“The great king's return-gift may be thus: Gold in thy land is (as) dust—they gather it up. Why should it go round into thine eyes? I have undertaken to build a new palace. Cause gold, as much as its over-laying and its need (requires), to be sent.
“When Ašur-nadin-âḫi, my father, sent to the land of Egypt, they caused to be sent to him 20 talents of gold.
“When the Ḫanigalbatian king sent to Egypt to thy father, he caused 20 talents of go(ld) to be brought to him.
“(Behold), thou hast caused to be brought ... gold to the Ḫani(gal)ba(tian) king ... and to me, (but f)or the going and returning it suffices (?) not for wages for my messengers.
“If friendship be desirable unto thee, cause much gold to be brought; and as it will be thy house, send, and let them take what thou desirest.
“We are distant countries—in this wise let our messengers go about.
“Those who delayed thy messengers were the Sutites, their persecutors; dead (was I) until I had sent, and they had taken the persecuting Sutites. Their bands (?) shall verily not delay my messengers.
“As for messengers abroad, why should they be detained and die there? If they stay abroad, the king will have the advantage, so let him stay and let him die abroad—let the king then have the advantage. And if not, why should the messengers whom we [pg 284] send die abroad? ... attack the messengers and cause them to die abroad.”
The last paragraph is difficult to understand on account of its being so mutilated, but the sense of the whole seems now to be fairly clear. Ašur-uballiṭ desires to be on friendly terms with Egypt, but he is anxious to get, above all, the precious metal which was said to be so plentiful there, and for which all the rulers of Western Asia seem to have hungered. And this leads to the interesting statement in the fifth paragraph, in which gold in Egypt is said to have been as dust; and there is the question, “Why should it go round into thine eyes?” (Amminî ina ênē-ka isaḫḫur?) implying that, being dust, it behaved as dust, and was in that respect undesirable, and therefore to be got rid of. He would like to have some for the decoration of his palace—his father, and the king of Ḫanigalbat had been favoured in this way. Let it not be as little (apparently), as that sent to the Ḫanigalbatian king, for that would not suffice to pay his messengers. The interchange of things needed as presents made good friends. It was a lawless band of Sutites who had detained the Egyptian king's messengers, and he was as one dead until his people had stopped their depredations. It was useful to a king that his ambassadors lived and died abroad, but not that they should be attacked and killed there.
The relations of Egypt with another class of ruler is well illustrated by the following letter from a prince or governor brought up in Egypt—