Is Cyprus Ancient Alashiya? New Evidence from an Egyptian TabletAuthor(s): Shelley WachsmannSource: The Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. 49, No. 1 (Mar., 1986), pp. 37-40Published by: The American Schools of Oriental ResearchStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3209980 .

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Map showing Amanmasha's projected route from Byblos to el-Amarna via Alashiya (probably ancient Cyprus). Amanmasha is the messenger described in the el-Amarna tablet 114.

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Many ancient stone anchors are under the water along Israel's Mediterranean coast. It has been said that "lost stone anchors, like clues in a paper-chase, both mark the sea-lanes of antiquity and hint at the navigational habits of ancient seafarers" (Frost 1973: 399). One such anchor is shown here in situ on the seabed at Dor.

ne of the most absorbing, and often perplex- ing, areas in the study of the ancient Near East is that of historical geography.' Ancient texts mention numerous lands, cities, and

other geographic entities. It has been possible to identify and locate many of these (with varying degrees of cer- tainty), yet others remain elusive. We know that they existed but their locations remain problematic.

Few place-names have been the cause of so much scholarly study and argument as that of Alashiya. This site is mentioned in a number of second-millennium texts from Egypt, Ugarit, Mari, Alalakh, and Boghazkoy. The scholarly debate over the location of Alashiya began in 1895 when Max M~iller first identified the ancient site with

Cyprus.2 It is generally agreed that Alashiya was located some- where in the northeastern region of the Mediterranean Sea basin but its precise identification varies from Cilicia in southern Turkey to north Syria and back to Cyprus.

The literature dealing with this problem is volumi- nous. The purpose of this paper is to discuss one specific text whose significance for the location of Alashiya appears to have been overlooked in the past.

el-Amarna Tablet 114 In el-Amarna text number 114 Rib Addi, the much em- battled king of Byblos who lived in the fourteenth cen-

tury B.C., complains to the Egyptian pharaoh of his pre- carious situation. According to Rib Addi, the sea route along the coast is held by his mortal enemy, Aziru. Rib Addi's ships are in danger of being captured:

May the King, my Lord, be apprised that Aziru is hostile to me and has seized twelve of my people, and has placed a ransom between us of fifty (shekels) of silver. And the people whom I had sent to Sumura, he seized in Yaclia. The ships of the people of TY[re], Beruta (and) Sidon are all in Amurru.

(lines 6-14) Following this Rib Addi writes:

And, behold, now Iapac-Addi has become hostile to me, in league with

Aziru. And he has actually seized one of my ships and, behold, thus he is sailing forth upon the sea in order to capture my (other) ships.

(lines 15-20) The land routes are also closed to Rib Addi:

Now, [erased personal name] m[y] messenger I have sent again and again. How many days (times) have I sent him without his being able

BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST/MARCH 1986 37

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to enter into Sumura? All roads are cut off to him.

(lines 32-38) Near the end of the letter Rib Addi emphasizes his isola- tion by reminding the pharaoh that he had to send the messenger, Amanmasha, to Egypt by way of Alashiya:

Under the circumstances it goes very badly with me. Here is, the other, Amanmasha. Ask him if I did not send him (via) Alashiya to thee.

(lines 49-53) Another el-Amarna text (number 113, lines 35-44)

mentions that a person named Amanmasha had been stationed in Byblos. The last lines in text 114 raise the question of why Rib Addi considered this information supportive of his claim of distress and request for assis- tance from the pharaoh.

Holmes (1969: 159) has correctly noted that in this text Rib Addi implies that things are going so badly for him that in order to send Amanmasha home to Egypt, he had to dispatch him by a route different from the normal coastal route between Byblos and Egypt. It is possible, however, to take this reasoning one step further: If Alashiya was located north of Byblos (either in the Syrian littoral or in Cilicia), then Rib Addi's strategy would be totally incomprehensible. Not only would Amanmasha be sail- ing in a direction exactly opposite to his destination, but this would also require him to sail along the Syrian coast -precisely the area that Rib Addi wanted the ship to avoid. If Alashiya, however, is to be identified as Cyprus or part of Cyprus, then Rib Addi's actions make perfect sense.

To avoid enemy ships lurking along the coast, Aman- masha's vessel sailed west-northwest, striking out across the open sea from Byblos to Cyprus and from there, with the aid of the predominantly northwestern winds, to Egypt (Casson 1971: 272).

Thus, on the basis of this admittedly circumstantial evidence, it seems necessary to locate Alashiya in Cyprus. The question as to whether the toponym defined all or only part of the island, however, remains.

Wenamon's escape from the Sekels Robert R. Stieglitz has suggested to me that a parallel to Rib Addi's action may be found in the Egyptian tale of Wenamon (Goedicke 1975: 115-29).

Wenamon, a priest of the Egyptian god Amon, was sent to Byblos around 1100 B.c. with the mission of bring- ing back timber for the holy barque of Amon at Karnak. While his ship was anchored at the city of Dor on the first part of the journey to Byblos from Egypt, the gold and silver that he had brought to pay for the timber was stolen. Subsequently, Wenamon stole back part of his losses from a ship belonging to the Sekels (a group of the Sea Peoples) of Dor.

Rare scenes showing the way stone anchors were raised are depicted on two Cypriote jugs from the seventh century B.c. The anchor's rope was passed through a ring at the top of the mast or apparently along the yard. This primitive device for raising the anchor may have been the reason some anchors were left on the seabed: If the seas were high and, for whatever reason, the ship had to leave its place of mooring, a captain would probably cut the rope and leave the anchor rather than raise it and have a stone weighing several hundred kilograms sway- ing precariously over his fragile hull. Drawings are after Karageorghis and des Gagniers 1974.

The small fisherman's port of Gebail (the ancient site of Byblos). Photo- graph by David Frank, ? Department of Antiquities and Museums, Ministry of Education and Culture, State of Israel.

38 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST/MARCH 1986

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Syrian merchant ships arriving at an Egyptian port are depicted in this drawing of a painting from the tomb of Kenamun at Thebes (dating to the reign of Amenhotep III, 1405-1367 B.c.). This is the most detailed representation of Syrian seagoing vessels from the Late Bronze Age.

Later, after many trials and tribulations, when Wena- mon was finally prepared to sail from Byblos with his timber, eleven Sekel ships arrived to capture Wenamon's ships. Sakar Baal, the king of Byblos, showed Wenamon a peculiar, yet well-known, type of Middle Eastern hos- pitality-he refused to let the Sekels molest Wenamon as long as he was anchored in the king's harbor-but sug- gested to the Sekels that they pursue Wenamon once he left it.

When Wenamon left Byblos, he mentions that the winds drove him to Alashiya. Apparently, in this manner, he managed to avoid the lurking Sekel ships that had expected him to take the normal coastal route to Egypt. In doing this, whether intentionally or due to a storm that drove him off course to Alashiya, Wenamon avoided a hostile coastal course in the same manner that Aman- masha had done some two and a half centuries earlier. He was eventually able to return safely to Egypt.

Conclusion Although information given in el-Amarna tablet 114 and the tale of Wenamon support the identification of Cyprus with ancient Alashiya, there are admittedly several re- maining problems, not the least of which is that no epigraphic evidence connecting Alashiya with Cyprus has yet been discovered on the island. Until more evidence is developed, the identification cannot be conclusive.

Acknowledgments I have had the good fortune of being able to discuss the Alashiya problem with two of its leading protagonists- Dr. Robert S. Merrillees and Professor James D. Muhly. I also want to thank Professor Trude Dothan for her valu- able comments; Professor Anson Rainey for very kindly retranslating the lines of el-Amarna text 114, which is quoted in this paper; and Dr. Robert Stieglitz for bringing to my attention the relevance of Wenamon's escape from the Sekels.

Notes 'For a general introduction to the study of toponomy see

Aharoni 1967: 94-117. 2Literature on the subject is extensive. For basic summaries

for and against the Alashiya/Cyprus equation see Merrillees 1972 and Muhly 1972 and more recently Hellbing 1979.

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Frost, H. 1963a From Rope to Chain: on the development of the anchor in the

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