Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 9, 2025
Whether or not we identify the Khabiri with the Hebrews, the character of the latter's incursion is strikingly illustrated by some of the Tell el-Amarna letters. We see a nomad folk pressing in upon settled peoples and gaining a foothold here and there.
Here again we are carried to a date when the Kassite kings of Babylonia held rule in Canaan, or led thither their armies, and when the Babylonians were called, as they are in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, the Kassi or sons of Cush. Nimrod himself may be the Kassite monarch Nazi-Murudas.
In the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna, too, there is frequent mention of the "Plunderers" by whom the Beduin, the Shasu of the Egyptian texts, must be meant, and who seem to have been generally ready at hand to assist a rebellious vassal or take part in a civil feud. Lebanon, the "white" mountain, took its name from its cliffs of glistening limestone.
Several letters from the king of Alasiya are preserved in the Tel el-Amarna collection, and we gather from them that his possessions extended across the Orontes from the desert to the Mediterranean Sea. Egyptian papyri tell us that mares were imported into Egypt from Alasiya as well as two different kinds of liquor. In the age of Samuel and Saul Alasiya was governed by a queen.
Gebal or Byblos, still farther to the north, had been renowned for its sanctity from immemorial times. Here stood the sanctuary of Baalith, the "lady" of Gebal, of whom we hear in the tablets of Tel el-Amarna. Still farther north were other cities, of which the most famous was Arvad, with its harbour and fleet.
But if so, it is curious that no royal titles are given to her parents; moreover, the author of the scarabs has made Yua the father of the queen and Tua her mother. Tuya is the name of an Amorite in one of the Tel el-Amarna letters, while from another of them it would seem as if Teie had been the daughter of the Babylonian king.
In his letters, as everywhere else in the Tel el-Amarna correspondence, the Babylonians are called Kassi or Kassites. The name is written differently in the cuneiform texts from that of the Ethiopians, the Kash of the hieroglyphic inscriptions.
A curious tale was found among the El-Amarna tablets which endeavors to account for Nergal's presence in the world of the dead. Unfortunately, the tablet on which the story is inscribed is so badly mutilated that we can hardly gather more than the general outlines. A conflict has arisen between the gods on high and a goddess who has her seat in the lower world.
When their rule actually ceased we do not yet know. It cannot have been very long, however, before the era of Egyptian conquest. In the Tel el-Amarna tablets they are always called Kassites, a name which could have been given to them only after the conquest of Babylonia by the Kassite mountaineers of Elam, and the rise of a Kassite dynasty of kings.
At Tell el-Amarna, in upper Egypt, were unearthed, in 1887, more than three hundred clay tablets containing diplomatic dispatches, written in the cuneiform character, and nearly all in the Babylonian language. They furnish a large amount of important information as to conditions in western Asia at that early period.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking