Amarna letters

The Amarna letters are of great signicance for biblical

studies as well as Semitic linguistics, since they shed light
on the culture and language of the Canaanite peoples in
pre-biblical times. The letters, though written in Akkadian, are heavily colored by the mother tongue of their
writers, who spoke an early form of Canaanite, the language family which would later evolve into its daughter
languages Hebrew and Phoenician. These Canaanisms
provide valuable insights into the proto-stage of those
languages several centuries prior to their rst actual
manifestation.[2][3]

1 The letters

EA 161, letter by Aziru, leader of Amurru (stating his case to

pharaoh), one of the Amarna letters in cuneiform writing on a
clay tablet.

The Amarna letters (sometimes Amarna correspondence or Amarna tablets) archive, on clay tablets,
mostly diplomatic correspondence between the Egyptian
administration and its representatives in Canaan and
Amurru during the New Kingdom. The letters were
found in Upper Egypt at Amarna, the modern name for
the Egyptian capital of Akhetaten (el-Amarna), founded
by pharaoh Akhenaten (1350s 1330s BC) during the
Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt. The Amarna letters are unusual in Egyptological research, because they are mostly
written in Akkadian cuneiform, the writing system of ancient Mesopotamia, rather than that of ancient Egypt.
The known tablets total 382: 24 tablets had been recovered since the Norwegian Assyriologist Jrgen Alexander
Knudtzon's landmark edition of the Amarna correspondence, Die El-Amarna-Tafeln in two volumes (1907 and
1915).[1] The correspondence spans a period of at most
thirty years.

One of the Amarna Letters (from Alashiya)

These letters, comprising cuneiform tablets written primarily in Akkadian the regional language of diplomacy
for this period were rst 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
1

AMARNA LETTERS LIST

they were found was determined, the ruins were explored

for more. The rst archaeologist who successfully recovered more tablets was William Matthew Flinders Petrie,
who in 1891 and 1892 uncovered 21 fragments. mile
Chassinat, then director of the French Institute for Oriental Archaeology in Cairo, acquired two more tablets in
1903. Since Knudtzons edition, some 24 more tablets, or
fragments, have been found, either in Egypt, or identied
in the collections of various museums.[4]
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;[5] 49 or
50 are at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo; 7 at the Louvre Map of the ancient Near East during the Amarna period, showing
in Paris; 3 at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow; and 1 in the great powers of the period: Egypt (green), Hatti (yellow), the
Kassite kingdom of Babylon (purple), Assyria (grey), and Mittani
the collection of the Oriental Institute in Chicago.[6]
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 Akhenatens reign, 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 Akhenatens reign to the mid-14th century BC. They
also contain the rst 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 Mittani, 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. Specically, the letters include requests for military help in the
north against Hittite invaders, and in the south to ght
against the Habiru.[7]

1.1

Letter summary

Amarna Letters are politically arranged in rough counterclockwise fashion:

001014 Babylonia
015016 Assyria
017030 Mittani
031032 Arzawa
033040 Alashiya
041044 Hatti

(red). Lighter areas show direct control, darker areas represent

spheres of inuence. The extent of the Achaean/Mycenaean civilization is shown in orange.

045380+ Syria/Lebanon/Canaan
Amarna Letters from Syria/Lebanon/Canaan are distributed roughly:
045067 Syria
068227 Lebanon (where 68140 are from Gubla
aka Byblos)
227380 Canaan (written mostly in the CanaanoAkkadian language).

2 Amarna letters list

Note: Many assignments are tentative; spellings vary
widely. This is just a guide.

2.1 Chronology
William L. Moran summarizes the state of the chronology
of these tablets as follows:
Despite a long history of inquiry, the
chronology of the Amarna letters, both relative
and absolute, presents many problems, some of
bewildering complexity, that still elude denitive solution. Consensus obtains only about
what is obvious, certain established facts, and
these provide only a broad framework within
which many and often quite dierent reconstructions of the course of events reected in
the Amarna letters are possible and have been
defended. ...The Amarna archive, it is now

3.4

Hale like the Sun...

generally agreed, spans at most about thirty
years, perhaps only fteen or so.[8]

3.4

Hale like the Sun...

And know that the King-(pharaoh) is Hale like

the Sun in the Sky. For his troops and his
From the internal evidence, the earliest possible date for
chariots in multitude all goes very well....
this correspondence is the nal decade of the reign of
See: Endaruta, for the Short Form; See:
Amenhotep III, who ruled from 1388 to 1351 BC (or
Milkilu, for a Long Form. Also found in EA
1391 to 1353 BC), possibly as early as this kings 30th
99: entitled: From the Pharaoh to a vassal.
regnal year; the latest date any of these letters were writ(with addressee damaged)
ten 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 3.5 I looked this way, and I looked...
16, may have been addressed to Tutankhamuns successor Ay.[9] However, this speculation appears improbable
I looked this way, and I looked that way, and
because the Amarna archives were closed by Year 2 of
there was no light. Then I looked towards the
Tutankhamun, when this king transferred Egypts capital
king, my lord, and there was light.EA 266
from Amarna to Thebes.
by Tagi (Ginti mayor); EA 296 by Yahtiru.

Quotations and phrases

3.6

May the Lady of Gubla..

May the Lady of Gubla grant power to the king,

A small number of the Amarna letters are in the class of
my lord.varieties of the phrase in the Ribpoetry. An example is EA 153, (EA is for 'el Amarna').
Hadda letters
EA 153, entitled: Ships on hold, from Abi-Milku 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 3.7 a pot held in pledge
sentences are identical, and repetitive, with only the subject statement changing.
a pot held in pledgeThe Pot of a Debt. EA
292 by Adda-danu of Gazru.
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 ght back and bite the hand 3.8
of the man that struck it?"....)

7 times and 7 times again

7 times and 7 timesOver and over again

3.1

Bird in a Cage
A bird in a cage (Trap)Rib-Hadda subcorpus
of letters. (Rib-Hadda was trapped in Gubla(Byblos), unable to move freely.)

3.2

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.

7 times plus 7EA 189, See: "Etakkama of

Kadesh(title)-(Qidu)

3.9 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 stomachEA 316, by PuBa'lu, and used in numerous letters to pharaoh.
See: Commissioner: Tahmai.

3.10
3.3

For the lack of a cultivator..

For the lack of a cultivator, my eld is like a
woman without a husband.Rib-Hadda letter EA 75

when an ant is struck..

"...when an ant is pinched (struck), does it not

ght 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 ones enemies.

See also
Abdi-Heba
Labaya

EXTERNAL LINKS

Knudtzon, Jrgen Alexander (1915).

Amarna-Tafeln 1. Leipzig.

Die El-

Knudtzon, Jrgen Alexander (1915).

Amarna-Tafeln 2. Leipzig.

Die El-

Ashur-uballit I
Mutbaal
Suwardata
See the town of Lakia, Lachish, for nd of one
tablet, EA 333.
Amarna letterslocalities and their rulers
List of artifacts signicant to the Bible

Mineralogical and Chemical Study of the Amarna

Tablets - Provenance Study of the Amarna Tablets
University of Tel Aviv web page
All 6 views on 1--Sample letter(Mesopotamian)

New Chronology (Rohl)

"The Tell el-Amarna Tablets". Catholic Encyclopedia. 1913.

Notes

[1] Moran, William L. (1992). The Amarna Letters. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. xiv. ISBN
0-8018-4251-4.
[2] F.M.T. de Liagre Bhl, Die Sprache der Amarnabriefe,
mit besonderer Bercksichtigung der Kanaanismen ('The
language of the Amarna letters, with special attention to
the Canaanisms), Leipzig 1909.
[3] Eva von Dassow, 'Canaanite in Cuneiform', Journal of the
American Oriental Society 124/4 (2004): 641674. (pdf)
[4] Moran, p.xv
[5] British Museum Collection
[6] Moran, pp.xiii-xiv
[7] El-Amarna Tablets, article at West Semitic Research
Project, website of University of Southern California accessed 2/8/15.
[8] Moran, p.xxxiv
[9] Moran, p.xxxv, n.123

High-resolution images, from the Vorderasiatisches

Museum Berlin.

Mari Tablets

Foreign relations of Egypt during the Amarna period

7 External links

References
Smith, Janet (2011). Dust or dew: Immortality in
the Ancient Near East and in Psalm 49. Eugene, OR,
USA: Wipf and Stock. p. 286. ISBN 978-1-60899661-2.
Goren, Y., Finkelstein, I. & Na'aman, N., Inscribed
in Clay - Provenance Study of the Amarna Tablets
and Other Ancient Near Eastern Texts, Tel Aviv: Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology, Tel
Aviv University, 2004. ISBN 965-266-020-5

Electronic version of the Amarna tablets, Akkadian

in English transliteration.
Text of some letters, archive.org

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

8.1

Text

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8.2

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8.3

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