rd. In
the letters there is a remark of the king of Alashia recommending Pharaoh
to exchange no more gifts with "the kings of the Hittites and of
Shankhar." Mitani is, perhaps, here named Shankhar from its dependencies
in Asia Minor, or we may suppose it to have been the name of Tushratta's
residence.

In contrast to the Hittite empire, which was pressing forward from the
neck of Asia Minor through the passes of Issus into Syria, and was rapidly
increasing in power, Mitani stood on the eve of its fall. Babylonians and
Hittites were alike watching to pluck the ripe fruit, and perhaps it
lacked little to decide Tushratta, instead of fighting once more for the
crown, to capitulate to the invading Hittites and see the end of the
kingdom of Mitani. The great "love" of this king for Egypt was not,
therefore, called forth merely by the glitter of gold, but also by dire
political necessity. The catastrophe occurred some few decades after the
correspondence comes to an end for us. Mitani vanished from the states of
Western Asia and gave place to small Aramaic kingdoms, while the eastern
boundary, together with Ninua, was seized by Assyria as the first step to
her subsequent suzerainty in the East.

But still more swiftly overtaken of fate was the XVIIIth Dynasty in Egypt.
Napkhuria did not even see the completion of his city at Tell el Amarna,
for he died in 1370 B.C. His reform followed him, and the victorious
champions of Amon could raze to the ground the hated City of the Sun's
Disk. They must already have been on the march when in a happy moment it
occurred to a keeper of the royal archives to conceal the clay tablets in
the earth and thus save them for remote posterity.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX

The best translation of the Tell el Amarna tablets available for English
readers is that from the German of H. Winckler, published by Luzac,
London, 1896.

Professor Flinders Petrie's _Syria and Egypt from the Tell el Amarna
Letters_ (Methuen, 1898) is a synopsis of the letters as far as they
belong to the relations of Egypt and Syria, with the addition of
geographical and historical notes. In the Introduction Professor Petrie
gives a harrowing account of the casual way in which the tablets were
found and of the criminal carelessness with which these priceless records
were subsequently handled.

Some years afterwards, in 1891-2, Professor Petrie himself excavated what
was left of the ruins of the royal city of Amen