present, Tadua is present, Yashua is present; ask them whether he hath fled from Shadi-Marduk, from Astarti. When all the cities in the land of Gari were in rebellion, Adma (Udumu), Aduri, Araru, Mishtu, Migdal, Ain-anab and Sarki were taken, then later Hawani and Yabesh. Behold, moreover, as soon as thou hadst written a letter to me I wrote to him (Ayab) that thou hadst returned from thy journey (to Palestine?). And behold he came to Bihishi and heard the command.”

The names Ayab and Yashua recall Job and Joshua to our minds.

The great alacrity shown in this letter was, as we already know, most acceptable to Yanhamu. Another Syrian chief, whose name has been obliterated, complained bitterly that Yanhamu had refused him a passage through his territories, although he showed the royal summons to Court. This, indeed, may have been an indirect favour to his correspondent. Very amusing is a group of three synoptic letters, written by one scribe for Biri ... (the name is imperfect) of Hashab, Ildaya ... of Hazi, and another. These vassals had evidently taken the field together. They recite their tale like a chorus of schoolboys repeating a lesson.

“Behold, we were besieging the cities of the king my lord in the land of Amki (i.e., cities that had fallen away and had ceased to pay tribute). Then came Itakama, the Prince of Kinza (Kadesh), at the head of Hittites. Let my lord the king write to Itakama, and cause him to turn aside and give us troops that we may win the cities of my lord the king, and thenceforth dwell in them.”

Itakama was specially unpopular with his neighbours. Apparently he was one of the more powerful allies of Aziru, and as such his special task was to press as hard as possible on the foes of the Amorites in southern Coele-Syria. Perhaps, however, Aziru and Itakama did not come together till each for a time had fought his battles alone. The Hittites in Itakama’s force were, of course, prominently mentioned to alarm Pharaoh. They may have been Hittite spearmen enrolled by the prince of Kadesh, much as the Habiri and Sutu had been enlisted by his chief rival Namyauza. It is even possible that the soldiers of Kadesh had always been armed in Hittite fashion; perhaps the town was already inhabited by people of Hittite stock. Later the Hittites actually seized Kadesh, and it is questionable whether it was for the first time. Itakama himself, however, scouts any thought of defection; nay, he writes:

“To the king my lord, &c. I am thy servant, but Namyauza hath slandered me to thee, oh my master. And while he was doing that he occupied all the inheritance of my fathers in the land of Kadesh, and my villages hath he set on fire. Do not the officers of my lord the king and his subjects know my faithfulness? I serve thee with all my brethren, and where there is rebellion against my lord the king, thither I march with my warriors, my chariots, and all my brethren. Behold, now Namyauza hath delivered up to the Habiri all the king’s cities in the land of Kadesh and in Ube. But I will march forth, and if thy gods and thy sun go before me I will restore these places from the Habiri to the king that I may show myself subject to him. I will drive out these Habiri, and my lord the king shall rejoice in his servant Itakama. I will serve the king my lord, and all my brethren, and all lands shall serve him. But Namyauza will I destroy, for I am for ever a servant of the king my lord.”

The land of Ube here named corresponds to the Hobah of the Bible, mentioned in Genesis xi, as the place to which Abram pursued the conquerors of Sodom, who had carried Lot away. According to the margin of the Revised Version, Hobah lay “north of Damascus.” In a letter from Akizzi of Katna , we read, however, “Oh, my lord the king, as Damascus in the land of Ube stretches out her hand to thy feet, so Katna stretches out her hand to thy feet.” The statements may be reconciled by the hypothesis that in the Old Testament the position of the town after which the district is named is more exactly indicated. Other lands named in the tablets are more difficult to identify. To mitigate a famine in Gebal, Rib-Addì intended to send for grain from Zalukhi in Ugarit, but his enemies detained his ships and frustrated his intentions. Zalukhi does not seem to be mentioned again, and Rib-Addì in a later letter compares Ugarit with the region round Tyre as regards its administrative relation to Egypt. Abi-milki, the Tyrian prefect, once informs the king, “Fire hath devoured the city of Ugarit; one half of it hath it destroyed and not the other.” Finally, a certain Yapakhi-Addì, after an unsuccessful attempt to get provisions into Rib-Addi’s city Simyra, reproachfully informs Yanhamu that Aziru has extended his dominions from Gebal to Ugarit. Ugarit must thus have been the most northerly of the Egyptian possessions in Asia, and therefore not far from the site of the modern Alexandretta. This outlying position made the little state a somewhat insecure jewel in the crown of Egypt. King Kadashman-Bel seems to have been of this opinion when he included in his little list of ladies impossible for a royal harem “a maiden from Ugarit.” Evidently he meant to enumerate superciliously petty foreign “princesses” only.

Of a certain land of Danuna (considered a part of Canaan) we learn further that its king died, and that his brother succeeded to the throne unopposed. One of the two may be identical with the king of Tana; who, as Rib-Addì briefly mentions, was about to march to Gebal, but was forced by scarcity of water to return home.

A few letters from women are among the tablets. Two probably came from the wife of Milki-El, who was hard pressed by the Habiri when her husband was called to Egypt. Two others are addressed, “The handmaid to my mistress”; perhaps they were sent along with Tushratta’s letters to his daughter in Egypt and were from one of her playfellows or relatives. Finally, the daughter of Napkhuria, married to Burnaburiash, sent a small tablet to her father by a special envoy named Kidin-Ramman. “Before the face of my lord let him come” indicates that the letter was “to be delivered in person.” It is a pity that this dainty little letter is for the most part illegible.