Page 307 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

would be likely to use his influence with Artatemu on behalf of
his fellow Semite, the rebel Aziru in Syria. It was high time that

Egypt sent an army to the Euphrates frontier, to put an end to
Aziru and to re-establish a friendly monarch in Mitanni. Other­
wise they ran the risk that Mitanni would disappear completely

between the Hittites and the Assyrians, and that those two
powers would go on to divide Syria between them.
Though the princesses were impressed, Akhenaten refused
to move. Aziru was his friend, and he had just received an envoy

from the Assyrian king. Assur-uballit’s ambassador brought a
present of a silver chariot and two white horses, and the magnifi­
cence of the gift quite obscured the fact that the envoy entitled

his master king both of Assyria and of Mitanni. The claim was
not allowed to pass entirely unchallenged, though. Not many
months passed before a deputation arrived from Babylon, bearing
letters from King Bumaburias II. The Kassite king of Babylon

protested that the king of Egypt had accepted gifts from “my
subjects, the Assyrians,” and had negotiated with them as though

they were an independent country.
During these years, while the older princesses, and young
Tutankhaten, took their first lessons in court procedure, many
envoys came to the court at Akhetaten. Egypt, even under a

pharaoh who seemed physically incapable of making up his
mind to decisive action, was still the greatest power in the world.
The pleas of the Syrian envoys grew more and more desperate,

and in the end became ultimatums that if no help came they had
no alternative but to make the best peace in their power with
Aziru. And the embassies from the independent countries to the

north, from the Hittites and from Arzawa and from the Achaeans
who now ruled in Crete, became more and more aloof as, in their
long journey up the Nile, they realized more and more clearly
the growing gulf between Akhenaten and the people he claimed

to rule.
It was in these years that the horizon began to contract
around princess Ankh-esenpa-Aten. The city of Akhetaten, whic

had once seemed endless, began to appear to her as a little
beleaguered enclave. The mountains that ringed the town to the
east crept nearer until they seemed to overshadow the town,