The name of Mitanni meets us on the Egyptian monuments of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth dynasties. The kingdom played a considerable part at that period of time in the politics of Western Asia, and the daughters of its kings were married to the Egyptian Pharaohs. The boundaries of the Egyptian Empire were coterminous with those of Mitanni, and we gather from the Tel el-Amarna correspondence that the Mitannian forces had more than once made their way into Palestine, perhaps as far south as Jerusalem, and that Mitannian intrigue was active in that portion of the Pharaoh’s dominions. Among the Canaanitish governors are some who bear Mitannian names, and testify to the continuance of a Mitannian element in that common meeting-place of nationalities. Several letters from the Mitannian king have been found among the Tel el-Amarna tablets. Most of them are written in the Babylonian language, but one--and fortunately an exceptionally long one--though in cuneiform characters, is in the native language of the country. A comparison of it with its companion letters, assisted by the determinatives and ideographs which are employed in it from time to time, has enabled Jensen, Leopold Messerschmidt and myself to decipher a very considerable part of the letter, and so to compile a grammar and vocabulary of the Mitannian language. That it is distantly related to Vannic seems to admit of little doubt, but it comes before us in a much more developed form; indeed, its system of suffixes is so elaborate and ponderous as to remind us of the polysynthetic languages of America. A legal document found in Babylonia and dated in the epoch of Khammu-rabi contains a number of proper names which are of Mitannian or allied origin, and show that persons of that race were already settled in Babylonia.[137] As the Mitannian form of cuneiform script must have been borrowed about the same time, we may infer that the advanced guard of the northern race had already made its way as far south as Mesopotamia, and there established its power in the midst of a Semitic population. From that time forward a constant struggle went on between the two races, the Semitic race striving to push back the northern intruders and planting its own colonies in the very heart of the northern area, while the northerners pressed ever more and more to the southward, and at one time even seemed likely to possess themselves of the heritage of the Babylonian Empire in Western Asia. Like Armenia, Northern Mesopotamia was occupied by a people of Caucasian and Asianic affinities, whose armies had crossed the Euphrates and won territory in Syria and Palestine.