Archibald Henry Sayce
Patriarchal Palestine
Amenophis IV. undertook no less a task than that of reforming the State religion of Egypt. For many centuries the religion of the priests and scribes had been inclining to pantheism. Inside the temples there had been an esoteric teaching, that the various deities of Egypt were but manifestations of the one supreme God. But it had hardly passed outside them. With the accession of Amenophis IV. to the throne came a change. The young king boldly rejected the religion of which he was officially the head, and professed himself a worshipper of the one God whose visible semblance was the solar disk. Alone of the deities of Egypt Ra, the ancient Sun-god of Heliopolis, was acknowledged to be the representative of the true God. It was the Baal-worship of Syria, modified by the philosophic conceptions of Egypt. The Aten-Ra of the "heretic" Pharaoh was an Asiatic Baal, but unlike the Baal of Canaan he stood alone; there were no other Baals, no Baalim, by the side of him.
Amenophis was not content with preaching and encouraging the new faith; he sought to force it upon his subjects. The other gods of Egypt were proscribed, and the name and head of Amon, the patron god of Thebes, to whom his ancestors had ascribed their power and victories, were erased from the monuments wherever they occurred. Even his own father's name was not spared, and the emissaries of the king, from one end of the country to the other, defaced that portion of it which contained the name of the god. His own name was next changed, and Amenophis IV. became Khu-n-Aten, "the splendour of the solar disk."
Khu-n-Aten's attempt to overthrow the ancient faith of Egypt was naturally resisted by the powerful priesthood of Thebes. A religious war was declared for the first time, so far as we know, in the history of mankind. On the one side a fierce persecution was directed against the adherents of the old creed; on the other side every effort was made to impede and defeat the Pharaoh. His position grew daily more insecure, and at last he turned his back on the capital of his fathers, and built himself a new city far away to the north. The priests of Amon had thus far triumphed; the old idolatrous worship was carried on once more in the great temple of Karnak, though its official head was absent, and Khu-n-Aten with his archives and his court had fled to a safer home. Upper Egypt was left to its worship of Amon and Min, while the king established himself nearer his Canaanite possessions.
Here on the eastern bank of the Nile, about midway between Minyeh and Siût, the new capital was founded on a strip of land protected from attack by a semi-amphitheatre of cliffs. The city, with its palaces and gardens, extended nearly two miles in length along the river bank. In its midst rose the temple of the new god of Egypt, and hard by the palace of the king. Both were brilliant with painting and sculpture, and inlaid work in precious stones and gold. Even the floors were frescoed, while the walls and columns were enamelled or adorned with the most costly materials that the Egyptian world could produce. Here and there were statues of alabaster, of bronze or of gold, some of them almost Greek in form and design. Along with the reform in religion there had gone a reform in art. The old conventionalized art of Egypt was abandoned, and a new art had been introduced which aimed at imitating nature with realistic fidelity.
The mounds which mark the site of Khu-n-Aten's city are now known as Tel el-Amarna. It had a brief but brilliant existence of about thirty years. Then the enemies of the Pharaoh and his work of reform finally prevailed, and his city with its temple and palaces was levelled to the ground. It is from among its ruins that the wondering fellah and explorer of to-day exhume the gorgeous relics of its past.
But among these relics none have proved more precious than the clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform characters, which have revolutionized our conceptions of the ancient East. They were preserved in the Foreign Office of the day. This formed part of the public buildings connected with the palace, and the bricks of which it was built were stamped with an inscription describing its character. Many of the tablets had been brought from the archive chamber of Thebes, but the greater part of the collection belongs to the reign of Khu-n-Aten himself. It consists almost entirely of official correspondence; of letters from the kings of Babylonia and Assyria, of Mesopotamia and Kappadokia, and of despatches from the Egyptian governors and vassal-princes in Syria and Palestine. They furnish us with a living and unexpected picture of Canaan about 1400 B.C.
Fragments of dictionaries for the use of the scribes have also been recovered from the débris of the building, as well as the seal of a servant of Samas-akh-iddin who looked after the cuneiform correspondence. Like several of the Canaanitish governors, he bore a Babylonian name. Even the brother of Amenophis III., who had been made king of Nukhasse, had received the Babylonian name of Rimmon-nirari. No stronger proof could be found of the extent and strength of Babylonian influence in the West.
At Khut-Aten, as the "heretic" Pharaoh called his new capital, he was surrounded by the adherents of the new faith. Many of them were doubtless Egyptians, but many, perhaps the majority, were of Asiatic extraction. Already under his father and grandfather the court had been filled with Canaanites and other natives of Asia, and the great offices of state had been occupied by them. Now under Khu-n-Aten the Asiatic character of the government was increased tenfold. The native Egyptian had to make way for the foreigner, and the rule of the Syrian stranger which seemed to have been expelled with the Hyksos was restored under another form. Canaan was nominally a subject province of Egypt, but in reality it had led its conqueror captive. A semi-Asiatic Pharaoh was endeavouring to force an Asiatic form of faith upon his subjects, and entrusting his government to Asiatic officials; even art had ceased to be Egyptian and had put on an Asiatic dress.
The tombs of Khu-n-Aten's followers are cut in the cliffs at the back of the city, while his own sepulchre is towards the end of a long ravine which runs out into the eastern desert between two lofty lines of precipitous rock. But few of them are finished, and the sepulchre of the king himself, magnificent in its design, is incomplete and mutilated. The sculptures on the walls have been broken, and the granite sarcophagus in which the body of the great king rested has been shattered into fragments before it could be lifted into the niche where it was intended to stand. The royal mummy was torn into shreds, and the porcelain figures buried with it dashed to the ground.
It is clear that the death of Khu-n-Aten must have been quickly followed by the triumph of his enemies. His capital was overthrown, the stones of its temple carried away to Thebes, there to adorn the sanctuary of the victorious Amon, and the adherents of his reform either slain or driven into exile. The vengeance executed upon them was national as well as religious. It meant not only a restoration of the national faith, but also the restoration of the native Egyptian to the government of his country. The feelings which inspired it were similar to those which underlay the movement of Arabi in our own time, and there was no English army to stand in the way of its success. The rise of the nineteenth dynasty represents the triumph of the national cause.
The cuneiform letters of Tel el-Amarna show that already before Khu-n-Aten's death his empire and power were breaking up. Letter after letter is sent to him from the governors in Canaan with urgent requests for troops. The Hittites were attacking the empire in the north, and rebels were overthrowing it within. "If auxiliaries come this year," writes Ebed-Tob of Jerusalem, "the provinces of the king my lord will be preserved; but if no auxiliaries come the provinces of the king my lord will be destroyed." To these entreaties no answer could be returned. There was civil and religious war in Egypt itself, and the army was needed to defend the Pharaoh at home.
The picture of Canaan presented to us by the Tel el-Amarna correspondence has been supplemented by the discovery of Lachish. Five years ago Prof. Flinders Petrie undertook to excavate for the Palestine Exploration Fund in the lofty mound of Tel el-Hesi in Southern Palestine. Tel el-Hesi stands midway between Gaza and Hebron on the edge of the Judaean mountains, and overlooking a torrent stream. His excavations resulted in the discovery of successive cities built one upon the ruins of the other, and in the probability that the site was that of Lachish. The excavations were resumed by Mr. Bliss in the following year, and the probability was raised to practical certainty. The lowest of the cities was the Lachish of the Amorite period, whose crude brick walls, nearly twenty-nine feet in thickness, have been brought to light, while its pottery has revealed to us for the first time the characteristics of Amorite manufacture. The huge walls bear out the testimony of the Israelitish spies, that the cities of the Amorites were "great and walled up to heaven" (Deut. i. 28). They give indications, however, that in spite of their strength the fortresses they enclosed must have been captured more than once. Doubtless this was during the age of the Egyptian wars in Canaan.
As at Troy, it is probable that it was only the citadel which was thus strongly fortified. Below it was the main part of the town, the inhabitants of which took refuge in the citadel when an enemy threatened to attack them. The fortified part, indeed, was not of very large extent. Its ruins measured only about two hundred feet each way, while the enclosure within which it stands is a quarter of a mile in diameter. Here a regular series of pottery has been found, dating from the post-exilic age through successive strata back to the primitive Amoritish fortress. To Prof. Petrie belongs the credit of determining the characteristics of these various strata, and fixing their approximate age.
The work begun by Prof. Petrie was continued by Mr. Bliss. Deep down among the ruins of the Amoritish town he found objects which take us back to the time of Khu-n-Aten and his predecessors. They consist of Egyptian beads and scarabs of the eighteenth dynasty, and on one of the beads are the name and title of "the royal wife Teie." Along with them were discovered beads of amber which came from the Baltic as well as seal-cylinders, some of them imported from Babylonia, others western imitations of Babylonian work. The Babylonian cylinders belong to the period which extends from 3000 to 1500 B.C., while the imitations are similar in style to those which have been found in the pre-historic tombs of Cyprus and Phoenicia.
But there was one discovery made by Mr. Bliss which far surpasses in interest all the rest. It is that of a cuneiform tablet, similar in character, in contents, and in age to those which have come from Tel el-Amarna. Even the Egyptian governor mentioned in it was already known to us from the Tel el-Amarna correspondence as the governor of Lachish. One of the cuneiform letters now preserved at Berlin was written by him, and Ebed-Tob informs us that he was subsequently murdered by the people of his own city.
Here is a translation of the letter discovered at Tel el-Hesi:—
"To … rabbat (?) [or perhaps: To the officer Baya] (thus speaks) … abi. At thy feet I prostrate myself. Verily thou knowest that Dan-Hadad and Zimrida have inspected the whole of the city, and Dan-Hadad says to Zimrida: Send Yisyara to me [and] give me 3 shields (?) and 3 slings and 3 falchions, since I am prefect (?) over the country of the king and it has acted against me; and now I will restore thy possession which the enemy took from thee; and I have sent my …, and … rabi-ilu … has despatched his brother [with] these words."
(This translation differs in some respects from that previously given by me, as it is based on the copy of the text made from the original at Constantinople by Dr. Scheil (Recueil de Trailaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l'Archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes, xv. 3, 4, 137). As I stated at the time, my copy was made from a cast and was therefore uncertain in several places. I am doubtful whether even now the published text is correct throughout.)
Yisyara was the name of an Amorite, as we learn from one of the Tel el-Amarna tablets, where he is mentioned along with other rebels as being sent in fetters of bronze to the king. Of Dan-Hadad we know nothing further, but Zimrida's letter is as follows:—
"To the king my lord, my god, my Sun-god, the Sun-god who is from heaven, thus (writes) Zimridi, the governor of the city of Lachish. Thy servant, the dust of thy feet, at the feet of the king my lord, the Sun-god from heaven, bows himself seven times seven. I have very diligently listened to the words of the messenger whom the king my lord has sent to me, and now I have despatched (a mission) according to his message."
It was towards the end of Khu-n-Aten's reign, when the Egyptian empire was falling to pieces, that the murder of Zimrida took place. Ebed-Tob thus describes it in a letter to the secretary of the Pharaoh: "The Khabiri (or Confederates) are capturing the fortresses of the king. Not a single governor remains among them to the king my lord; all are destroyed. Behold, Turbazu thy officer [has fallen] in the great gate of the city of Zelah. Behold, the servants who acted against the king have slain Zimrida of Lachish. They have murdered Jephthah-Hadad thy officer in the gate of the city of Zelah."
We hear of another governor of Lachish, Yabni-el by name, but he probably held office before Zimrida. At all events the following despatch of his has been preserved:—
"To the king my lord, my god, my Sun-god, the Sun-god who is from heaven, thus (writes) Yabni-el, the governor of the city of Lachish, thy servant, the dust of thy feet, the groom of thy horses; at the feet of the king my lord, my god, my Sun-god, the Sun-god who is from heaven, seven times seven I bow myself. Glorious and supreme [art thou]. I the groom of [the horses] of the king my lord, listen to the [words] of the king my lord. Now have I heard all the words which Baya the prefect has spoken to me. Now have I done everything."
Zimrida of Lachish must be distinguished from another Canaanite of the same name who was governor of Sidon. This latter was a personal enemy of Rib-Hadad the governor of Gebal, whose letters to Khu-n-Aten form a considerable portion of the Tel el-Amarna collection. The authority of Rib-Hadad originally extended over the greater part of Phoenicia, and included the strong fortress of Zemar or Simyra in the mountains. One by one, however, his cities were taken from him by his adversaries whom he accuses of rebellion against the Pharaoh. His letters to Egypt are accordingly filled with imploring appeals for help. But none was sent, and as his enemies equally professed their loyalty to the Egyptian government, it is doubtful whether this was because the Pharaoh suspected Rib-Hadad himself of disaffection or because no troops could be spared.
Rib-Hadad had been appointed to his post by Amenophis III., and in one of his letters he looks back regretfully on "the good old times." When his letters were written he was old and sick. Abimelech, the governor of Tyre, was almost the only friend who remained to him. Not content with fomenting rebellion in his district, and taking his cities from him, his enemies accused him to the Pharaoh of disloyalty and misdoing. Those accusations were in some cases founded on truth. He confesses to having fled from his city, but he urges that it was to save his life. The troops he had begged for had not been sent to him, and he could no longer defend either his city or himself. He also alleges that the excesses committed by some of his servants had been without his knowledge. This seems to have been in answer to a despatch of Ammunira, the prefect of Beyrout, in which he informed the king that he was keeping the brother of the governor of Gebal as a hostage, and that the latter had been intriguing against the government in the land of the Amorites.
Chief among the adversaries of Rib-Hadad was Ebed-Asherah, a native of the land of Barbarti, and the governor of the Amoritish territory. Several of his sons are mentioned, but the ablest and most influential of them was Aziru or Ezer, who possessed a considerable amount of power. The whole family, while professing to be the obedient servants of the Pharaoh, nevertheless acted with a good deal of independence, and sought to aggrandise themselves at the expense of the neighbouring governors. They had at their disposal a large body of "plunderers," or Beduin from the eastern desert, and Rib-Hadad accuses them of forming secret alliances with the kings of Babylonia, of Mitanni and of the Hittites. The authority of Aziru extended to the northern frontier of the empire; we find him sent with the Egyptian general Khatip, or Hotep, to oppose the Hittite invasion, and writing to the king as well as to the prime minister Dudu to explain why they had not succeeded in doing so. Tunip had been invested by the enemy, and Aziru fears that it may fall into their hands. The Hittites had already made their way into the land of Nukhasse, and were from thence marching up into the land of the Amorites.
On the heels of these despatches came a long letter from the people of Tunip, complaining of the conduct of Aziru, and protesting against his doing to them what he had done to the city of Ni. He was at the time in the land of the Hittites, doubtless carrying on the war against the general enemy.
To these accusations Aziru made a full reply. "O my lord," he begins, "hearken not to the wicked men who slander me before the king my lord: I am thy servant for ever." He had been charged with want of respect to the Pharaoh, on the ground that he had not received the royal commissioner Khani on his arrival at Tunip. But, he replies, he did not know that the commissioner was coming, and as soon as he heard that he was on the road he "followed him, but failed to overtake him." In his absence Khani was duly received by the brethren of Aziru, and Belti-el (or Bethuel) furnished him with meat and bread and wine. Moreover, on his way home he was met by Aziru himself, who provided the commissioner with horses and mules. A more serious charge was that of seizing the city of Zemar. To this Aziru answers that it was done in self-defence, as the kings of Nukhasse had always been hostile to him, and had robbed him of his cities at the instigation of Khatip, who had also carried away all the silver and gold which the king had placed under his care. Moreover he had not really seized Zemar, but had won the people over to himself by means of gifts. Lastly, he denied the accusation that he had received the envoy of the king of the Hittites and refused to receive the Egyptian messenger, although the country he governed belonged to the king, and the king had appointed him over it. Let the Egyptian envoy make inquiries, he urges, and he will find that Aziru has acted uprightly.
The capture of Zemar forms the burden of many of the letters of Rib-Hadad. It had been besieged for two months by Ebed-Asherah, who had vainly attempted to corrupt the loyalty of the governor of Gebal. For the time Rib-Hadad managed to save the city, but Aziru allied himself with Arvad and the neighbouring towns of Northern Phoenicia, captured twelve of Rib-Hadad's men, demanded a ransom of fifty pieces of silver for each of them, and seized the ships of Zemar, Beyrout, and Sidon. The forces sent from Gebal to Zemar were made prisoners by the Amorite chief at Abiliya, and the position of Rib-Hadad daily became more desperate. Pa-Hor, the Egyptian governor of Kumidi, joined his opponents, and induced the Sute or Beduin to attack his Sardinian guards. Yapa-Hadad, another governor, followed the example of Pa-Hor, and Zimridi the governor of Sidon had from the first been his enemy. Tyre alone remained faithful to his cause, though an "Ionian" who had been sent there on a mission from Egypt had handed over horses, chariots, and men to Ebed-Asherah, and it was accordingly to Tyre that Rib-Hadad sent his family for safety. Tyre, however, now began to suffer like Gebal in consequence of the alliance between Zimridi and Ebed-Asherah.
Zemar eventually fell into the hands of Ebed-Asherah and his sons, its prefect Khayapa or Khaip being slain during the assault. Abimelech, the governor of Tyre, accuses Zimridi of having been the cause. Whether this were so or not, it placed the whole of Northern Phoenicia under the government or the influence of the Amorite chiefs. If Rib-Hadad spoke the truth, Ebed-Asherah had "sent to the soldiers in Bit-Ninip, saying, 'Gather yourselves together, and let us march up against Gebal, if therein are any who have saved themselves from our hands, and we will appoint governors throughout all the provinces;' so all the provinces went over to the Beduin." Provisions began to be scarce in Gebal, and the governor writes to Egypt for corn.
Rib-Hadad now threatened the Pharaoh with deserting to his enemies if succour was not forth-coming immediately, and at the same time he appealed to Amon-apt and Khayapa, the Egyptian commissioners who had been sent to inquire into the condition of affairs in Canaan. The appeal was so far successful that troops were despatched to Zemar. But it was too late: along with Arka it had already been occupied by Ebed-Asherah, who thereupon writes to the Pharaoh, protesting his loyalty to Khu-n-Aten, declaring that he is "the house-dog" of the king, and that he guards the land of the Amorites for "the king" his lord. He further calls on the Egyptian commissioner Pakhanate, who had been ordered to visit him, to bear witness that he was "defending" Zemar and its fields for the king. That Pakhanate was friendly to Ebed-Asherah may be gathered from a despatch of Rib-Hadad, in which he accuses that officer of refusing to send any troops to the relief of Gebal, and of looking on while Zemar fell. Ebed-Asherah goes on to beg the king to come himself, and see with his own eyes how faithful a governor he really was.
The letters of Abimelech of Tyre told a different tale, and the unfortunate Pharaoh might well be excused if he was as much puzzled as we are to know on which side the truth lay, or whether indeed it lay on either. Abimelech had a grievance of his own. As soon as Zimridi of Sidon learned that he had been appointed governor of Tyre, he seized the neighbouring city of Usu, which seems to have occupied the site of Palætyros on the mainland, thereby depriving the Tyrians of their supplies of wood, food, and fresh water. The city of Tyre was at the time confined to a rocky island, to which provisions and water had to be conveyed in boats. Hence the hostile occupation of the town on the mainland caused many of its inhabitants to die of want. To add to their difficulties, the city was blockaded by the combined fleet of Sidon, Arvad, and Aziru. Ilgi, "king of Sidon," seems to have fled to Tyre for protection, while Abimelech reports that the king of Hazor had joined the Beduin under Ebed-Asherah and his sons. It may be noted that a letter of this very king of Hazor has been preserved, as well as another from Ebed-Sullim, the Egyptian governor of the city, whose powers were co-extensive with those of the king.
Soon afterwards, however, the Sidonian ships were compelled to retreat, and the Tyrian governor made ready to pursue them. Meanwhile he sent his messenger Elimelech to Khu-n-Aten with various presents, and gave the king an account of what had been happening in "Canaan." The Hittite troops had departed, but Etagama—elsewhere called Aidhu-gama—the pa-ur or "prince" of Kadesh, in the land of Kinza, had joined Aziru in attacking Namya-yitsa, the governor of Kumidi. Abimelech adds that his rival Zimridi of Sidon had collected ships and men from the cities of Aziru against him, and had consequently defeated him, but if the Pharaoh would send only four companies of troops to his rescue all would be well.
Zimridi, however, was not behindhand in forwarding his version of events to the Egyptian court, and assuring the king of his unswerving fidelity. "Verily the king my lord knows," he says, "that the queen of the city of Sidon is the handmaid of the king my lord, who has given her into my hand, and that I have hearkened to the words of the king my lord that he would send to his servant, and my heart rejoiced and my head was exalted, and my eyes were enlightened, and my ears heard the words of the king my lord.... And the king my lord knows that hostility is very strong against me; all the [fortresses] which the king gave into [my hand] had revolted" to the Beduin, but had been retaken by the commander of the Egyptian forces. The letter throws a wholly different light on the relations of the two rival parties in Phoenicia.
The assertions of Rib-Hadad, however, are supported by those of his successor in the government of Gebal, El-rabi-Hor. Rib-Hadad himself disappears from the scene. He may have died, for he complains that he is old and sick; he may have been driven out of Gebal, for in one of his despatches he states that the city was inclined to revolt, while in another he tells us that even his own brother had turned against him and gone over to the Amorite faction. Or he may have been displaced from his post; at all events, we hear that the Pharaoh had written to him, saying that Gebal was rebellious, and that there was a large amount of royal property in it. We hear also that Rib-Hadad had sent his son to the Egyptian court to plead his cause there, alleging age and infirmities as a reason for not going himself. However it may have been, we find a new governor in Gebal, who bears the hybrid name of El-rabi-Hor, "a great god is Horus."
His first letter is to protest against Khu-n-Aten's mistrust of Gebal, which he calls "thy city and the city of [thy] fathers," and to assert roundly that "Aziru is in rebellion against the king my lord." Aziru had made a league (?) with the kings of Ni, Arvad, and Ammiya (the Beni-Ammo of Num. xxii. 5) (See above, p. 64.), and with the help of the Amorite Palasa was destroying the cities of the Pharaoh. So El-rabi-Hor asks the king not to heed anything the rebel may write about his seizure of Zemar or his massacre of the royal governors, but to send some troops to himself for the defence of Gebal. In a second letter he reiterates his charges against Aziru, who had now "smitten" Adon, the king of Arka, and possessed himself of Zemar and the other towns of Phoenicia, so that Gebal "alone" is on the side of the king, who "looks on" without doing anything. Moreover a fresh enemy had arisen in the person of Eta-gama of Kadesh, who had joined himself with the king of the Hittites and the king of Naharaim.
Letters to Khu-n-Aten from Akizzi the governor of Qatna, which, as we learn from the inscriptions of Assur-natsir-pal, was situated on the Khabûr, represent Aziru in the same light. First of all, the Egyptian government is informed that the king of the Hittites, together with Aidhu-gama (or Eta-gama) of Kadesh has been invading the Egyptian territory, burning its cities, and carrying away from Qatna the image of the Sun-god. Khu-n-aten, it is urged, could not allow the latter crime to go unpunished. The Sun-god had created him and his father, and had caused them to be called after his own name. He was the supreme object of the Pharaoh's worship, the deity for whose sake Khu-n-Aten had deserted Thebes.
The Hittite king had been joined in his invasion of Syria by the governors of some otherwise unknown northern cities, but the kings of Nukhasse, Ni, Zinzar (the Sonzar of the Egyptian texts), and Kinanat (the Kanneh of Ezek. xxvii. 23) remained faithful to the Egyptian monarch. The rebel governors, however, were in the land of Ube,—the Aup of the hieroglyphics,—which they were urging Aidhu-gama to invade.
Another letter brings Aziru upon the scene. He is accused of having invaded the land of Nukhasse, and made prisoners of the people of Qatna. The Pharaoh is prayed to rescue or ransom them, and to send chariots and soldiers to the help of his Mesopotamian subjects. If they come all the lands round about will acknowledge him as lord, and he will be lord also of Nukhasse; if they do not come, the men of Qatna will be forced to obey Aziru.
It is probable that the misdeeds of Aziru which are here referred to were committed at the time he was in Tunip, professedly protecting it against Hittite attack. It would seem from what Akizzi says, that instead of faithfully performing his mission, he had aimed at establishing his own power in Northern Syria. While nominally an officer of the Pharaoh, he was really seeking to found an Amorite kingdom in the north. In this he would have been a predecessor of Og and Sihon, whose kingdoms were built up on the ruins of the Egyptian empire.
A despatch, however, from Namya-yitsa, the governor of Kumidi, sets the conduct of Aziru in a more favourable light. It was written at a somewhat later time, when rebellion against the Egyptian authority was spreading throughout Syria. A certain Biridasyi had stirred up the city of Inu'am, and after shutting its gate upon Namya-yitsa had entered the city of Ashtaroth-Karnaim in Bashan, and there seized the chariots belonging to the Pharaoh, handing them over to the Beduin. He then joined the kings of Buzruna (now Bosra) and Khalunni (near the Wadi 'Allân), in a plot to murder Namya-yitsa, who escaped, however, to Damascus, though his own brothers turned against him. The rebels next attacked Aziru, captured some of his soldiers, and in league with Etu-gama wasted the district of Abitu. Etakkama, however, as Etu-gama spells his own name, professed to be a loyal servant of the Egyptian king, and one of the Tel el-Amarna letters is from him.
