Mountains” can only be identified with the Taurus, where silver mines were worked in antiquity.  The reference to Iarmuti is interesting, for it is clearly the same place as Iarimuta or Iarimmuta, of which we find mention in the Tell el-Amarna letters.  From the references to this district in the letters of Rib-Adda, governor of Byblos, we may infer that it was a level district on the coast, capable of producing a considerable quantity of grain for export, and that it was under Egyptian control at the time of Amenophis IV.  Hitherto its position has been conjecturally placed in the Nile Delta, but from Sargon’s reference we must probably seek it on the North Syrian or possibly the Cilician coast.  Perhaps, as Dr. Poebel suggests, it was the plain of Antioch, along the lower course and at the mouth of the Orontes.  But his further suggestion that the term is used by Sargon for the whole stretch of country between the sea and the Euphrates is hardly probable.  For the geographical references need not be treated as exhaustive, but as confined to the more important districts through which the expedition passed.  The district of Ibla which is also mentioned by Naram-Sin and Gudea, lay probably to the north of Iarmuti, perhaps on the southern slopes of Taurus.  It, too, we may regard as a district of restricted extent rather than as a general geographical term for the extreme north of Syria.

     (1) Thureau-Dangin, Les inscriptions de Sumer de d’Akkad,
     p. 108 f., Statue B, col. v. 1. 28; Germ. ed., p. 68 f.

It is significant that Sargon does not allude to any battle when describing this expedition, nor does he claim to have devastated the western countries.(1) Indeed, most of these early expeditions to the west appear to have been inspired by motives of commercial enterprise rather than of conquest.  But increase of wealth was naturally followed by political expansion, and Egypt’s dream of an Asiatic empire was realized by Pharaohs of the XVIIIth Dynasty.  The fact that Babylonian should then have been adopted as the medium of official intercourse in Syria points to the closeness of the commercial ties which had already united the Euphrates Valley with the west.  Egyptian control had passed from Canaan at the time of the Hebrew settlement, which was indeed a comparatively late episode in the early history of Syria.  Whether or not we identify the Khabiri with the Hebrews, the character of the latter’s incursion is strikingly illustrated by some of the Tell el-Amarna letters.  We see a nomad folk pressing in upon settled peoples and gaining a foothold here and there.(2)

(1) In some versions of his new records Sargon states that “5,400 men daily eat bread before him” (see Poebel, op. cit., p. 178); though the figure may be intended to convey an idea of the size of Sargon’s court, we may perhaps see in it a not inaccurate estimate of the total strength of his armed forces.

     (2) See especially Professor Burney’s forthcoming commentary
     on Judges (passim), and his forthcoming Schweich Lectures
     (now delivered, in 1917).