his first communication to Nimmuria every petty chief went raiding on
his own account: Teuwatta of Lapana, Dasha, Arzawia and all the rest of
them. These vanished with the entrance of Aziru upon the scene, though the
change was by no means welcome to Akizzi. In the Lebanon things were no
better. Here Namyauza was struggling with the headmen of Puzruna and
Khalunni. "They began hostilities together with Biridashwi against me and
said: 'Come, let us kill Namyauza.' But I escaped." This promiscuous
warfare raged most fiercely in the south. Here a certain Labaya tried to
play the part taken by Aziru in the north. But fortune was less favourable
to Labaya. Probably he failed to induce his undisciplined officers to act
in unison, and the unhappy man's sole achievement seems to have been the
welding of his foes into a compact body against himself. He lost his
territory, kept up the struggle a little longer as a freebooter, was taken
captive at Megiddo, escaped again on the eve of being shipped to Egypt,
and fell in battle or died a natural death after at length meeting
apparently with some success in Judaea.

Jerusalem was under a royal "Uweu," a term perhaps best rendered
"captain," named Abdikheba. A neighbouring prefect, Shuwardata, asserted
occasionally that he had entered into conspiracies with Labaya, and
Abdikheba in fact complained of hostilities on all sides. Milki-El and his
father-in-law Tagi, chiefs in the Philistian plain near Gath, were his
principal opponents. They recruited troops from among the Habiri in the
hope that Abdikheba, finding himself practically blockaded, would weary of
the struggle and abandon the field. He was evidently very nearly driven to
this when he wrote:

"Infamous things have been wrought against me. To see it would
draw tears from the eyes of the king, so do my foes press me.
Shall the royal cities fall a prey to the Habiri? If the Pidati do
not come in the course of this year, let the king send messengers
to fetch me and all my brethren that we may die in the presence of
the king, our lord."

By the Habiri we must here understand no other than the Hebrews, who were
therefore already to be found in the "Promised Land," but had not yet
firmly established themselves there. They swarmed in the Lebanon, where
Namyauza had formally enlisted one of their hordes; and yet it seems as if
they already held Shechem and Mount Ephraim as free tribal property. At
any rate