Alašiya of the Amarna Letters

It will soon be 70 years since the first arguments were presented concerning the geographical location of the ancient kingdom or city-state of Alasiya.References to Alasiya have come to light in Akkadian, Ugaritic, Hittite and Egyptian texts, and from such diverse locations as Ras Shamra, Alalakh, Boghazkoy, Mari, Karnak, and Tell el-Amarna.The dating of these various texts covers a span from the 18th-12th centuries.The failure of scholars to agree on where Alasiya is to be located is not singular among issues of place-names, but the controversy continues to be more active than most.We shall not review the defenses for the different positions.In reading these, we are not necessarily left neutral, but we think it presumptuous to enter into a controversy in which scholars have arrived at conclusions which are diametrically opposed.It is enough for our purposes to point out the central issue which pertains to the present report.One thesis l argues that Alasiya was on Cyprus (or was synonymous with Cyprus); the other, that Alasiya was not on Cyprus but rather was located in the general area of the 2 north Syrian coast.This report is concerned with two of the Amarna letters numbered 29788 and 29789 from the British Museum, which we sampled with the kind permission of Dr. Richard Barnett, the keeper of the Asiatic Department.Both tablets contain the title of the king of Alasiya, LUGAL KUR a-la-si-ya; they were