To the king, my lord, my sun, say: Rib-Adda, thy servant; at the feet of my lord, my sun-god, seven times and seven times I prostrate myself. May the king, my lord, listen to the words of his faithful servant! It is going very hard for me! The hostility has become strong. The sons of Ebed-Ashera have become great in Amurru; theirs is the whole land. The city of Sumur and the city of Irkata are left to the princes. And behold in Sumur I am strong. When it was difficult for the princes on account of the enmity, I left Gebal and ........ Zimridda and .......... Yapa-Addi ........ with me. Behold, then wrote the prince unto them; but they did not hearken unto him. And may the king, my lord, hearken to the words of his faithful servant! Send aid very quickly unto the city Sumur for its protection until the arrival of the mercenaries of the king, the sun. And may the king, the sun, drive out the enemy from his land. Again may the king, my lord, hearken to the word of his servant and send men as guards to the city of Sumur and to the city of Irkata, in case that all the guards flee from Sumur. And may it seem good to my lord, the sun of the countries, to give to me 20 pairs of horses. And may he send help very quickly to the city of Sumur to guard it. All the guards who remain are in straits and few are the men in the city. If mercenaries thou dost not send, then there will be no city remaining to thee. If there are mercenaries, we will take all the lands for the king. These letters mention a certain Ebed-Ashera and claim that his sons are gaining possession of all the land of Amurru. If the “Ebed” were dropped out of the phrase, “sons of Ebed-Ashera,”[479] there would remain “sons of Ashera,” or, “sons of Asher.” The “land of Amurru,” or, “land of the Amorites,” lay, at the time these letters were written, in the later home of the tribe of Asher, and a little to the north of it, between the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon mountains. Some scholars hold that we have in these letters references to the coming of the “sons of Asher,” or the tribe of Asher into this region, but it is a theory which in the present state of our knowledge we can neither prove nor disprove. If it should prove to be true, these tablets would reflect a part of the Hebrew conquest of this region. =2. Letters of Ebed-Hepa of Jerusalem.= I[480]