* The site of Alasia, Alashia, was determined from the Tel el-Amarna tablets by Maspero.  Niebuhr had placed it to the west of Cilicia, opposite the island of Eleousa mentioned by Strabo.  Conder connected it with the scriptural Elishah, and W. Max Millier confounds it with Asi or Cyprus.

On the right, between the Orontes and the Balikh, extended the land of rivers, Naharaim.  Towns had grown up here thickly,—­on the sides of the torrents from the Amanos, along the banks of rivers, near springs or wells—­wherever, in fact, the presence of water made culture possible.  The fragments of the Egyptian chronicles which have come down to us number these towns by the hundred,* and yet of how many more must the records have perished with the crumbling Theban walls upon which the Pharaohs had their names incised!  Khalabu was the Aleppo of our own day,** and grouped around it lay Turmanuna, Tunipa, Zarabu, Nii, Durbaniti, Nirabu, Sarmata,*** and a score of others which depended upon it, or upon one of its rivals.  The boundaries of this portion of the Lower Lotanu have come down to us in a singularly indefinite form, and they must also, moreover, have been subject to continual modifications from the results of tribal conflicts.

     * Two hundred and thirty names belonging to Naharaim are
     still legible on the lists of Thutmosis III., and a hundred
     others have been effaced from the monument.

     ** Khalabu was identified by Chabas with Khalybon, the
     modern Aleppo, and his opinion has been adopted by most
     Egyptologists.

*** Tunipa has been found in Tennib, Tinnab, by Noldoke; Zarabu in Zarbi, and Sarmata in Sarmeda, by Tomkins; Durbaniti in Deir el-Banat, the Castrum Puellarum of the chroniclers of the Crusades; Nirabu in Nirab, and Tirabu in Tereb, now el-Athrib.  Nirab is mentioned by Nicholas of Damascus.  Nii, long confounded with Nineveh, was identified by Lenormant with Ninus Vetus, Membidj, and by Max Millier with Balis on the Euphrates:  I am inclined to make it Kefer- Naya, between Aleppo and Turmanin.

[Illustration:  208.jpg Map]

We are at a loss to know whether the various principalities were accustomed to submit to the leadership of a single individual, or whether we are to relegate to the region of popular fancy that Lord of Naharaim of whom the Egyptian scribes made such a hero in their fantastic narratives.*

* In the “Story of the Predestined Prince” the heroine is daughter of the Prince of Naharaim, who seems to exercise authority over all the chiefs of the country; as the manuscript does not date back further than the XXth dynasty, we are justified in supposing that the Egyptian writer had a knowledge of the Hittite domination, during which the King of the Khati was actually the ruler of all Naharaim.

Carchemish represented in this region the position occupied by Megiddo in relation to Kharu, and by Qodshu among the Amorites; that is to say, it was the citadel and sanctuary of the surrounding country.  Whoever could make himself master of it would have the whole country at his feet.