The Amarna Letters

Lore & Background

The Amarna Letters are an archive of clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform script, the writing system of ancient Mesopotamia, rather than the language of ancient Egypt. They were discovered in Upper Egypt at the site of el-Amarna, the modern name for the ancient capital Akhetaten, which was founded by Pharaoh Akhenaten during the Eighteenth Dynasty. The tablets primarily contain diplomatic correspondence between the Egyptian administration and its representatives in Canaan and Amurru, as well as neighboring kingdom leaders, spanning no more than thirty years in the mid-14th century BC. Most are written in a variety of Akkadian, sometimes described as a mixed language known as Canaanite-Akkadian, while one long letter (EA 24) is in a late dialect of Hurrian, making it the longest surviving text in that language. The archive totals 382 known tablets and fragments, of which 350 are letters; the rest are literary and school texts. Only 26 tablets were found in their original archaeological context, within a building designated Q42.21. The letters were originally stored in an ancient structure archaeologists call the Bureau of Correspondence of Pharaoh. They were first uncovered around 1887 by local Egyptians who secretly dug them from the ruined city and sold them on the antiquities market. Subsequent excavations by Flinders Petrie in 1891–1892 recovered 21 fragments, and Émile Chassinat acquired two more in 1903. The initial group of letters is now scattered across museums in Germany, the United Kingdom, Egypt, France, Russia, and the United States. The archive provides insight into Egyptian relations with Babylonia, Assyria, Syria, Canaan, Alashiya (Cyprus), Mitanni, and the Hittites, and includes the first mention of the Habiru, a group whose possible connection to the Hebrews remains debated.

Reader's Guide

The Amarna letters are a crucial primary source for the history and chronology of the mid-14th century BC Near East. They provide a wealth of information about cultures, kingdoms, events, and individuals from a period with few written sources. The correspondence covers Egyptian relations with Babylonia, Assyria, Syria, Canaan, Alashiya (Cyprus), Mitanni, and the Hittites. Letters from the Babylonian king Kadashman-Enlil I anchor the timeframe of Akhenaten's reign. The archive also contains the first mention of the Habiru, a group whose possible connection with the Hebrews remains debated. The letters include requests for military help against Hittite invaders and the Habiru, and feature rulers such as Tushratta of Mitanni, Lib'ayu of Shechem, Abdi-Heba of Jerusalem, and Rib-Hadda of Byblos. The letters are politically arranged in a rough counterclockwise fashion, covering Babylonia, Assyria, Mitanni, Arzawa, Alashiya, Hatti, and Syria/Lebanon/Canaan.

Did You Know?

• One letter, EA 24, is written in a late dialect of Hurrian and is the longest contiguous text known to survive in that language.
• Only 26 of the known tablets and fragments were found in their archaeological context, Building Q42.21.
• The Akkadian of the letters is heavily colored by the mother tongue of their writers, who probably spoke an early form of Proto-Canaanite.