The Syrian Town of Katna and the Kingdom of Mitanni

Extract

The name of the Syrian town of Katna is first met with in the El-Amarna Tablets, a collection of 300 letters written in Babylonian and found in 1887 at El Amarna in Upper Egypt. These letters were addressed by the princes of Palestine and Syria to their allies or suzerains, the Pharaohs Amenophis 111 and Amenophis IV, in the first half of the fourteenth century. Four or five of these letters of El Amarna were actually written from Katna itself. They show us the Prince Akizzi expressing to the Pharaoh Amenophis 111 his feelings of loyalty, and at the same time asking his help against the Hittites, who then occupied a large expanse of territory in the north of Syria, thus threatening the Valley of the Orontes.