Biryawaza was king of Damascus in the mid fourteenth century BCE. In the Amarna letters, he was ordered by his Egyptian overlords to take armed action against Labaya's sons (EA 250). Damascus by night, pictured from Jabal Qasioun; the green spots are minarets Damascus (Arabic: ‎ translit: Also commonly: الشام ash-Shām) is the capital and largest city of Syria. ... One of the Amarna letters The designation Amarna letters denotes an archive of correspondence, mostly diplomatic, between the Egyptian administration and its representatives in Canaan and Amurru. ... Labaya (also transliterated as Labayu or Libayu) was a Canaanite warlord who lived about contemporaneously with Pharaoh Akhenaten (14th century BCE). ...

The name Biryawaza is Indo-European in origin. Biryawaza may have been of an Indo-European maryannu caste similar to that which ruled the Mitanni and later, the Hittites. The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred languages and dialects (443 according to the SIL estimate), including most of the major languages of Europe, as well as many in Southwest Asia, Central Asia and Southern Asia. ... Mitanni or Mittani (in Assyrian sources Hanilgalbat, Khanigalbat) was a Hurrian kingdom in northern Syria during the later 2nd millennium BC. The name was later used as a geographical term for the area between the Khabur and Euphrates rivers in Neo-Assyrian times. ... Relief of Suppiluliuma II, last known king of the Hittite Empire Hittites is the conventional English-language term for an ancient people who spoke an Indo-European language and established a kingdom centered in Hattusa (Hittite URU) in north-central Anatolia from the 18th century BC. In the 14th century...