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This paper sets out to combine the textual evidence from the Amarna letters with the archaeological evidence from the Uluburun shipwreck. The latter was most probably a Levantine vessel carrying an extraordinary quantity of commodities and prestige objects from Egypt and the Near East to a major palatial centre in the Aegean. Most of the scholarship has therefore taken the view that it represents an exchange of the same type as those described in the Amarna letters, and that the Aegean world should be inserted in the same system of diplomacy and gift exchange as the Near Eastern polities. What this scholarship has failed to acknowledge, however, is the fact that the Amarna letters do not contain a single mention of the Aegean. This paper, therefore, addresses this significant discrepancy between the textual and the archaeological evidence and argues that the texts and the shipwreck may be part of two different phenomena. All Subject Expand Expand
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Interdisciplinary Studies Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences Regional and Area Studies The Amarna letters (/əˈmɑːrnə/; sometimes referred to as the Amarna correspondence or Amarna tablets, and cited with the abbreviation EA, for "El Amarna") are an archive, written on clay tablets, primarily consisting of diplomatic correspondence between the Egyptian administration and its representatives in Canaan and Amurru, or neighboring kingdom leaders, during the New Kingdom, spanning a period of no more than thirty years between c. 1360–1332 BC (see here for dates).[1] The letters were found in Upper Egypt at el-Amarna, the modern name for the ancient Egyptian capital of Akhetaten, founded by pharaoh Akhenaten (1350s–1330s BC) during the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. The Amarna letters are unusual in Egyptological research, because they are written not in the language of ancient Egypt, but in cuneiform, the writing system of ancient Mesopotamia. Most are in a variety of Akkadian sometimes characterised as a mixed language, Canaanite-Akkadian;[2] one especially long letter—abbreviated EA 24—was written in a late dialect of Hurrian, and is the longest contiguous text known to survive in that language.
The known tablets total 382, of which 358 have been published by the Norwegian Assyriologist Jørgen Alexander Knudtzon in his work, Die El-Amarna-Tafeln, which came out in two volumes (1907 and 1915) and remains the standard edition to this day.[2][3] The texts of the remaining 24 complete or fragmentary tablets excavated since Knudtzon have also been made available.[2] The Amarna letters are of great significance for biblical studies as well as Semitic linguistics because they shed light on the culture and language of the Canaanite peoples in this time period. Though most are written in Akkadian, the Akkadian of the letters is heavily colored by the mother tongue of their writers, who probably spoke an early form of Proto-Canaanite, the language(s) which would later evolve into the daughter languages of Hebrew and Phoenician. These "Canaanisms" provide valuable insights into the proto-stage of those languages several centuries prior to their first actual manifestation.[4][5] Amarna letter EA 153 from Abimilku. These letters, comprising cuneiform tablets written primarily in Akkadian – the regional language of diplomacy for this period – were first discovered around 1887 by local Egyptians who secretly dug most of them from the ruined city of Amarna, and sold them in the antiquities market. They had originally been stored in an ancient building that archaeologists have since called the Bureau of Correspondence of Pharaoh. Once the location where they were found was determined, the ruins were explored for more. The first archaeologist who successfully recovered more tablets was Flinders Petrie, who in 1891 and 1892 uncovered 21 fragments. Émile Chassinat, then director of the French Institute for Oriental Archaeology in Cairo, acquired two more tablets in 1903. Since Knudtzon's edition, some 24 more tablets, or fragments, have been found, either in Egypt, or identified in the collections of various museums.[6] The initial group of letters recovered by local Egyptians have been scattered among museums in Germany, England, Egypt, France, Russia, and the United States. Either 202 or 203 tablets are at the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin; 99 are at the British Museum in London;[7] 49 or 50 are at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo; 7 at the Louvre in Paris; 3 at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow; and 1 in the collection of the Oriental Institute in Chicago.[8] A few tablets are at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and Royal Museum of Art and History in Brussels.[9] The archive contains a wealth of information about cultures, kingdoms, events and individuals in a period from which few written sources survive. It includes correspondence from Akhenaten's reign (Akhenaten who was also titled Amenhotep IV), as well as his predecessor Amenhotep III's reign. The tablets consist of over 300 diplomatic letters; the remainder comprise miscellaneous literary and educational materials. These tablets shed much light on Egyptian relations with Babylonia, Assyria, Syria, Canaan, and Alashiya (Cyprus) as well as relations with the Mitanni, and the Hittites. The letters have been important in establishing both the history and the chronology of the period. Letters from the Babylonian king, Kadashman-Enlil I, anchor the timeframe of Akhenaten's reign to the mid-14th century BC. They also contain the first mention of a Near Eastern group known as the Habiru, whose possible connection with the Hebrews—due to the similarity of the words and their geographic location—remains debated. Other rulers involved in the letters include Tushratta of Mitanni, Lib'ayu of Shechem, Abdi-Heba of Jerusalem, and the quarrelsome king, Rib-Hadda, of Byblos, who, in over 58 letters, continuously pleads for Egyptian military help. Specifically, the letters include requests for military help in the north against Hittite invaders, and in the south to fight against the Habiru.[10] Letter summaryMap of the ancient Near East during the Amarna period, showing the great powers of the period: Egypt (green), Mycenaean Greece (orange), Hatti (yellow), the Kassite kingdom of Babylon (purple), Assyria (grey), and Mitanni (red). Lighter areas show direct control, darker areas represent spheres of influence. Amarna Letters are politically arranged in rough counterclockwise fashion:
Amarna Letters from Syria/Lebanon/Canaan are distributed roughly:
Akhenaten and TushrattaEarly in his reign, Akhenaten, the pharaoh of Egypt, had conflicts with Tushratta, the king of Mitanni, who had courted favor with his father, Amenhotep III, against the Hittites. Tushratta complains in numerous letters that Akhenaten had sent him gold-plated statues rather than statues made of solid gold; the statues formed part of the bride-price that Tushratta received for letting his daughter Tadukhepa marry Amenhotep III and then later marry Akhenaten.[11] An Amarna letter preserves a complaint by Tushratta to Akhenaten about the situation:
Note: Many assignments are tentative; spellings vary widely. This is just a guide.[3]
ChronologyWilliam L. Moran summarizes the state of the chronology of these tablets as follows:
From the internal evidence, the earliest possible date for this correspondence is the final decade of the reign of Amenhotep III, who ruled from 1388 to 1351 BC (or 1391 to 1353 BC), possibly as early as this king's 30th regnal year; the latest date any of these letters were written is the desertion of the city of Amarna, commonly believed to have happened in the second year of the reign of Tutankhamun later in the same century in 1332 BC. Moran notes that some scholars believe one tablet, EA 16, may have been addressed to Tutankhamun's successor Ay.[12] However, this speculation appears improbable because the Amarna archives were closed by Year 2 of Tutankhamun, when this king transferred Egypt's capital from Amarna to Thebes. A small number of the Amarna letters are in the class of poetry. An example is EA 153, (EA is for 'el Amarna'). EA 153, entitled: "Ships on hold", from Abimilku of Tyre is a short, 20-line letter. Lines 6–8, and 9-11 are parallel phrases, each ending with "...before the troops of the king, my lord."-('before', then line 8, line 11). Both sentences are identical, and repetitive, with only the subject statement changing. The entire corpus of Amarna letters has many standard phrases. It also has some phrases, and quotations used only once. Some are parables: (EA 252: "...when an ant is pinched (struck), does it not fight back and bite the hand of the man that struck it?"....) Bird in a CageA bird in a cage (Trap)—Rib-Hadda subcorpus of letters. (Rib-Hadda was trapped in Gubla-(Byblos), unable to move freely.)"A brick may move.."A brick may move from under its partner, still I will not move from under the feet of the king, my lord.—Used in letters EA 266, 292, and 296. EA 292 by Adda-danu of Gazru."For the lack of a cultivator..""For the lack of a cultivator, my field is like a woman without a husband."—Rib-Hadda letter EA 75"Hale like the Sun...""And know that the King-(pharaoh) is hale like the Sun in the Sky. For his troops and his chariots in multitude all goes very well...."—See: Endaruta, for the Short Form; See: Milkilu, for a Long Form. Also found in EA 99: entitled: "From the Pharaoh to a vassal". (with addressee damaged)"I looked this way, and I looked...""I looked this way, and I looked that way, and there was no light. Then I looked towards the king, my lord, and there was light."—EA 266 by Tagi (Ginti mayor); EA 296 by Yahtiru."May the Lady of Gubla..""May the Lady of Gubla grant power to the king, my lord."—varieties of the phrase in the Rib-Hadda lettersa pot held in pledgea pot held in pledge—The Pot of a Debt. EA 292 by Adda-danu of Gazru.7 times and 7 times again7 times and 7 times—Over and over again 7 times plus 7—EA 189, See: "Etakkama of Kadesh"(title)-(Qidšu)I fall ... 7 times and 7..."on the back and on the stomach"I fall, at the feet, ... 7 times and 7 times, "on the back and on the stomach"—EA 316, by Pu-Ba'lu, and used in numerous letters to pharaoh. See: Commissioner: Tahmašši.when an ant is struck.."...when an ant is pinched (struck), does it not fight back and bite the hand of the man that struck it?"—A phrase used by Labayu defending his actions of overtaking cities, EA 252. Title: "Sparing one's enemies".Amarna letter EA 15, from Ashur-uballit I; see also Amarna letter EA 153.
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