Between the time of Abraham and that of Joshua’s conquest we hear nothing about the city for six hundred years. After this we have remarkable evidence of its existence as a royal city in the extant tablets of the Tell Amarna collection, written to the Pharaoh by the Amorite king of Uru-salimu. Amenophis III. of Egypt was the contemporary of Rimmon-nirari of Assyria, who reigned about 1500 B. C., and Amenophis IV. was the contemporary of Burnaburias of Babylon, who acceded about 1440 B. C.[60] Palestine, having been conquered by Thothmes III. about 1580 B. C., was peacefully ruled by Egypt when Amenophis III. acceded to the throne. The population appears at this time to have been entirely Semitic, no letters in any but the Babylonian language occurring among those of its rulers, while the names of all the cities mentioned, even in the sixteenth century B. C., are also Semitic. The Philistines, like the rest of the Canaanites, used the Babylonian language and script, and they worshipped the Babylonian sea-god Dagon, whom ’Ammurabi had adored. Their names are also Semitic, not only in the Bible but in the Tell Amarna tablets, and in the later inscriptions of Sennacherib.[61] If any Hittites still remained in the south, they were no longer a ruling tribe, though in North Syria and Cappadocia they were then powerful and independent. The Philistines were loyal to Egypt, but they do not appear to have had any power in the mountains till four centuries later, and the loyalty of the Amorite kings of Jerusalem and Gezer was much suspected by the Pharaohs. [Sidenote: THE AMORITES] About the middle of the reign of Amenophis III. a rebellion broke out in Syria.[62] Hittites and Amorites invaded Phœnicia, attacked Damascus, and spread in Bashan, shortly before the time when Israel appeared in Moab according to the Bible chronology. Amenophis was, however, allied with the Kassite ruler of Babylon, and with the Armenian and Cappadocian monarchs of the same Mongoloid race. He sent soldiers to Gebal, and the Cappadocians subdued the Amorites. Some twenty years later, Amenophis IV. (son of Amenophis III.) having begun his unfortunate reign, another more formidable revolt occurred. The friendly Armenian king Dusratta had died, and Aziru the Amorite had deserted his obedience, allying himself with the Hittite suzerain of Cappadocia. The Amorites conquered Phœnicia, and Egypt was powerless to aid its Syrian subjects. The hatred of the memory of Amenophis IV., shown in later times, was perhaps due to his loss of the empire rather than to his worship of Asiatic gods, who had been adored in Egypt in the time of his father also; for,[63] like his father, he is addressed by the Asiatic kings as a worshipper of the Egyptian god Amen, and texts from the Egyptian ritual occur on his coffin. [Sidenote: THE ABIRI]