Naville went so far as to suggest that the Akkadian documents which lie behind our Hebrew Old Testament (or at least the Pentateuch and Joshua) were in use until the time of Ezra who adapted them to the alphabet used by the Aramaic speaking Jews of the Persian Empire. This view is not seriously considered today, for we know that Early or Palaeo-Hebrew manuscripts antedate the Square or Aramaic form of the letters in current use. The Canaanite dialect in use at Ras Shamra, ancient Ugarit, was written in a cuneiform alphabet at a time contemporary with the Amarna texts. Another group of texts, dated about 1500 B.C., was discovered at the Egyptian turquoise mines in the Sinai Peninsula. There are about twenty-five inscriptions in all, written in a form of alphabetic writing which was clearly derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics. Three short examples of the same alphabet, dating somewhat earlier than the Sinai inscriptions, have been discovered at Gezer, Lachish, and Shechem in southern Canaan. The oldest actual Hebrew inscription, using the Paleao-Hebrew script, is the Gezer Calendar (ca. 900 B.C.).

We cannot know for certain the nature of the writing on the tables, or tablets of the Law (Exod. 34:27-28). Moses, raised as an Egyptian prince, probably knew both Egyptian hieroglyphs and Akkadian cuneiform, and he may have learned to write in an early form of the Hebrew alphabet as a result of contacts with his own people. The Amarna texts have underscored the fact that both Egypt and Canaan were highly literate during the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries before Christ.

Canaanite Glosses

Of particular interest to language students is the fact that the Amarna Letters frequently contain Canaanite words or expressions which are inserted to clarify the meaning of the Akkadian text, which was a foreign language to the scribe. These glosses are our earliest examples of the language which became Biblical Hebrew. While the language of Laban, and that branch of Abraham’s family which settled in northern Mesopotamia, was Aramaic (cf. Gen. 31:47 where Laban uses an Aramaic name), the Patriarchs who entered Canaan came to speak “the language of Canaan” (cf. Isa. 19:18) which became the classical language of the Old Testament. The cuneiform syllabary in which the Amarna texts were written indicates vowel sounds which are not expressed in the alphabetic Hebrew script. In this way philologists are able to reconstruct some of the sounds of the ancient language.

Amarna Age Palestine

Although the Amarna texts do not name any personage met on the pages of Scripture, they are of value in helping us to visualize life in the Palestinian city states during the middle of the second millenium B.C. Biblical cities mentioned in the correspondence include: Akko, Ashkelon, Arvad, Aroer, Ashtaroth, Gebal (Byblos), Gezer, Gath, Gaza, Jerusalem, Joppa, Keilah, Lachish, Megiddo, Sidon, Tyre, Sharon, Shechem, Taanach, and Zorah. Beth-ninurta is thought to be identical with Biblical Beth-shemesh.

These cities are, for the most part, independent city states, owing allegiance to Egypt yet free to form their own alliances and resolve their own local problems. It was this type of political structure that Joshua met in Canaan. He waged war against “thirty-one kings” (Josh. 12:24). At times these kings made alliances in order to prevent Israel from gaining control of the land, just as the Amarna Age rulers aided one another in resisting Lab‘ayu. A leader against Joshua was Adonizedek, king of Jerusalem, who found allies in Hoham, king of Hebron; Piram, king of Jarmuth; Japhia, king of Lachish, and Debir, king of Eglon (Josh. 10:1-3).

The military engagements were strictly limited affairs, judged by the numbers of troops and horses requested of the Pharaoh. Rib-Addi of Byblos pleaded:

Let it seem good to the lord, the sun of the lands, to give me twenty pairs of horses.[64]

In his encounter with Abdi-Ashirta, the Amorite chieftain who was seeking to control northern Syria in league with the Hittites, Rib-Addi asked for but three hundred men.[65]

Abi-milki of Tyre indicated that he could get by with but token help from Egypt. In one letter he asks for but twenty foot soldiers,[66] and in another he will be satisfied with but ten.[67] Somewhat earlier, in the Canaan of Abraham’s day, the patriarch was able to assemble an army of three hundred and eighteen men (Gen. 14:14), pursue a confederation of five kings with their armies, rout and chase the enemy. An entire garrison might number but fifty men in the armies of Amarna Age rulers.[68]

Affairs of Government

The presence of a friend at the court was appreciated and cultivated by the rulers of the city states. Several of the Amarna tablets are addressed to an Egyptian official named Yanhamu who bore the title “the king’s fanbearer.” He was evidently a man of considerable power, for the king entrusted him with the issuing of supplies from a place known as Yarimuta. For this reason the local princes in Syria and Canaan frequently wrote to him. After outlining his needs, Rib-Addi indulged in a little apple-polishing as he concluded, “There is no servant like Yanhamu, a faithful servant of the king.”[69]

Yanhamu seems to have occupied in the court of Amenhotep III (and possibly Akhenaton as well) a position comparable to the one Joseph held several generations earlier.[70] Both Yanhamu and Joseph were charged with overseeing the distribution of food supplies (cf. Gen. 42:51-57). They both had Semitic names, and the presence of Yanhamu in an Egyptian court during New Kingdom times indicates that Semites were not barred from government following the Hyksos expulsion. Rulers often find it safer to trust faithful foreigners than some of their own subjects who might be tempted to rebel.

The simple tastes of the Israelite tribes in the period before the monarchy may be contrasted with the ostentation of Solomon’s harem with its thousand wives and concubines (I Kings 11:3) along with the wealth and luxury of an oriental court. The rulers of the larger states of the Amarna Age, and particularly Tushratta of Mitanni, sent their daughters to grace the harems of Amenhotep III and Akhenaton. A scarab of Amenhotep III commemorates the arrival of Giluhepa, a Mitannian princess with a retinue of three hundred seventeen maidens.[71] That Amenhotep III was actively building his harem is shown in a letter which he addressed to Milk-ili of Gezer which says, in part:

I have sent Hania, the commander of the archers, to you with all sorts of things, to bring the beautiful women.... There are in all forty women; forty pieces of silver is the price of the women. Send me therefore very beautiful women among whom are no slanderers, so that the king, your lord, may say to you, “This is fine.”[72]

The building of a harem had political implications for it involved an alliance of friendship. Early in Solomon’s reign he “made a marriage alliance with Pharaoh, king of Egypt; he took Pharaoh’s daughter and brought her into the City of David....” (I Kings 3:1). A large harem, moreover, was a symbol of power, wealth and prestige. Solomon was but adapting the customs of the great rulers of the ancient East when he built an enormous harem for himself.