Pihuri

Last updated May 02, 2019

Pakhura (Pihu) was an Egyptian commissioner in the "Land of Retenu" (Canaan) mentioned in the Amarna letters. He probably served under Pharaoh Amenhotep III and/or Akhenaten. In EA 122, Rib-Hadda, king of Byblos, complained of an attack by Pakhura, who killed a number of Byblos' Shardana mercenaries and took captive three of Rib-Hadda's men.

Ancient Egypt was a civilization of ancient North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in the place that is now the country Egypt. Ancient Egyptian civilization followed prehistoric Egypt and coalesced around 3100 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under Menes. The history of ancient Egypt occurred as a series of stable kingdoms, separated by periods of relative instability known as Intermediate Periods: the Old Kingdom of the Early Bronze Age, the Middle Kingdom of the Middle Bronze Age and the New Kingdom of the Late Bronze Age.

Canaan was a Semitic-speaking region in the Ancient Near East during the late 2nd millennium BC. The name Canaan appears throughout the Bible, where it corresponds to the Levant, in particular to the areas of the Southern Levant that provide the main setting of the narrative of the Bible: Phoenicia, Philistia, Israel, and other nations.

The Amarna letters are an archive, written on clay tablets, primarily consisting of diplomatic correspondence between the Egyptian administration and its representatives in Canaan and Amurru during the New Kingdom, between c. 1360-1332 BC. The letters were found in Upper Egypt at el-Amarna, the modern name for the ancient Egyptian capital of Akhetaten, founded by pharaoh Akhenaten during the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt. The Amarna letters are unusual in Egyptological research, because they are mostly written in a script known as Akkadian cuneiform, the writing system of ancient Mesopotamia, rather than that of ancient Egypt, and the language used has sometimes been characterised as a mixed language, Canaanite-Akkadian. The written correspondence spans a period of at most thirty years.

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The land of Subartu or Subar is mentioned in Bronze Age literature. The name also appears as Subari in the Amarna letters, and, in the form Šbr, in Ugarit.

Rib-Hadda was king of Byblos during the mid fourteenth century BCE. He is the author of some sixty of the Amarna letters all to Akhenaten. His name is Akkadian in form and may invoke the Northwest Semitic god Hadad, though his letters invoke only Ba'alat Gubla, the "Lady of Byblos".

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Abdi-Ashirta was the ruler of Amurru who was in conflict with King Rib-Hadda of Byblos.

This is a list of the "Amarna letters" –Text corpus, categorized by: Amarna letters–localities and their rulers. It includes countries, regions, and the cities/or 'city-states' . The regions are included in Canaan and the Levant.
EA: 'el Amarna' –(Akhenaten's capitol of Akhetaten).

Pahura, and also spelled Pihur/Pihuru, Pihura, and Pihuru/Pihure was a commissioner of the 1350 BC Amarna letters correspondence. Pahura's name means in Egyptian, ' the Syrian ' , and he was commissioner to the Egyptian pharaoh.

Yanhamu, also Yenhamu, and Enhamu, was an Egyptian commissioner of the 1350-1335 BC Amarna letters correspondence.

Yapa-Hadda, also Yapah-Hadda, was the mayor/ruler of Biruta-(Beirut) of the 1350-1335 BC Amarna letters correspondence.

Amanmašša is the name of an Egyptian official, but probably two separate officials-(?), in the |1350-1335 BC Amarna letters correspondence. The Egyptian form of his name is Amenmose, which means "Amun-born".

Haapi, also Haip and Ha'ip was a commissioner of the 1350-1335 BC Amarna letters correspondence. The name "Hapi" in Egyptian is the name for the Nile god Hapi.

Ili-Rapih was the follow-on mayor in Gubla-(modern Byblos), and the brother of Rib-Hadda, the former mayor of Gubla, ; Ili-Rapih is in the 1350-1335 BC Amarna letters correspondence, and wrote 2 follow-on letters to the Pharaoh after the death of Rib-Haddi.

Irimayašša, or Iriyamašša was an Egyptian official, of the 1350-1335 BC Amarna letters correspondence, written from a 15-20 year time period. The 2 letters that reference him are regarding Byblos/Gubla, and Ashkelon/(Ašqaluna), in western and southwestern Canaan.

The Salhi is a region/city-state in the vicinity of Ugarit during the 15-20 year Amarna letters correspondence of 1350-1335 BC.

Amarna letter EA 362, titled: "A Commissioner Murdered," is a finely-inscribed clay tablet letter from Rib-Haddi, the mayor/'man' of the city of Byblos,. Byblos, being a large coastal seaport Mediterranean city, was a city that was aligned with Egypt (Miṣri), and housed an Egyptian community. Rib-Haddi, as the city-state leader wrote the largest number of letters to the Pharaoh, in a sub-corpus of the 1350 BC Amarna letters.

Amarna letter EA 75, titled: "Political Chaos" is a short to moderate length letter from Rib-Hadda, who wrote the largest number of Amarna letters in a sub-corpus, from the city-state of Byblos; Byblos contained an Ancient Egyptian colony, and was aligned with a few neighboring townsites.

References

I. E. S. Edwards, C. J. Gadd, N. G. L. Hammond, E. Sollberger, eds., The Cambridge Ancient History, Cambridge University Press 1973
Epiphanius Wilson, Egyptian Literature, The Colonial Press 1901, p.212
Charles Francis Horne, The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, Kessinger Publishing 2001, p.288

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