Damien Mackey:
Yes ... I love alter egos. Presuming that they have some substance to them.
I believe that one of Velikovsky's really rock solid achievements was to identify the two EA Amurru kings with biblical Ben-Hadad I and Hazael.
The Glasgow School (when the British revisionists were really getting somewhere, but then unfortunately 'died') considered this to be a compellingly firm foundation (with Dr. Bimson even extending it to include the later Ben-Hadad as well).
I made this one of the very bases of my postgrad. thesis.
And I extended Abdi-ashirta (= Ben-Hadad I, a la Velikovsky) to equate to Mitannian Tushratta (= Abdu-ashratta). After all, we can't have two potent kings, perfectly contemporaneous according to the experts, running riot over the same territories and never clashing, now can we?
Why?
Because it is the one and the same Syro-Mitannian king.
Tushratta's access to the statue of Ishtar at Nineveh made him then possibly also the formidable Ashurnasirpal II, considering that Mitannian territory also encroached on Assyria.
This Ben Hadad I was an absolute master king, with 32 other kings in train. Way bigger than Hammurabi (Solomon) and Iarim-Lim (Hiram). His army was 120,000 strong, the same as Shalmaneser III's.
Now, isn't that interesting?
Rib-Addi complained that he (as Abdi-ashirta) was an aspiring king of Mitanni and Kasse. I believe that he ultimately mastered all of these.
....
