Amarna Age Palestine
Although the Amarna texts do not name any personage met on the pages of Scripture, they are of value in helping us to visualize life in the Palestinian city states during the middle of the second millenium B.C. Biblical cities mentioned in the correspondence include: Akko, Ashkelon, Arvad, Aroer, Ashtaroth, Gebal (Byblos), Gezer, Gath, Gaza, Jerusalem, Joppa, Keilah, Lachish, Megiddo, Sidon, Tyre, Sharon, Shechem, Taanach, and Zorah. Beth-ninurta is thought to be identical with Biblical Beth-shemesh.
These cities are, for the most part, independent city states, owing allegiance to Egypt yet free to form their own alliances and resolve their own local problems. It was this type of political structure that Joshua met in Canaan. He waged war against “thirty-one kings” (Josh. 12:24). At times these kings made alliances in order to prevent Israel from gaining control of the land, just as the Amarna Age rulers aided one another in resisting Lab‘ayu. A leader against Joshua was Adonizedek, king of Jerusalem, who found allies in Hoham, king of Hebron; Piram, king of Jarmuth; Japhia, king of Lachish, and Debir, king of Eglon (Josh. 10:1-3).
The military engagements were strictly limited affairs, judged by the numbers of troops and horses requested of the Pharaoh. Rib-Addi of Byblos pleaded:
Let it seem good to the lord, the sun of the lands, to give me twenty pairs of horses.[64]
In his encounter with Abdi-Ashirta, the Amorite chieftain who was seeking to control northern Syria in league with the Hittites, Rib-Addi asked for but three hundred men.[65]
Abi-milki of Tyre indicated that he could get by with but token help from Egypt. In one letter he asks for but twenty foot soldiers,[66] and in another he will be satisfied with but ten.[67] Somewhat earlier, in the Canaan of Abraham’s day, the patriarch was able to assemble an army of three hundred and eighteen men (Gen. 14:14), pursue a confederation of five kings with their armies, rout and chase the enemy. An entire garrison might number but fifty men in the armies of Amarna Age rulers.[68]