In his letters, as everywhere else in the Tel el-Amarna correspondence, the Babylonians are called Kassi or Kassites.  The name is written differently in the cuneiform texts from that of the Ethiopians, the Kash of the hieroglyphic inscriptions.  Both, however, are alike represented in Hebrew by Cush, and hence we have not only a Cush who is the brother of Mizrairn, but also another Cush who is the father of Nimrod.  The name of the latter takes us back to the age of the Tel el-Amarna tablets.

Nahrima, or Naharaim, was the name by which the kingdom of Mitanni was known to its Canaanite and Egyptian neighbours.  Mitanni, in fact, was its capital, and it may be that Lutennu (or Lotan), as the Egyptians called Syria and Palestine, was but a mispronunciation of it.  Along with the Babylonians the people of Naharaim had made themselves formidable to the inhabitants of Canaan, and their name was feared as far south as Jerusalem.  Even the governor of the Canaanite town of Musikhuna, not far from the Sea of Galilee, bore the Mitannian name of Sutarna.  It was not, indeed, until after the Israelitish conquest that the last invasion of Canaan by a king of Aram-Naharaim took place.

Gaza and Joppa were at one time under the same governor, Yabitiri, who in a letter which has come down to us asks to be relieved of the burden of his office.  Ashkelon, however, which lay between the two sea-ports, was in the hands of another prefect, Yidya by name, from whom we have several letters, in one of which mention is made of the Egyptian commissioner Rianap, or Ra-nofer.  The jurisdiction of Rianap extended as far north as the plain of Megiddo, since he is also referred to by Pu-Hadad, the governor of Yurza, now Yerzeh, south-eastward of Taanach.  But it was more particularly in the extreme south of Palestine that the duties of this officer lay.  Hadad-dan, who was entrusted with the government of Manahath and Tamar, to the west of the Dead Sea, calls him “my Commissioner” in a letter in which he complains of the conduct of a certain Beya, the son of “the woman Gulat.”  Hadad-dan begins by saying that he had protected the commissioner and cities of the king, and then adds that “the city of Tumur is hostile to me, and I have built a house in the city of Mankhate, so that the household troops of the king my lord may be sent to me; and lo, Baya has taken it from my hand, and has placed his commissioner in it, and I have appealed to Rianap, my commissioner, and he has restored the city unto me, and has sent the household troops of the king my lord to me.”  After this the writer goes on to state that Beya had also intrigued against the city of Gezer, “the handmaid of the king my lord who created me.”  The rebel then carried off a quantity of plunder, and it became necessary to ransom his prisoners for a hundred pieces of silver, while those of his confederate were ransomed for thirty pieces of silver.