ABSTRACT
The 2nd millennium BC saw the first appearance of states and empires based in Anatolia and western Syria. What began as a network of culturally diverse city-states and territorial states linked by active overland trade routes in the Middle Bronze Age ([MBA] c. 2000–1600 BC) developed into true imperial polities in the Late Bronze Age ([LBA] c. 1600–1200 BC) that rivalled the power of the long-established kingdoms of Mesopotamia and Egypt (Akkermans and Schwartz 2003: 327). 1 Tell Atchana, site of the ancient city of Alalakh and capital of the small kingdom of Mukish, was culturally and at times politically affiliated with the kingdoms of Ebla and Yamhad in north-western Syria from its founding around 2200 BC until the end of the MBA when the expanding kingdoms of Hatti, Mitanni and Egypt began to change the sociopolitical landscape of the Levant in the LBA (Akkermans and Schwartz 2003: 326; Yener 2010: 2).
