says: (at the feet of the king) seven times seven do I prostrate myself. . . . When a raid was made, Milki (Melech) of the sea-coast (marched) against the country of the king my lord, commanding the forces of the city of Gedor (Gaturri), the forces of the city of Gath (Gimti), and the forces of the city of Keilah (Kilti). They seized the country of the city of Rabbah (Rubute) dependent on the country of the king, belonging to the Confederates' (khabiri). And again he destroyed entirely the city of the land of Ururusi, the city of the god Uras, whose name (there) is Marru (Marnas), the city of the king, dependent on the locality of the men of Keilah, and twelve cities of my king." Two small tablets in the Boulaq Museum, both unfortunately broken in half, give us further information about the affairs of Southern Palestine. One of them may be translated as follows: "To the king my lord, my gods, my Sun-god, by letter I speak, even Su-arda-ka, thy servant, the dust of thy feet. At the feet of the king my lord, my gods, my Sun-god, seven times seven do I prostrate myself. The king of... set himself to make war. In the city of Keilah (Kelti) he made war against thee for the third time; a complaint was brought to myself. My city that belongs to me adhered (?) to me. Ebed-tob sent to the men of Keilah. He sent fourteen pieces of silver, and they marched against my rear, and they overran the domains of the king my lord. Keilah, my city, did Ebeddhabba remove from my jurisdiction. The pleasure-park (?) of the king my lord, and the fortress of Baal-nathan, and the fortress of Hamor (the Amorite) he removed from his presence and his justice. Lab-api, the halting in speech, occupied the fortress of . . . ninu, and when Lab-api, along with Ebed-dhabba and [his companions] occupied the fortress of ninu, the king [sent] to his servant."

Lab-api is mentioned again in the other tablet to which I have referred. What remains of it runs thus: "And, again, the city of Pir(qar), the fortress which is in front of this country, belonging to the king, I made faithful. At that time the city of Gaza (Khazati), belonging to the king, which is on the shore of the sea, westward of the country of the cities of Gath and Carmel (?), * fell away to Urgi and the men of Gath. I rode in my chariot (?) for the second time, and we marched up (out of Egypt). Lab-api and the country which thou possessest [went over] for the second time to the men of Hebron, the Confederates (khabiri) of Milki-ar'il, and he took (their) sons as hostages (?). At the same time

*It is doubtful whether we are to read Irmila or Kirmila.

he uttered their requests to the men of the district of Kirjath (Qarti), and we defended the city of Ururusi. The men of the garrison whom thou hadst left in it were collected by Khapi (Apis), my messenger. Addasi-rakan in his house in the city of Gaza [sent messengers] to the land of Egypt."

The use of the word khabiri, which occurs here and in the first text I have translated, seems to show that we must render it by "Hebronites" rather than as the common noun "confederates." The word may throw light on the origin of the city of Hebron, which grew up out of a confederacy of tribes worshipping at a common sanctuary, and may explain why the name is not met with on the Egyptian monuments. Kirjath is, perhaps, Kirjath-Sepher, though it may also denote Kirjath-Arba, the old name of Hebron. As for Milki-ar'il, it is formed like Melchizedek or Malchiel, and must be interpreted "Moloch is Ar'il." Ar'il, the Ariel of Isai. xxix. 1, and the "lion-like men " of the A. V. in 2 Sam. xxiii. 20, has been shown by a passage in an Egyptian papyrus to mean "hero," so that when King Mesha declares on the Moabite

we דורה and יהוה of ארלום Stone that he carried away the

must understand that he carried away the consecrated "heroes" who protected the Israelitish shrines of Yahveh and Dodah.

Dodah is the same name as that which we find in the varying forms of Dodo, Dod, and David, and up to now it has not been found outside the pages of the Old Testament, though the feminine Dido proves that it was known to the Phoenicians; and the Assyrian Dadu, corresponding to the Syrian Hadad, comes from the same root. But one of the Tel el-Amarna tablets in the Boulaq Museum now informs us that Dûdu or David was a name employed among the Semites long before the age of the founder of the Empire of Israel, or even of the Exodus. The tablet is a letter addressed by Aziru to his "lord" and "father" Dûdu. We have already made the acquaintance of Aziru, who was one of the lieutenants of Rib-Addu in Phoenicia; and it is possible that the letter to his father was written from that part of the world. The middle of the tablet is injured; what is left of it runs as follows: "To Dûdu, my lord (and) father, I speak, even Aziru, thy son, thy servant; at the feet of my father I prostrate myself; unto the feet of my father may there be peace! Dûdu, now . . . the foundations of the palace of my lord have been laid, and I have founded (them) for a temple. . . And now, O Dudu, my father, plant the gardens, and I will look after the daughter (of the king). [Behold], O my father and my lord, I will look after the girl. . . . I have directed the

planting (of the gardens), and have planted the trees.. I am the servant of the king my lord [who comes] from executing the commands of the king my lord [and] the commands of Dûdu my father; (everything) do I observe until his return home . . . he has sent a soldier, and let me come unto thee."

It is clear from the letter that Dâdu, or David, occupied a high position in the court of the Pharaoh, and, like his son, appears to have been employed in laying out the gardens attached to the palace of the Egyptian king. It is even possible that he may have been a Hebrew; at all events, the name has never yet been found in a Phoenician inscription, while we know that it was borne by Israelites. Aziru, too, is probably the Biblical Ezer.

Phoenicia seems to have been the furthest point to the north to which the direct government of Egypt extended. At any rate, the letters which came to the Egyptian monarch from Syria and Mesopotamia were sent to him by princes who called themselves his "brothers," and not by officials who were the "servants" of the king. Doubtless, many of these princes were but semi-independent, and in case of war were required to assist the Egyptian Government. One of those in most frequent correspondence with the Pharaoh was the King of Alasiya, a country which lay to the east of Arvad, in the district afterwards occupied by Homs and Hamath, though it also seems to have possessed a port on the seacoast. The name of the country has been read "Arosha" and "Arsa" by Egyptologists; but the cuneiform texts now furnish us with its true pronunciation. A very perfectly-preserved 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 listened to thy salutation. This man is my minister, O 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

* Perhaps we may infer, from the mention of the Pharaoh's son, that the letter was addressed to Amenophis III., and not to Amenophis IV.

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, O 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, O 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. his accession to the throne, the Babylonian prince "again sent an ambassador" to Egypt; and, six years later, the Pharaoh forwarded by his envoy Salmási, thirty manehs of gold, besides a certain amount of silver. The object of the letter is to inform the Egyptian monarch that other presents are now on their way from his brother-in-law.

After

Babylonia is here called Kara-Duniyas, the name by which it went in the age of the Kassite Dynasty. Another potentate who corresponded with the Egyptian kings ruled over a country the name of which is unfortunately lost, a fracture of the tablet having destroyed the characters which composed the name. The letter commences with the words: "[I am] Subbi-kuzki, the king of the country of... ma(?)-ti; to Khûrî[ya], the [king of] Egypt, [I speak] by letter. [May] there be peace before thee, may there be peace [unto thy wife], thy children, thy house, thy soldiers, [thy] chariots, [and in] the midst of thy country may there ever be peace: O my brother, my ambassador whom I sent to thy father,

and the request which thy father made to the king, saying: 'O prince, let us take counsel together,' I did not countermand." The royal scribe then inquires why no acknowledgment has been made of the presents he has sent to Egypt, and adds that he is forwarding various other gifts, including a cup of silver five manehs in weight, and a second cup of silver three manehs in weight, as well as two other objects of silver ten manehs in weight.

The most interesting, however, of all the tablets at Boulaq is a long and well-preserved one, which is addressed by Tarkhundaras, king of the country of Arzapi, to Nimutriya, or Amenophis III., the Pharaoh of Egypt. The heading and one or two technical words are in Semitic Assyrian, but the rest of the letter is written in an unknown language. The ideographs employed in it show that the introductory greetings are the same as those found in other letters from foreign potentates to the Egyptian king, and we are thus enabled to determine the meaning of the phonetically-written words which occur in them. Thus the possessive pronoun "my" is expressed by the affix mi, and the pronoun "thy" by ti, tim, and perhaps ta, which become tu when suffixed to the word signifying "trees." These two pronouns offer a strange similarity to the corresponding pronouns in the Indo-European languages. Bibbi is "chariot," and bibbid "chariots," while kalatta seems to mean 66 brother." Ganeda is "exceedingly,' and khuman-sakh (?)-in "may there be peace;" sakh (?)-an-ta being "thy peace-offering," and khalu-garitsi "a messenger." Now, Tarkhundaras is a Hittite name, like the names of Tarkhu-nazi and Tarkhu-lara found on the Assyrian monuments, or the name of Tarkondêmos on the now famous bilingual boss ; and the name of the country over which he ruled reminds us of Rezeph (2 Kings xix. 12), in North-western Mesopotamia. I am, therefore, tempted to see in the language of the letter one of the Hittite dialects which are concealed under the hieroglyphs of the Hittite texts. The purport of the letter is to describe the various presents sent by Tarkhundaras to the Pharaoh by the messenger, Irsappa, in return for the hand of the Pharaoh's daughter, who had been given to him as a wife. Among the presents sent were 20 manehs of gold and 100 shekels of lead. Mention is made in the letter of "the prince of the Hittites" (Khatte), who, it would appear, lived in the mountains of I-gaid.*

According to the "Travels of the Mohar" (Brugsch's translation), the land of Igad'ai bordered on the country of the Hittites to the north of Aleppo..