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The last letter in the Aziru series, which had obviously been confiscated and subsequently found its way back into the archives, is a letter of condolence from the adherents or sons of Aziru to their imprisoned chief.
The native governors were fighting with one another or intriguing with the enemies of Egypt, while all the time protesting their loyalty to the Pharaoh. Ebed-Asherah and his son Aziru governed the Amorites in the north, and the prefect of Phoenicia sends bitter complaints to the Egyptian court of their hostility to himself and their royal master. Aziru, however, was an able ruler.
The Hittites had already made their way into the land of Nukhasse, and were from thence marching up into the land of the Amorites. On the heels of these despatches came a long letter from the people of Tunip, complaining of the conduct of Aziru, and protesting against his doing to them what he had done to the city of Ni.
Abi-milki, the Tyrian prefect, once informs the king, “Fire hath devoured the city of Ugarit; one half of it hath it destroyed and not the other.” Finally, a certain Yapakhi-Addi, after an unsuccessful attempt to get provisions into Rib-Addi’s city Simyra, reproachfully informs Yanhamu that Aziru has extended his dominions from Gebal to Ugarit.
A despatch, however, from Namya-yitsa, the governor of Kumidi, sets the conduct of Aziru in a more favourable light. It was written at a somewhat later time, when rebellion against the Egyptian authority was spreading throughout Syria.
The cunning Amorite brought forward one excuse after another. “Even if thy actions be just, yet if thou dissemble in thy letters at thy pleasure, the king must at length come to think that thou liest in every case,” is a passage in the letter brought by Hani. Aziru replies in a tone of injured innocence: “To the great king, my lord, my god, my sun; Aziru, thy servant.
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.
At the same time the surrender was demanded of certain “enemies of the king,” who were in all probability principal adherents of Aziru. When the messenger Hani arrived with this note, Aziru, evidently warned in good time, had promptly vanished over the hills, and none of the royal commands could be carried out.
Moreover a fresh enemy had arisen in the person of Eta-gama of Kadesh, who had joined himself with the king of the Hittites and the king of Naharaim. Letters to Khu-n-Aten from Akizzi the governor of Qatna, which, as we learn from the inscriptions of Assur-natsir-pal, was situated on the Khabûr, represent Aziru in the same light.
This prince, a certain Yadi Addu, had already been released and was on his way home when the allies of Aziru caused him to be recalled. “If, however, we have to mourn,” so the complaint proceeds, “the king himself will soon have to mourn over those things which Aziru has committed against us, for next he will turn his hand against his lord.
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