Labbawa also had to write and ask for forgiveness, and assure the Pharaoh that he is his “devoted slave,” who does “not withhold his tribute” or disobey the “requests” of the Egyptian commissioners. In fact, he concludes his letter with declaring that “if the king should write to me: Run a sword of bronze into your heart and die, I would not fail to execute the king’s command.” All the same, however, he had established himself securely on Mount Shechem, from whence, like Joshua in after days, he was able to make raids on the surrounding Canaanitish towns. In the north we hear of him at Shunem and Gath-Rimmon, where he first appeared upon the scene in the train of the Egyptian army at a time when Amon-hotep III. was suppressing an insurrection in that part of Palestine. It is probable that he had just arrived with his band of condottieri, attracted by the pay and the chance of plunder that the Egyptian Pharaoh offered the free-lance. By a curious fatality it was also in this same locality that he afterwards met his death at the hands of the people of Gina--the Cana of Galilee, probably, of St. John’s Gospel. Labbawa cast envious eyes on the important city of Megiddo, and its governor--who, by the way, is mentioned in one of the cuneiform tablets found three years ago by the Austrian excavators on the site of Taanach--sent piteous appeals for assistance against him to the Egyptian Government. The beleaguered governor declared that so closely invested was he by the Hittite free-lances that he could not venture outside the gates of his town. The peasantry were afraid even to bring vegetables into it, and unless help were forthcoming from Egypt, Megiddo was doomed. After all, however, Labbawa was not only unable to possess himself of the Canaanitish stronghold, but was taken prisoner and confined in the very place he had hoped to capture. But fortune befriended him. He managed to bribe the governor of Acre, and the latter, on the pretext that he was going to send Labbawa by sea to Egypt, took him out of prison and set him free. Labbawa now turned his attention to the south of Palestine--the future territory of Judah. Here he entered into alliance with the king of Jerusalem, or, to speak more precisely, was taken into his pay, and the two together waged war on the neighbouring states. One of the Egyptian governors complains that they had robbed him of Keilah, and he had to wait for Labbawa’s death before he could recover his city.