Like other rulers who wrote to the king of Egypt, Abi-milku and Ashur-uballit sought to achieve specific goals-one practical (i.e., the assurance of safety and protection), the other ideological and status-oriented (i.e., establishing contact with Egypt and acquiring knowledge of the foreign land). Here, Ashur-uballit I indicates that his message is accompanied by gifts of a chariot, two horses, and a carved precious lapis lazuli stone, and requests that his messenger be allowed to visit the king and his country. While most of the so-called great kings of the Amarna Letters could trace contact with Egypt back to their forefathers, the other letter in the Museum’s collection unusually claims to mark the beginning of correspondence between the king of Assyria and the king of Egypt ( 24.2.11). These rulers use terms of equality, referring to the Egyptian king as a “brother,” and discuss the mutual exchange of gifts, including raw materials such as gold from Egypt and lapis lazuli from modern Afghanistan ( 26.7.21) and expertly produced luxury objects ranging in size from small jewelry items to chariots ( 27.6.1), as well as more direct exchanges, such as royal marriages. In both tone and content, these letters differ considerably from those of the Levantine rulers. The second (less common) type comprises letters from rulers who were powerful kings in their own right and controlled large territories such as Babylonia, Assyria, Mitanni, and Hatti. In addition to the many letters sent by Abi-milku of Tyre, the Amarna tablets include letters from the rulers of many Levantine cities from Ugarit in the north to Gaza in the south. One letter in the Museum’s collection from Abi-milku, ruler of the coastal city of Tyre, shows how these Levantine kings depicted themselves as dependent upon their Egyptian overlord ( 24.2.12). These rulers write deferentially to the king (identifying him as “the Sun, my lord,” and referring to themselves as “your servant”) and relate squabbles with other Levantine rulers, list concerns with Egyptian administration, or discuss trade and tribute. The first (more common) type comprises letters written from rulers of cities and small kingdoms in the Levant-an area controlled by Egypt in the New Kingdom period-that were vassals of the Egyptian king. Two types of letters can be distinguished. Letters comprise the majority of the Amarna tablets and have been extensively studied in the modern period by scholars interested in ancient history and international relations. It seems likely that the Amarna Letters were discovered in these buildings, all part of a larger administrative complex located near the royal palace in what is now known as the “Central City” of Amarna.
A few fragments of letters and school texts were excavated in this administrative building, but tablets were also recovered from nearby buildings over the course of various archaeological expeditions. h.” on stamped bricks (also called the “Records Office” in modern scholarship)-as the site of the original discovery. Locals identified a particular building-named “The Place of the Correspondence of Pharaoh, l. Archaeologists working at Tell el-Amarna following the initial find tried to ascertain the exact spot of the tablets’ discovery but were met with conflicting evidence. Secondhand accounts indicate that the tablets were uncovered either by a peasant woman or a group of local farmers it is also possible that they came from private, undocumented excavations. Most of the tablets were found in 1887, but details concerning their discovery are vague and contradictory. These texts are housed today in museums and collections across the world, including two examples in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum ( 24.2.11 24.2.12). The majority of the tablets are letters (hence the modern designation “Amarna Letters”) written from rulers of the lands north of Egypt, but a few are letters from the Egyptian king, and there are also tablets inscribed with myths, epics, syllabaries, lexical texts, and other lists-the kinds of texts that were used to learn cuneiform writing. Since Egypt is outside the area where cuneiform writing developed, the Amarna Letters testify to the use of the Mesopotamian script and the Akkadian language across the eastern Mediterranean during this period. and were found at the site of Tell el-Amarna, the short-lived capital of ancient Egypt during the reign of Amenhotep IV / Akhenaten (ca.
The Amarna Letters are a group of several hundred clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform (“wedge-shaped”) writing that date to the fourteenth century B.C.
0 kommentar(er)
