65 B. M.—(_Sibtiaddu?_) writes as a servant of the King with the usual salutation, and has heard the message. “Behold what _Yankhamu_ (says). I am a faithful servant at the foot of the King. Let the King my Lord know it. I guard much the King’s city which is with me.”
147 B.—From (_Khiziri?_), the King’s servant. He will meet the soldiers, and has received a message from _Maya_ about a tax.
148 B.—_Ruzbanya_, of _Taruna_, is a servant of the King. The letter is broken. He was of old a servant of the King.
150 B.—From _Nurtu_.... He listens to the _Paka_, and will fortify until the King comes to his tribe. He fills a good-sized tablet, without giving any information of interest.
76 B. M.—_Zidriyara_ writes, with the usual compliments, to acknowledge a message.
141 B.—_Zidriyara_ is faithful, as of old, and a friend of the rulers, and listens to all the King’s messages.
140 B.—_Zidriyara_ hears the message of the King, whose servant he is—“the Sun from among the Heavenly Gods who has spoken”—and he will not neglect the messages of the King his lord, or of the _Paka_ who is established with him.
135 B.—Apparently without a name. He is only a dog, but will march with chariots and horses to meet the Egyptian soldiers (_bitati_).
130 B.—_Sutarnamu_, of his city _Zicaruenu_,(364) bows to the King. He asks for soldiers of garrison, as they are obstructing the district of the King’s land near him. Probably the site is the present village _Dhikerîn_, near Gath on the south, which was the Caphar Dikerin of the Talmud (Tal. Jer. “_Taanith_,” iv. 8), in the region of Daroma (now _Deirân_), near Ekron (see Ekha ii. 2). He asks for soldiers.
131 B.—_Samuaddu_, of the town of _Sama’una_, listens to all the King’s messages. Perhaps _Sammûnieh_, an ancient and important ruin immediately east of Kirjath Jearim (_’Erma_), on the way to Jerusalem, by the Valley of Sorek, is the place intended.
Nos. 79, 80, 81 B. M. are short and broken letters, which appear only to acknowledge messages received. No. 80 is from a certain _Nebo_...; in No. 79 there appears to be no personal name, and in No. 81 it is destroyed.
The names of these villages establish a regular chain of posts from Gaza, by Lachish, to the valleys of Sorek and Elah, which seem to have been the most eastern parts of the country in which chariots were to be found. There is no mention of chariots at Jerusalem, or at any village which was not accessible by a flat valley-road. By these posts communication was kept up, it would seem, with Jerusalem; and the messengers probably travelled by this route, avoiding Ajalon. It was by this route that Adonizedek proposed that Amenophis should come up to help him. Whether any such expedition was attempted, none of the letters seem to indicate. The troops had been withdrawn, and the Egyptian policy seems to have been to call out the native levies of the Amorite charioteers. Perhaps, when the five kings had been killed at Makkedah, no further steps were taken, but the lowlands remained unconquered till the time of Samuel and David. Even in Solomon’s time Gezer was only received as the dower of the daughter of the Pharaoh (1 Kings ix. 16) who had burned the place and killed its Canaanite population. In Judges we read that Judah “could not drive out the inhabitants of the Shephelah (or lowlands) because they had chariots of iron” (i. 19). The coast road was still open when Dusratta was writing to his son-in-law Amenophis IV twenty years later; and all lower Galilee was, for some few years, with Philistia and Syria, reconquered by Rameses II, who, however, never entered the Judæan mountains.