The victory at Hazor seems to have been his last. Hazor stood near Kadesh of Galilee, now represented by the ruins of Qedes, to the north of Safed, and on the western side of the marshes of Hûleh, the Lake Merom of the Old Testament.[265] In the age of the Tel el-Amarna letters it was still governed by its native kings, and in one of them an Egyptian officer complains that the king had joined with Sidon in intriguing with the Bedâwin.[266] When the Israelites entered Palestine it was the leading city of the northern part of the country. While Megiddo was the capital of the centre of the country, Hazor was the capital of the north. Its king, Jabin, now put himself at the head of a great confederacy which extended from Sidon to Dor on the sea-coast, and from the slopes of Hermon to the Sea of Galilee in the inland region. Among the confederates history remembered the names of Jobab, the king of Madon, and the kings of Shimron and Achshaph. Achshaph is the Phœnician Ekdippa, now Zîb, on the sea-coast, which is called Aksap by Thothmes III. But Madon is written Marôn in the Septuagint, though the reading of the Hebrew text seems to be confirmed by the modern name of Khurbet Madîn, ‘the ruins of Madîn.’ Shimron, moreover, is Symoôn in the Septuagint, and this form of the name finds support in the Simônias of Josephus, Simonia in the Talmud, now Semûnieh, sixteen miles from Khurbet Madîn. Mr. Tomkins would identify it with the Shmânau of Thothmes III.[267] But, again, the reading of the Hebrew text is probably the more correct. In what may be termed the official list of Joshua’s victories (Josh. xii. 20), the name appears as Shimronmeron, and this reminds us of Samsi-muruna (‘the Sun-god is lord’), which is given by the Assyrian inscriptions as the name of a town in this very neighbourhood. It was from ‘Menahem, king of Samsi-muruna,’ that Sennacherib received tribute during his campaign against Hezekiah, and it is possible that Shimron may be a contracted form of Shem[esh-me]ron or Sam[si-mu]runa. Once more criticism has raised doubts as to the truth of the narrative. We hear of another Jabin of Hazor, at a later date, in the time of Deborah and Barak, and we hear also of another great victory gained by Israel over Jabin’s troops. It is urged that if Hazor had been burnt to the ground by Joshua, and all its inhabitants put to the sword, it could hardly have risen so soon again from its ashes and have assumed a leading position in the north. Had Joshua’s conquest been as complete as it is represented to have been, the country would have been Israelitish, and not Canaanite.