The archæology of the cuneiform inscriptions

by A. H. Sayce

Along with Aita-gama two other Hittite chieftains had marched, Teuwatti, whose name appears in the native texts under the form of Tuates, and Arzawaya. Arzawaya means “a man of Arzawa,” the country whose language has been revealed to us in one of the Tel el-Amarna letters, and which proves to be the same as the Hittite dialect found in the cuneiform tablets of Boghaz Keui. We are told that he came from a city which was in the neighbourhood of the Karmalas, in Southern Cappadocia. Arzawaya helped Teuwatti to conquer Damascus and then led his followers further south. Here he acted as a free-lance, hiring himself and his mercenaries to the rival Canaanitish princes and professing himself to be all the while a faithful servant of the Egyptian king. It is amusing to read one of his letters to the Egyptian court: “To my lord the king thus writes Arzawaya, of Rukhiza. At the feet of my lord I prostrate myself. My lord the king wrote that I should join the household troops of the king my lord and his numerous officers.” Here follow four words of Hittite which are accompanied by the translation: “I am a servant of the king my lord.” Then the letter proceeds: “I will join the household troops of the king my lord and his officers; and I will send everything after them and march wherever there is rebellion against the king my lord. And we will deliver his enemies into the hand of the king our lord.” Doubtless Arzawaya expected to be well paid for his help.

There is another letter from Arzawaya to the Pharaoh in which he calls himself “the dust of his feet and the ground on which he treads.” But in this letter he has to explain away the share he took in entering the town of Gezer along with Labbawa,[156] another Hittite leader, and there infringing the royal prerogative by summoning a levy of the militia. In the eyes of the home Government this was a much more serious matter than merely plundering or killing a few of its Canaanitish subjects, as it was equivalent to usurping the functions of the imperial power.

Labbawa also had to write and ask for forgiveness, and assure the Pharaoh that he is his “devoted slave,” who does “not withhold his tribute” or disobey the “requests” of the Egyptian commissioners. In fact, he concludes his letter with declaring that “if the king should write to me: Run a sword of bronze into your heart and die, I would not fail to execute the king’s command.” All the same, however, he had established himself securely on Mount Shechem, from whence, like Joshua in after days, he was able to make raids on the surrounding Canaanitish towns. In the north we hear of him at Shunem and Gath-Rimmon, where he first appeared upon the scene in the train of the Egyptian army at a time when Amon-hotep III. was suppressing an insurrection in that part of Palestine. It is probable that he had just arrived with his band of condottieri, attracted by the pay and the chance of plunder that the Egyptian Pharaoh offered the free-lance. By a curious fatality it was also in this same locality that he afterwards met his death at the hands of the people of Gina—the Cana of Galilee, probably, of St. John’s Gospel.

Labbawa cast envious eyes on the important city of Megiddo, and its governor—who, by the way, is mentioned in one of the cuneiform tablets found three years ago by the Austrian excavators on the site of Taanach—sent piteous appeals for assistance against him to the Egyptian Government. The beleaguered governor declared that so closely invested was he by the Hittite free-lances that he could not venture outside the gates of his town. The peasantry were afraid even to bring vegetables into it, and unless help were forthcoming from Egypt, Megiddo was doomed. After all, however, Labbawa was not only unable to possess himself of the Canaanitish stronghold, but was taken prisoner and confined in the very place he had hoped to capture. But fortune befriended him. He managed to bribe the governor of Acre, and the latter, on the pretext that he was going to send Labbawa by sea to Egypt, took him out of prison and set him free.

Labbawa now turned his attention to the south of Palestine—the future territory of Judah. Here he entered into alliance with the king of Jerusalem, or, to speak more precisely, was taken into his pay, and the two together waged war on the neighbouring states. One of the Egyptian governors complains that they had robbed him of Keilah, and he had to wait for Labbawa’s death before he could recover his city.

One of the two letters in the Tel el-Amarna collection which are in the Arzawan or Hittite language was written by Labbawa, as we have lately learned from Dr. Knudtzon’s revised copy of it. In this he calls himself a native of the Hittite district of Uan, near Aleppo, and refers to “the Hittite king,” though our knowledge of the language is too imperfect to allow us to understand the meaning of the reference. The letter is addressed simply “to my lord,” and we do not know, therefore, whether it was intended for Hittite or Egyptian eyes. After his settlement in Palestine, however, Labbawa adopted the official language of the country; his letters to the Pharaoh are in Babylonian, and his son bore the characteristically Semitic name of Mut-Baal. The fact is an interesting example of the rapid way in which the Hittite settlers in Palestine were Semitized. They brought no women with them, and their wives accordingly were natives of Canaan.

Labbawa left two sons behind him, who, in spite of their Semitic education, followed in their father’s footsteps and continued to lead his company of Hittite mercenaries. Mut-Baal, moreover, made himself useful to the Government by escorting the trading caravans to Cappadocia, a fact which proves that he still maintained relations with the country of his origin. The alliance between Ebed-Kheba of Jerusalem and his father, however, had come to an end; Ebed-Kheba now had the Hittites of Kas in his pay, and no longer needed the services of the sons of Labbawa. They therefore transferred themselves to his rivals, together with the sons of Arzawaya, who, like Labbawa, was now dead, and Ebed-Kheba soon found himself in difficulties. The result was letter after letter from him to the Egyptian court, begging for help against his enemies, and declaring that if no help came the king’s territory would be lost. These appeals seem to have met with no response; the Egyptian Government was by no means assured of Ebed-Kheba’s loyalty, and knew that if the territory of Jerusalem were to pass into the hands of the Hittite chieftain it would make but little difference to the imperial power. The tribute would still be paid, the Egyptian commissioner would still be respected, and the new rulers of the district would profess themselves the faithful subjects of the Pharaoh. There would merely be a change of governors, and nothing more. The Hittite mercenaries were formidable only in the petty struggles which took place between the rival Canaanitish governors; when it came to dealing with the regular army of Egypt they were numerically too few to be of account.

Ebed-Kheba calls the followers of Labbawa and Arzawaya “Khabiri.” I have long ago pointed out that the word is found elsewhere in the Assyrian texts in the sense of “Confederates,” and that its identification with the Hebrews of the Old Testament, though phonetically possible, is historically impossible. Now that we know the nationality of Labbawa and Arzawaya the question is finally settled, and we can explain a hitherto puzzling passage in one of Ebed-Kheba’s letters, in which he says that “when ships were on the sea the arm of the mighty king seized Naharaim and Kas, but now the Khabiri have seized the cities of the king.” Naharaim lay southward of the gulf of Antioch, while Kas extended to the Cilician coast, and they were thus, both of them, within reach of a maritime Power; they were, moreover, both of them Hittite regions, Naharaim being the district afterwards called Khattinâ, “the Hittite land,” by the Assyrians, while Kas was the Hittite kingdom of Cappadocia. Ebed-Kheba, therefore, is drawing a comparison between the power of “the mighty king” in the days when an Egyptian fleet controlled the sea and the present time when Hittite marauders are seizing without let or hindrance the king’s cities on the very borders of Egypt. Even Lachish and Ashkelon had joined the enemy.

Perhaps the most important of the King of Jerusalem’s letters is one which has hitherto been misunderstood, partly owing to its being broken in half and the relation of the two halves to one another not being recognized, partly to the imperfections of the published copy. Now that a complete and accurate text of it lies before us, its meaning has ceased to be a riddle, and I will therefore give here the first translation that has been made of the completed text—

“To the king my lord thus says Ebed-Kheba thy servant: at the feet of my lord the king seven times seven I prostrate myself. Behold, Malchiel has not separated himself from the sons of Labbawa and the sons of Arzawaya so as to claim the king’s land for them. A governor who commits such an act, why has not the king questioned him (about it)? Behold, Malchiel and Tagi have committed such an act by seizing the city of Rabbah. And now as to Jerusalem, if this land belongs to the king, why is it that Gaza has been appointed for the (residence of the) king (’s commissioner)? Behold the land of Gath-Carmel is in the power of Tagi, and the men of Gath are (his) bodyguard. He is (now) in Beth-Sannah. But (nevertheless) we will act. Malchiel wrote to Tagi that they should give Labbawa and Mount Shechem to the district of the Khabiri, and he took some boys as slaves. They granted all their demands to the people of Keilah. But we will rescue Jerusalem. The garrison which you sent by Khaya the son of Meri-Ra has been taken by Hadad-mikhir and stationed in his house at Gaza. [I have sent messengers] to Egypt, [and may] the king [listen to me].... There is no garrison of the king [here]. Verily by the life of the king Pa-ur has gone down to Egypt; he has left me and is in Gaza. But let the king entrust to him a garrison for the defence of the land. All the land of the king has revolted. Send Yenkhamu and let him take charge of the king’s land.