May 19, 1892] 



NATURE 



51 



gold ornaments which Amenophis had sent to his father, 

 thereby hinting that similar gifts would be most accept- 

 able to himself. In true Oriental fashion he says, " When 

 my brother has sent the gold, if I ask, ' Is it enough? ' 

 the answer may be, ' Fully enough ' ; or I may ask, * Is it 

 the full amount?' and the answer may be, ' It is more 

 than the full amount.'" In the latter case Tushratta 

 declares that he will be " very glad" ! In another letter 

 Tushratta gives an account of his accession to the throne. 

 It appears that when his father Shutarna died, his brother 

 Artashumara became king, but was shortly after slain by 

 rebels. Though quite young, Tushratta rallied his friends 

 and supporters, and after some trouble succeeded in 

 slaying his brother's murderers. Facts of this nature are 

 of great importance for restoring the history of this long- 

 forgotten country. It is an interesting fact that together 

 with such letters there always arrived gifts, which 

 consisted of horses, chariots, gold vessels, ornaments 

 made of gold and lapis-lazuli, eunuchs and ladies for the 

 king's household ; and the relatives of the Mesopotamian 

 princesses who had become wives of the King of Egypt 

 never forgot to send them gifts of earrings of gold, choice 

 oil for anointing, &c. Sad to relate, however, some of the 

 writers of these letters complain that Amenophis did not 

 send them gifts in return. In a third letter Tushratta men- 

 tions that the goddess" Ishtar of Nineveh, lady of the 

 world," had gone down into Egypt during his own reign 

 and during that of his father, and he begs Amenophis to 

 increase the worship of this goddess in Egypt tenfold- 

 A fourth letter of Tushratta is sent to the " Queen of 

 Egypt," who can be none other than the blue-eyed, fair- 

 haired Thi. 



Passing from theletters which refer to Amenophis's mar- 

 riages contracted with Mesopotamian princesses, we come 

 to those relating to the matter-of-fact business of the 

 Egyptian Government of that day. These consist of re- 

 ports of disasters to the Egyptian power and of success- 

 ful intrigues against it, coupled with urgent entreaties for 

 help, pointing to a condition of distraction and weakness 

 in Egypt and her dependencies. Some of them must 

 have been addressed to Amenophis III. towards the 

 close of his long reign of about thirty-six years, but the 

 greater number clearly belong to the reign of his son 

 Amenophis IV., for the disorganized condition of the 

 Egyptian provinces in Phcenicia and Syria which they 

 reflect could only have come into existence when Egypt 

 herself was torn by the rival factions which sprang up 

 when that king endeavoured to substitute the worship of 

 the Disk for that of Amen, the mighty god of Thebes- 

 The chief cities of Phoenicia, Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, 

 Aradus, and Simyra (which commanded the road to 

 Aradus), representing the Egyptian power, were being 

 daily attacked by the ever-increasing forces of the enemy, 

 who, seeing the impotence or supineness of Egypt, grew 

 bolder and bolder. Nor did the brave and loyal defence 

 of such men as Rib-Adda, governor of Byblos, and Abi- 

 Milki,'King of Tyre, stave off for long the overthrow of 

 the Egyptian power in Phoenicia. The desperate posi- 

 tion of this latter loyal officer is almost pathetic in its 

 hopelessness. In one letter to the King of Egypt he 

 says, " My lord, my sun, my god, seven times and seven 

 times do I prostrate myself at the feet of the king, my 

 lord. I am the dust beneath the feet of the king, my 

 NO. I 177, VOL. 46] 



lord, and that upon which he treadeth. O my king and 

 lord, thou art like unto the god Shamash and to the god 

 Rimmon in heaven. Let the king give counsel to his 

 servant. Now the king, my lord, hath appointed me the 

 guardian of the city of Tyre, the ' royal handmaid,' and 

 I sent a report in a tablet unto the king, my lord ; but I 

 have received no answer thereunto." He then announces 

 the delivering of the city of Simyra into the hands of 

 Aziru the rebel, by Zimrida, governor of Sidon, who had 

 also captured the city of Sazu, wherefrom Abi-Miiki drew 

 his supplies of wood and water, for neither existed natur- 

 ally on [the bleak rock of Tyre ; in consequence many 

 Tyrians died of want. Moreover, Zimrida, Aziru, and 

 the people of Aradus attacked the forces of Abi-MiIki in 

 chariots by land and in ships by sea. In conclusion he 

 sadly adds, " I am surrounded on all sides with foes, and 

 I have neither wood to warm myself, nor water to drink ; 

 I send this tablet to the king by the hands of a common 

 soldier, and may the king send me an answer speedily." 

 When his condition becomes more desperate he sends 

 another despatch, and with it a gift of five talents of 

 copper, hoping thereby to extort an answer from the king 

 of Egypt; in this he reports events with a Cassar-like 

 brevity thus :— " The king of the land of Danuna is 

 dead, and his brother has succeeded him ; there is peace 

 in his land. One half of the city of Ugarit has been 

 destroyed by fire. The soldiers of Khatti have departed 

 Itagamapairi of Kadesh and Aziru have rebelled, and 

 are fighting against Namyawiza. Zimrida, governor of 

 Sidon and Lachish, is gathering together ships and men." 



A letter of considerable importance is that of Akizzi, 

 governor of Katna (Cana), for it refers to the origin of the 

 worship of the sun in Egypt. It appears that the King of 

 Khatti came to Katna, and carried off the image of the 

 Sun-god, and Akizzi writes to Amenophis III., asking for 

 money to ransom the image ; he makes his appeal on the 

 ground that Shamash the Sun-god, the god of his fathers, 

 became also the god of the ancestors of Amenophis, and 

 that they called themselves after his name. Now this 

 clearly has reference to the title " son of the Sun," which 

 was adopted by nearly every king of Egypt, and indicates 

 that Akizzi believed that the worship of the sun was in- 

 troduced into Egypt from Asia. 



Space forbids our quoting more from these interesting 

 documents, but sufficient has been said above to show 

 what an important contribution to our knowledge of 

 Oriental diplomacy about 1500 B.C. the Tell el-Amarna 

 tablets offer. Incidentally they reveal many new facts of 

 history ; they offer a new field for the researches of the 

 geographical student, and the identification of many 

 towns and countries mentioned in the Bible and in the 

 Egyptian inscriptions has already been obtained ; they 

 give us for the first time the names of Artatama, Artashu- 

 mara, and Tushratta, kings of Mitani, and of Kallimma- 

 Sin, king of Karaduniyash ; they supply the reasons why 

 and show how the Semites came to have such power in 

 Egypt ; and depict the inevitable anarchy which prevails 

 in dependencies or colonies when the dominant power 

 totters or declines. 



We have already said that the Tell el-Amarna tablets 

 are different from any other cuneiform documents known, 

 and it is precisely this difference which has made their 

 publication a difficulty. To make a satisfactory edition 



