10 EEV. A. H. SAYCE, M.A., LL.D. 



tablet at Boulaq, containing a letter from the King of Alasiya, 

 has a docket attached to it in Egyptian hieratic characters, 

 which reads : " The correspondence of the prince of the country 

 of Alasha." The letter is as follows : " To the king of Mitsri 

 (Egypt), my lord, I speak by letter, I, the king of the country 

 of Alasiya, thy brother. I am at peace, and unto thee may 

 there be peace ! To thy house, thy daughters, thy son,* thy 

 wives, thy multitudinous chariots, thy horses, and in thy land 

 of Mitsri may there be peace ! O my brother, my ambassador 

 has carefully conveyed a costly gift for them, and has lis- 

 tened to thy salutation. This man is my minister, my 

 brother. Carefully has he conveyed to them the costly gift. 

 My minister has not brought my ship along with them." 

 There is another letter in the Boulaq Museum which is clearly 

 from the King of Alasiya, though the commencement of it is 

 lost. Here we find : " Now I have sent [thee] as presents 

 a sea (?) of bronze, three talents of hard bronze, the tusk of 

 an elephant, a throne, and the hull (?) of a ship. These gifts, 

 O my brother, this man [brings in] this ship of the king [my 

 lord], and do thou in return send a costly gift to me carefully. 

 [And] do thou, my brother, [listen to] my request, and 

 give to me the . . . which I have asked for. This man is 

 the servant of the king [my] lord, but the carpenter with me 

 has not finished (his work) in addition to the other presents ; 

 yet do thou, brother, send the costly gift carefully." 



The reference to the sinnu sa biri, or " elephant's tusk," is 

 interesting. We know, from the Egyptian inscriptions, that 

 Thothmes III. hunted wild elephants in the neighbourhood of 

 Ni, near Aleppo; while, some four or five centuries later, 

 Tiglath-pileser I. did the same in the neighbourhood of 

 Carchemish. 



The King of Alasiya was not the only foreign potentate 

 whose letters are preserved in the Museum of Boulaq. One 

 of the tablets in the collection begins in this way : " [To 

 N]imutriya, the King of Egypt, [I speak] by letter, even I, 

 [Ris-takul] la-Sin, the king of the country of Babylonia. My 

 peace be [upon thee], and upon thy wife, thy children, 

 [thy house], and thy chariots and horses; upon all thy 

 [possessions] may there ever be peace ! " The letter then 

 goes on to state that the father of the writer had sent his 

 daughter, Irtabi, to the Egyptian Pharaoh many years before, 

 Nimutriya sending presents in return to his father. After 

 his accession to the throne, the Babylonian prince " again sent 



* Perhaps we may infer, from the mention of the Pharaoh's son, that the 

 lettr was addressed to Amenophis III., and not to Amenophis IV. 



