disloyal to him. He got away with this for quite some time until his
career was suddenly ended. We don’t know the details but it’s likely
that he pushed his luck too far with the pharaoh, probably
Amenhotep III, who sent a strong Egyptian expeditionary force to
Amurru and captured and no doubt executed the miscreant. But that
failed to solve the problem in Amurru. For Abdi-Ashirta’sshoes
were rapidlyfilled by his son Aziru, under whose leadership the
terrorist-clan continued to harass, plunder and seize for themselves
the cities and territories of the pharaoh, now Akhenaten.
Like his father, Aziru protested that in all he did, he was merely
acting as his overlord’s agent, particularly by keeping out Egypt’s
most dangerous enemy–the Hittites. For Amurru was a frontier
state adjacent to Hittite subject-territory in Syria, and there were
ominous signs of a large build-up of Hittite forces in the region.
The Hittite threat and Aziru’s representations of himself as a
bulwark against it, were apparently sufficient to ward off any action
by a deeply suspicious pharaoh, and despite a constant stream of
complaints by the rulers of other Egyptian vassal states in the
region. Most vocal among these was the king of Byblos, whose city-
state was in imminent danger of falling to Aziru.
All this we know from the letters exchanged between the
terrorist leaders, their victims, and the pharaoh–one of the most
interesting groups of letters found in the Amarna archive.^1 From
these letters we learn too that while pledging his allegiance to the
pharaoh, Aziru was establishing alliances with states that had
already gone over to the Hittite side, including the ruler of Qadesh
which bordered on Amurru’s territory.‘You are at peace with the
ruler of Qadesh. The two of you take food and strong drink
together. Why do you act so?’Akhenaten demanded to know.
And as Aziru’s acts of treachery became ever more blatant, and
the cries of his victims ever more shrill and desperate, the pharaoh’s
patience ran out. Aziru was summoned to Egypt to explain
himself in his overlord’s presence.‘If for any reason you plot evil
treacherous things,’Aziru was warned,‘you and your entire family
shall die by the axe of the king!’Aziru realised his bluff had been
well and truly called. Though he had complied with the pharaoh’s
demand that he come to Egypt for a thorough briefing on an earlier
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