ns. The capital city Mitanni stood
on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, at no great distance from
Carchemish, but the Naharaim, or "Two Rivers," more probably mean the
Euphrates and Orontes, than the Euphrates and Tigris. In one of the Tel
el-Amarna tablets the country is called Nahrima, but its usual name is
Mitanni or Mitanna. It was the first independent kingdom of any size or
power on the frontiers of the Egyptian empire in the age of the
eighteenth dynasty, and the Pharaohs Thothmes IV., Amenophis III., and
Amenophis IV. successively married into its royal family.

The language of Mitanni has been revealed to us by the cuneiform
correspondence from Tel el-Amarna. It was highly agglutinative, and
unlike any other form of speech, ancient or modern, with which we are
acquainted. Perhaps the speakers of it, like the Hittites, had descended
from the north, and occupied territory which had originally belonged to
Aramaic tribes. Perhaps, on the other hand, they represented the older
population of the country which was overpowered and displaced by Semitic
invaders. Which of these views is the more correct we shall probably
never know.

Along with their own language the people of Mitanni had also their own
theology. Tessupas was god of the atmosphere, the Hadad of the Semites,
Sausbe was identified with the Phoenician Ashteroth, and Sekhrus,
Zizanu, and Zannukhu are mentioned among the other deities. But many of
the divinities of Assyria were also borrowed--Sin the Moon-god, whose
temple stood in the city of Harran, Ea the god of the waters, Bel, the
Baal of the Canaanites, and Istar, "the lady of Nineveh." Even Amon the
god of Thebes was adopted into the pantheon in the days of Egyptian
influence.

How far back the interference of Aram-Naharaim in the affairs of Canaan
may have reached it is impossible to say. But the kingdom lay on the
high-road from Babylonia and Assyria to the West, and its rise may
possibly have had something to do with the decline of Babylonian
supremacy in Palestine. The district in which it grew up was called Suru
or Suri by the Sumerian inhabitants of Chaldaea--a name which may be the
origin of the modern "Syria," rather than Assyria, as is usually
supposed, and the Semitic Babylonians gave it the title of Subari or
Subartu. The conquest of Suri was the work of the last campaign of
Sargon of Accad, and laid all northern Mesopotamia at his feet.

We gather from the letters of Tel el-Amarna that