The archæology of the cuneiform inscriptions

by A. H. Sayce

The Tel el-Amarna letters tell us how the new provinces were organized. The most important cities were placed under Egyptian governors, many of whom, however, were natives. But they were carefully watched by Egyptian commissioners, to whom the control of the military forces was entrusted, as well as by special high-commissioners sent from time to time by the imperial Government. Local jealousies and rivalries, moreover, among the governors prevented union among them against the central power, and up to a certain point were not discouraged by the Egyptian Foreign Office. The Tel el-Amarna letters offer us a curious picture of the extent to which their mutual animosities were carried in the days when the Egyptian Empire was growing feeble. All the governors protest their devotion to the court, and all like are accused by their rivals of intriguing and even fighting against it.

Besides the states which were thus directly under Egyptian rule, there were also protected states. Here the representative of the old line of kings was allowed to retain a titular authority, though in reality his power was not greater than that of the governors in other states. But, whether governor or protected prince his duty to the imperial Government was clearly marked out for him. He had to levy the taxes and send a fixed amount of tribute to the Egyptian Treasury, to provide a certain number of militia, and to send official reports to the king. He had further to see that the troops of the army of occupation were duly provided with pay and maintenance.

The army of occupation in the reign of Amon-hotep IV. does not seem to have been large. The imperial forces were needed at home to enforce the new faith upon the Egyptian people, and to put down the discontent that was growing there. We hear, however, of “the household troops,” who belonged to the standing army of Egypt and formed the nucleus of the permanent garrison. How many of them were native Egyptians it is impossible to say; as we hear of Kushites or Ethiopians among them, it is probable that the Sudanese were at least as largely employed on foreign service as the Egyptians themselves. The Egyptian has never been fond of military service, whereas, we all now know, the Sudanese is essentially a fighting animal.

Both sides of the Jordan were included in the Egyptian administration. One of the Tel el-Amarna letters, for example, is from a governor of “the field of Bashan.” It is characteristic of the whole series, and shows what the relations were between the army of occupation and the native levies. I cannot do better than quote it in full: “To the king, my lord, thus says Artamanya, the governor of the Field of Bashan, thy servant: at the feet of the king, my lord, seven times seven do I fall. Behold, thou hast written to me to join the household troops, and how could I be a dog (of the king) and not go? Behold, I and my soldiers and my chariots will join the household troops in whatever place the king my lord orders.”

The name of Artamanya is not Semitic; neither is it Egyptian. The fact brings us to one of the most interesting and unexpected results of the decipherment of the Tel el-Amarna correspondence. And this is that the ruling caste in the Palestine of the Mosaic age was largely of Hittite origin, or had come from those countries of the north whose population was related in blood and language to the Hittites of Asia Minor.

In Northern Mesopotamia was a kingdom which ranked with those of Egypt and Babylonia as regarded power and influence. Its native name was Mitanni; the Hebrews, like the Egyptians, called it the kingdom of Aram Naharaim. It stretched from Assyria to the Orontes, and contended with the Hittites of Carchemish for the possession of the fords of the Euphrates. Its rulers had descended upon it from the highlands of Armenia and the Caucasus, and had reduced the native Aramæan population to servitude. There are frequent references in the Tel el-Amarna tablets to Mitannian intrigues in Canaan. Mitannian armies had from time to time marched against the Canaanitish cities, and although there was now a nominal alliance between Mitanni and Egypt, and the royal families of the two countries were united by marriage, the Mitannian court never lost an opportunity of sending secret support to the disaffected princes of Canaan or of encouraging them in their revolts from the Egyptian Government. In many parts of the country the ruling family continued to be Mitannian, and accordingly we find more than one governor who bears a Mitannian name. Thus one of them, as we see, was governor of Bashan, and there was another who had his seat near the Sea of Galilee.

Mitannian influence, however, was chiefly confined to the northern part of Palestine. It was otherwise with the Hittites, whose marauding bands penetrated as far south as the frontiers of Egypt. The important part they played in the early history of Canaan and the substantial element they must have contributed to the future population of the country has but lately been disclosed to us by the advance that has been made in the interpretation of the Tel el-Amarna texts. We have at last obtained an explanation of the fact that whereas in the older Babylonian period Canaan was known as “the land of the Amorites,” it was called by the Assyrians “the land of the Hittites.” The Assyrian kings even speak of Judah and Moab as “Hittite,” and the town of Ashdod is described by Sargon as a “Hittite” state. What this must mean has indeed long been recognized by the Assyriologists. When the Assyrians first became acquainted with Palestine the Hittites must have been there the dominant power. But how and when this came about we have but just begun to learn, and it is the story of the Hittite occupation of Canaan, as a better knowledge of the Tel el-Amarna tablets is making possible, that I now propose to describe.

The Hittite race was of Cappadocian origin. Professor Ramsay has pointed out that the hieroglyphic characters which they used in their inscriptions must have been invented on the treeless plateau of Central Asia Minor, and that their capital, whose ruins now strew the ground at Boghaz Keui, north of the Halys, was the centre towards which all the early high-roads of Asia Minor converge. But they extended on both sides of the Taurus Mountains, and at an early date had planted themselves in Northern Syria. I have lately succeeded in deciphering their inscriptions, which have so long baffled our attempts to read them, and one result of my decipherment is the discovery of an unexpected fact. I find that the name of Hittite was confined to that portion of the race which lived eastward and southward of the Taurus. In Asia Minor itself, their first cradle and home, they called themselves Kas or Kasians; it was the kingdom of Kas over which the Hittite lords of Boghaz Keui claimed to rule, and it is still as kings of Kas that they are entitled on the monuments of Carchemish, though here they also acknowledge the name of Hittite.

The name of Kas is met with in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, where it has hitherto been misunderstood. The kings of the Hittites, of Mitanni and of Kas are associated together as supporting the enemies of the Egyptian Pharaoh or attacking his cities in Syria, Hitherto we have supposed that Kas signified Babylonia, though the supposition had but little in its favour, and a different name is given to Babylonia in passages where there is no doubt as to what country is meant. Now, however, all becomes clear: in the age of the tablets there were still four Hittite kingdoms in the north: Kas in Asia Minor, the Hittites proper, east and south of the Taurus, Mitanni in Mesopotamia, and Naharaim on the Orontes. Shortly afterwards they were all swallowed up in the empire of the “great king” of the Hittites, whose southern capital was at Kadesh. Some Kasians had found their way to Jerusalem, where the king Ebed-Kheba—whose name is compounded with that of a Mitannian deity—writes to the Egyptian Government to excuse his conduct in regard to them. They had been accused of plundering the Pharaoh’s territory and murdering his servants; he assures the court that nothing of the sort is true. They are still in his house, where it would seem they formed his bodyguard. But, on the other hand, there were other Hittites in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem who were really enemies to the king and threatened Jerusalem itself. These he calls Khabiri, or “Confederates,” a name in which, despite history and probability, certain writers have insisted upon seeing the Hebrews of the Old Testament. But Dr. Knudtzon’s fresh collation of the Tel el-Amarna texts has at last dispelled the mystery. The Khabiri turn out to have been bands of Hittite condottieri, who sold their military services to the highest bidder and carved out principalities for themselves in the south of Canaan. The Egyptian Government found them useful in escorting and protecting the trading caravans to Asia Minor and the Taurus region, and as long as their leaders professed themselves the devoted servants of the Pharaoh it was quite willing to overlook such little accidents as their capture and sack of a Canaanitish town or the murder of a Canaanitish prince.

One of these Hittite leaders, Aita-gama by name, had possessed himself of the city of Kadesh on the Orontes, which in the following century was to become the capital of a Hittite empire. In a letter to the Egyptian court he has the audacity to assert that he was merely claiming his patrimony, the whole district having belonged to his father. If there is any truth in this it can only mean that his father had already led a troop of Hittite raiders into this portion of the Egyptian territory.