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The picture of Canaan presented to us by the Tel el-Amarna correspondence has been supplemented by the discovery of Lachish. Five years ago Prof. Flinders Petrie undertook to excavate for the Palestine Exploration Fund in the lofty mound of Tel el-Hesi in Southern Palestine. Tel el-Hesi stands midway between Gaza and Hebron on the edge of the Judaean mountains, and overlooking a torrent stream.
At first sight it might seem possible to trace a parallel in the use of the Babylonian language by kings and officials in Egypt and Syria during the fifteenth century B.C., as revealed in the letters from Tell el-Amarna. But a moment's thought will show that the cases are not similar.
Accordingly we further read that at the same time "Melchizedek, king of Salem," and "priest of the most High God," "brought forth bread and wine," and blessed the Hebrew conqueror, who thereupon gave him tithes of all the spoil. It is only since the discovery and decipherment of the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna that the story of Melchizedek has been illustrated and explained.
The capital city Mitanni stood on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, at no great distance from Carchemish, but the Naharaim, or "Two Rivers," more probably mean the Euphrates and Orontes, than the Euphrates and Tigris. In one of the Tel el-Amarna tablets the country is called Nahrima, but its usual name is Mitanni or Mitanna.
Just as Philistia, the district of the Philistines, became the comprehensive Palestine, so Canaan, the land of the Canaanites of the coast and the valley, came to denote the whole of the country between the Jordan and the sea. It is already used in this sense in the cuneiform correspondence of Tel el-Amarna.
This latter was a personal enemy of Rib-Hadad the governor of Gebal, whose letters to Khu-n-Aten form a considerable portion of the Tel el-Amarna collection. The authority of Rib-Hadad originally extended over the greater part of Phoenicia, and included the strong fortress of Zemar or Simyra in the mountains.
But for occasional intervals, as when Akhunaten held his court at Tell el-Amarna and Ramses II at Tanis, Thebes remained the national capital for six hundred years, till the time of the XXIId Dynasty. During the whole history of the Old Kingdom, Egyptian relations with the outer world had been nil.
Along with the reform in religion there had gone a reform in art. The old conventionalized art of Egypt was abandoned, and a new art had been introduced which aimed at imitating nature with realistic fidelity. The mounds which mark the site of Khu-n-Aten's city are now known as Tel el-Amarna. It had a brief but brilliant existence of about thirty years.
The female correspondents of the Pharaoh are among the most curious and interesting features of the state of society depicted in the Tel el-Amarna tablets; they entered keenly into the politics of the day, and kept the Egyptian king fully informed of all that was going on. The letters of Ebed-Tob are so important that it is as well to give them in full.
Yurza is now represented by the ruins of Yerza, south-eastward of Ta'anach, and there are letters from its governor in the Tel el-Amarna collection. Its name is followed by those of Makhsa, Yapu or Joppa, and "the country of Gantu" or Gath. Next we have Luthen or Ruthen, which is possibly Lydda, Ono, Apuqen, Suka or Socho, and Yahem.
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