Nakhai we may have the Sirbonian lake of classical celebrity.

There still remain two allusions in the papyrus which must not be passed
over in silence. One is the allusion to "Qazairnai, the lord of Asel,"
the famous slayer of lions. We know nothing further about this Nimrod of
Syria, but Professor Maspero is doubtless right in believing that Asel
ought to be written Alsa, and that the country meant was the kingdom of
Alasiya, which lay in the northern portion of Coele-Syria. Several
letters from the king of Alasiya are preserved in the Tel el-Amarna
collection, and we gather from them that his possessions extended across
the Orontes from the desert to the Mediterranean Sea. Egyptian papyri
tell us that mares were imported into Egypt from Alasiya as well as two
different kinds of liquor. In the age of Samuel and Saul Alasiya was
governed by a queen.

The second allusion is to the ironsmith in Canaan. It is clear that
there were many of them, and that it was to the worker in iron and not
to the worker in bronze that the traveller naturally turned when his
chariot needed mending. Even the word that is employed to denote the
metal is the Canaanitish _barzel_, which has been adopted under the form
of _parzal_. Nothing could show more plainly how characteristic of
Canaan the trade of the ironsmith must have been, and how largely the
use of iron must have there superseded the use of bronze. The fact is in
accordance with the references in the annals of Thothmes III. to the
iron that was received by him from Syria; it is also in accordance with
the statements of the Bible, where we read of the "chariots of iron" in
which the Canaanites rode to war. Indeed there seems to have been a
special class of wandering ironsmiths in Palestine, like the wandering
ironsmiths of mediæval Europe, who jealously guarded the secrets of
their trade, and formed not only a peculiar caste, but even a peculiar