Egypt's Amarna Letters revealed

diplomacy in the ancient world

The Amarna Letters preserve an inside look at Egyptian
diplomacy, revealing how power brokers maneuvered, alliances
were forged, and pharaohs were flattered.
By José Lull
Updated May. 03, 2021 05:46 PM

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Sometimes, archaeologists stumble on not just one, or a few, but an entire cache
of documents that utterly transforms their understanding of an ancient period,
and whose fascinating details bring that distant time into sharp focus. The trove
that transformed Egyptology is undoubtedly that of the Amarna Letters, 382
clay tablets considered the oldest documents of diplomacy ever found.

Written in the 14th century B.C., they consist of correspondence between the
pharaohs and their rival kings, the Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, and
Mitanni, as well as letters from puppet kings under Egyptian rule. Beginning in
the reign of Amenhotep III (1390-1353 B.C.), Egypt’s great builder king, the
archive also tracks the reign of his son, Akhenaten (1353-1336 B.C.), whose
religious revolution convulsed ancient Egypt for a generation. The letters open a
window into 18th-dynasty Egypt and give a detailed snapshot of the eastern
Mediterranean and Middle East in the Late Bronze Age, just as Egypt was
consolidating its greatness and the new power of Assyria was beginning to
flourish.

Revealing the writers’ flattery, arrogance, jealousy, and groveling, the letters
also provide an insight into the developing complexity of international
diplomacy. The growth of large empires jostling for supremacy had created the
need for a system of rules, and the Amarna communiqués give historians
unparalleled insights into how these early rules worked.

City of the sun

Around 1348 B.C., Pharaoh Akhenaten moved his court to an isolated spot
farther north, roughly equidistant between Thebes (his former capital) and
Memphis. The transfer was part of the pharaoh’s radical program to exalt Aten,
the solar disk, as the almost exclusive divinity of Egypt.

Akhenaten’s new capital, on the east bank of the Nile, was called Akhetaten,
meaning “horizon of Aten,” possibly because of nearby hills that frame the rising
sun. The modern name of the place, Tell el Amarna, is used interchangeably
with the site of Akhetaten, and it has given its name to the extraordinary culture
that briefly flourished when the upheaval of the pharaoh’s Aten cult paralleled a
radical change in art, known as Amarna style.

Akhenaten’s reign, however, was not just centered on religious and artistic
upheaval. He had inherited a kingdom of huge power and regional prestige from
his father, Amenhotep III, and continued pursuing Egyptian interests,
particularly in mineral-rich Nubia to the south. Until his death in 1336 B.C.,
Egypt’s capital was a bustling city filled with palaces and temples, homes,
barracks, and administrative buildings. The latter contained the ongoing archive
of diplomatic letters, begun under Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye. (King Tut's
grandparents were Egypt's royal power couple.)

The ancient city was identified at Amarna in the late 1700s, when Akhetaten’s
boundary stone was found there. The letters came to light in the 1880s after a
series of chance finds. As news of their existence spread, the site suddenly
acquired huge archaeological importance. The curator of the British Museum,
Wallis Budge, managed to obtain a batch of 82 pieces. A significant number of
tablets also found their way via the antiquities market to the Egyptian Museum
in Cairo and the Staatliche Museum in Berlin.

Led by British Egyptologist William Flinders Petrie in the 1890s, the first
significant excavation at Amarna soon uncovered more tablets from the time of
Akhenaten. During his first campaign, Petrie excavated a building with the
name “Bureau of Correspondence of Pharaoh” stamped on its bricks.

A meticulous archaeologist, Petrie also had an instinct for publicity. He knew

the Amarna Letters would help attract patrons to fund the dig. His examinations
of the documentary riches of the letters and the archaeological remains of the
ancient capital hugely boosted knowledge of this dynasty and the New Kingdom.

Not all the letters were found at once. When the Norwegian linguist Jørgen
Alexander Knudtzon ordered them chronologically within geographic groupings
in the early 1900s, there were 358. The remaining 24 were discovered in the
course of the 20th century and incorporated into Knudtzon’s system of
numbering, still used by scholars today. (Here's what the Armana Letters
reveal about ancient pirates.)

The letters are not written in ancient Egyptian, but in Akkadian, a language
spoken widely in ancient Mesopotamia. In the second millennium B.C.,
Akkadian became a lingua franca across the whole region, similar to the role
English plays in international relations today. It is written in the wedge-shaped
writing system, cuneiform. Most of the tablets found to date are letters received
by the Egyptians. Only a few copies were retained of letters written by the
pharaohs.

Letters from puppets

Scholars have divided the Amarna Letters into two principal groups. One is
letters to the pharaoh from the leaders of states controlled by Egypt, and the
other is letters to the pharaoh written by his equals (or as he would have seen
them, his near equals), the rulers of the other great, independent regional
powers.

The former category, dispatches from puppet kings, are from Canaan, located in
modern-day Israel and Lebanon. Egypt had seized Canaan as an imperial trophy
a century before under Thutmose III. The new acquisition brought Egypt
problems along with prestige: Its rulers were harried by a people called the
Habiru, identified by some historians as the Hebrews, although their identity is
still hotly debated. The temptation for puppet rulers to make deals with local
Habiru was, apparently, very great. An Amarna dispatch from the ruler of Tyre
to Akhenaten (Letter 148) complains that the Habiru have laid waste to the
region, but that another local ruler, that of Hazor (modern-day northern Israel)
supposedly loyal to Egypt, “has aligned himself with the Habiru . . . [and] has
turned over the king’s land to the Habiru.” (A Canaanite palace was abandoned
3,700 years ago. Archaeologists finally know why.)

These letters are often expressed in language of extreme abasement. The puppet
ruler of Gezer, in present-day Israel, wrote: “To the king, my lord, my god, my
Sun, the Sun of heaven: Message of Yapahu, your servant, the dirt at your feet. I
fall at the feet of the king, my lord, my god, my Sun, seven times and seven
times.”

Betrothals and brides

In contrast, the letters written by the pharaoh’s equals, rulers of the great
regional powers, are careful how and when they demonstrate that they are on
more equal footing. Scholars sometimes refer to the main regional powers of
this time as the “Great Powers Club,” which at this time consisted of Egypt,
Babylonia, Assyria, Mitanni (centered in modern southeastern Turkey), and
“Hatti,” the Hittite empire. Another member of the club was Alashiya, the island
of Cyprus. While geographically small, the island nation was economically
powerful thanks to its copper reserves. (The Hittites' swift war chariots kept
Egypt on edge.)

A few of the letters date back to the reign of Amenhotep III and his great royal
wife, Tiye, who was also Akhenaten’s mother. After Amenhotep’s death, his
widow remained powerful when her son took the throne. Akhenaten took his
father’s archives with him to the new capital as a record of diplomatic relations
with Egypt’s allies and vassal states.

Some of the Amarna archive concerns the exchanging of royal princesses as

wives. A rare example of an Amarna missive actually written by the pharaoh is
Letter 5, from Amenhotep III to the Babylonian king Kadasman-Enlil I. In just
30 lines, the letter covers the principal themes of royal communication: effusive
well-wishing, the dispatch of costly presents, and the pharaoh’s hopes to receive
a Babylonian princess for his harem. (See inside one of Egypt’s biggest royal
weddings.)

The pharaoh could expect to receive a wife, but a sign of Egypt’s supremacy was
the pharaoh’s consistent refusal to give wives in return. An earlier dispatch
(Letter 4) from Kadasman-Enlil I to Amenhotep complains at the injunction
that “since earliest times no daughter of the king of Egypt has ever been given in
marriage.” The Babylonian king chafes at the edict: “Why are you telling me
such things? You are the king. You may do as you wish. If you wanted to give me
your daughter in marriage who could say you nay?” His frustration is shared by
other kings in the archive, and lays bare the reality of regional power: Egypt
could call the shots.

Egypt and its neighbors

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Military rivals of Egypt, the Hittites were known for their war chariots, but they
left behind their own distinctive stone art, like this 13th-century B.C. relief from
Yasilikaya, Turkey, showing a divine procession of the gods.

DE AGOSTINI PICTURE LIBRARY/ SCALA, FLORENCE

Much as it is today, the geopolitical situation in the Middle East was complex
and in flux in the 14th century B.C. It was during this period that the Hatti
(Hittites) were expanding, while the once powerful kingdom of Mitanni went
into decline. The Assyrian Empire, based in Ashur, took advantage of the power
vacuum to grow, while the house of Babylon held strong but remained wary of
the threat from Assyria.

The Amarna Letters reflect this change. In addition to playing off the interests
of the other big regional players, Egypt had to maintain its imperial holdings in
the Levant, where cities such as Tyre complained of harassment from the
mysterious Habiru people. The pharaoh was also on the alert for signs of
betrayal from his puppet rulers.

Royal etiquette
Some of the most revealing letters about kingship and power are those sent
from Tushratta, king of Mitanni, whose expanding empire had a southern
border with Egypt’s northernmost holdings in Lebanon. Tushratta opens his
letters with a codified greeting, set down by the Great Powers to establish the
authenticity of the sender. Letter 27 takes the form of an elaborate pattern of
well-wishing. As the king of Mitanni is an equal, he refers to the pharaoh as
“brother,” and opens with these words:

Say to Naphurreya [Akhenaten], the king of Egypt, my brother, my son-in-

law, whom I love and whom loves me: Thus Tushratta, Great King, the king of
Mitanni, your father-in-law, who loves you, your brother. For me all goes well.
For you may all go well. For Tiye, your mother, may all go well. For Tadu-
Heba, my daughter, your wife, for the rest of your wives . . . may all go very,
very well.

The daughter Tushratta mentions, Tadu-Heba, had been a lesser wife to

Akhenaten’s father, Amenhotep III. After his death, she became a wife to
Akhenaten. This alliance was vital to Tushratta, as the Mitanni were constantly
harried by the Hittites to their north and needed a strong alliance with Egypt.
(Meet the three queens who led Egypt against Hyksos invaders—and won.)

There is an underlying tension in the letter explained by the previous missive,

Letter 26, written not to Akhenaten, but to Queen Tiye. Tushratta complains to
the pharaoh’s mother that gifts her late husband, Amenhotep III, had promised
to Tushratta (detailed in Letter 19), had included two gold statues. On arrival,
these were discovered to be not solid gold at all, but “[gold]-plated statues of
wood.”

Scholars are unsure as to whether the cheaper statues were an intentional snub
to Tushratta, and an indication of Mitanni’s diminished status in the eyes of
Egypt. Tushratta was the weaker here, but he had to maintain his prestige. The
dispute continues in Letter 28, where Tushratta complains that as his
messengers were detained by Akhenaten, so he has detained Egypt’s.
Tushratta was soon to suffer defeat at the hands of his former vassal king, the
Assyrian Ashuruballit I. As Mitanni power waned, so Assyria started to wax.
Ashuruballit I does not yet call himself a brother in his first letter to Akhenaten
(Letter 15), but it is a bold declaration that Assyria had joined the “Club”: He
had treasure to bestow—“a splendid chariot, horses, and a date-stone of genuine
lapis lazuli”—but expected respect in return.

The sudden rise of Assyria caused indignation in other quarters, especially in

Babylon whose king wrote to Akhenaten in Letter 9. After the usual gift-giving
and well-wishing, he asks: “Why on their own authority have the Assyrian
envoys of my vassal [i.e., Ashuruballit I] come to your country? If you love me,
they will conduct no business whatsoever. Send them off to me empty handed.”
Such protests, however, were as nothing to the realities of power. Assyria
continued to grow, and Akhenaten’s Egypt remained the preeminent power in
the region. (These ancient artifacts honor Egypt's powerful queens.)

Even so, in Egypt, Akhenaten’s new cult of Aten would fail. The last letters of the
Amarna archive date from the reign of his son and successor, Tutankhamun,
under whose rule the Amarna reforms were rolled back, and references to
Akhenaten’s name erased.

Akhenaten’s capital was left for the desert to swallow. At some stage in its
abandonment, a civil servant must have placed the diplomatic tablets in two
small pits under the floor of the administrative building where they remained in
their hiding place. There, they were discovered during another age of empire
more than 3,000 years later.