United States or Senegal ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
When it was a mere question of hundreds in the field against hundreds, the appearance of a company, or of a few troops, restored peace for a time, but serious and aggravated hostilities between masses of rebels could not always be checked by such small numbers, and it was a severe blow to the prestige of the Shirtani when they were defeated at Gebal by the Sutu.
The Hittites in Itakama’s force were, of course, prominently mentioned to alarm Pharaoh. They may have been Hittite spearmen enrolled by the prince of Kadesh, much as the Habiri and Sutu had been enlisted by his chief rival Namyauza. It is even possible that the soldiers of Kadesh had always been armed in Hittite fashion; perhaps the town was already inhabited by people of Hittite stock.
But the Sutu reached the domains of more powerful vassals, and by two of these, Aziru and Namjauza, were openly taken into pay. Obviously such alliances with land-seeking plunderers could only prolong and embitter the strife.
The tablets are full of references to these complicated struggles, which it is not always possible to follow in detail. Additional confusion was caused by the immigration of Bedawìn tribes. In the north the nomadic Sutu, in the south the Habiri pressed forward and encroached upon Egyptian territory.
This exhortation seems to have been vain, for a letter of the next Assyrian king, Assuruballit, speaks of a regular exchange of messengers, and indicates that the Sutu of the desert—doubtless at the instigation of the Babylonians—were about to kill every Egyptian who showed himself in their territory.
Word Of The Day