Like the Saxons in England, however, the Hittite chieftains must have founded principalities for themselves in the south of Canaan, as we know from the evidence of the Tel el-Amarna tablets and the Egyptian monuments that they did in the north. Ezekiel, in fact, tells us that the mother of Jerusalem was a Hittite, and the Jebusites, from whom Jerusalem took its name in the age of the Israelitish conquest, were probably the descendants of the followers of the Hittite Arzawaya. They had, moreover, found a Hittite population already settled in the country, descendants of older bands who had made their way from the highlands of Asia Minor to the frontiers of Egypt in days when as yet Abraham was unborn. At the very commencement of the Egyptian twelfth dynasty we hear of the Pharaohs destroying “the palaces of the Hittites” in Southern Palestine,[157] and archæology has recently shown that the painted pottery discovered in the earlier strata of Lachish and Gezer by English excavators had its original home in Northern Cappadocia and is an enduring evidence of Hittite culture and trade. The Hittites had been preceded in their occupation of Canaan by the Amorites, as we have learnt from the Babylonian inscriptions. But in the Tel el-Amarna age the specifically Amoritish territory was in the north, eastward of Tyre and Gebal. Here Ebed-Asherah and his son Aziru had their seat and from hence they led their forces northwards towards Aleppo to resist “the king of the Hittites” on behalf of the Egyptian Government, or attacked the Phœnician cities on their own account. In the north, in fact, they played much the same part as the Hittite mercenaries did in the south, with the additional advantage of being able to secure secret assistance when it was needed from Mitanni. Between Amorites and Hittites the Canaanites must have had a somewhat unhappy time, like the Britons after the departure of the Roman legions, who found themselves the alternate prey of Saxons and Scots. But we can now understand and appreciate the ethnological notice in the Book of Numbers (xiii. 29), which tells us that “the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites dwell in the mountains, and the Canaanites dwell by the sea and by the coast of Jordan.” The Amorite princes, however, were more formidable to the Egyptian Government than the Hittite chieftains, or else must have played their cards a little too openly, for we find Aziru receiving a scolding such as the Egyptian court seldom had the courage or energy to give. The letter from the Egyptian Foreign Office, which is a long one, is worth translating in full-- “To the governor of the land of the Amorites [thus] says the king your lord. The governor of Gebal, thy brother, whom his brother has driven from the gate (of the city) has said: ‘Take me and bring me back into my city, [and] I will then give you money, [for] I have nothing [of value] with me now.’ So he spoke to you.