Affairs of Government
The presence of a friend at the court was appreciated and cultivated by the rulers of the city states. Several of the Amarna tablets are addressed to an Egyptian official named Yanhamu who bore the title “the king’s fanbearer.” He was evidently a man of considerable power, for the king entrusted him with the issuing of supplies from a place known as Yarimuta. For this reason the local princes in Syria and Canaan frequently wrote to him. After outlining his needs, Rib-Addi indulged in a little apple-polishing as he concluded, “There is no servant like Yanhamu, a faithful servant of the king.”[69]
Yanhamu seems to have occupied in the court of Amenhotep III (and possibly Akhenaton as well) a position comparable to the one Joseph held several generations earlier.[70] Both Yanhamu and Joseph were charged with overseeing the distribution of food supplies (cf. Gen. 42:51-57). They both had Semitic names, and the presence of Yanhamu in an Egyptian court during New Kingdom times indicates that Semites were not barred from government following the Hyksos expulsion. Rulers often find it safer to trust faithful foreigners than some of their own subjects who might be tempted to rebel.
The simple tastes of the Israelite tribes in the period before the monarchy may be contrasted with the ostentation of Solomon’s harem with its thousand wives and concubines (I Kings 11:3) along with the wealth and luxury of an oriental court. The rulers of the larger states of the Amarna Age, and particularly Tushratta of Mitanni, sent their daughters to grace the harems of Amenhotep III and Akhenaton. A scarab of Amenhotep III commemorates the arrival of Giluhepa, a Mitannian princess with a retinue of three hundred seventeen maidens.[71] That Amenhotep III was actively building his harem is shown in a letter which he addressed to Milk-ili of Gezer which says, in part:
I have sent Hania, the commander of the archers, to you with all sorts of things, to bring the beautiful women.... There are in all forty women; forty pieces of silver is the price of the women. Send me therefore very beautiful women among whom are no slanderers, so that the king, your lord, may say to you, “This is fine.”[72]
The building of a harem had political implications for it involved an alliance of friendship. Early in Solomon’s reign he “made a marriage alliance with Pharaoh, king of Egypt; he took Pharaoh’s daughter and brought her into the City of David....” (I Kings 3:1). A large harem, moreover, was a symbol of power, wealth and prestige. Solomon was but adapting the customs of the great rulers of the ancient East when he built an enormous harem for himself.