Important cache of documents from f. l-.•MARN. A, discovered in 1887 by a village woman digging ancient mud-brick for use as fertilizer (Arabic sehakh). This discovery led to further illicit diggings and the appearance of a number of clay cuxkii-'or. m tablets on the antiquities market. Their importance was not immediately recognized, and many passed into private hands, but Wallis Budge of the British Museum believed the tablets to be genuine and purchased a number of them; his view was confirmed by A. H. Sayce. The tablets are held by the British Museum, the Bodemuseum in Berlin, the Louvre, and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
'Ehere are 382 known tablets, most of which derive from the 'Place of the Letters of Pharaoh’, a building identified as the official ‘records office’ in the central city at cl-Amarna. Their exact chronology is still debated, but they span a fifteen-to-thirty-ycar period (depending upon interpretations of coregencies at this time), beginning around year thirty of AMENiroTEP iii (1390-1352 Bc) and extending no later than the first year of tltaxkiiamun’s reign (1336-1327 nc), with the majority dating to the time of AkiiEN. ATEN (1352-1336 bc). Most arc written in a dialect of the AKKADIAN language, which was the lingua franca of the time, although the languages of the A. s.SYRiAN. s, HiTTiTES and Hurrians (.HTANi) are also represented.
All but thirty-two of the documents in the archive are items of diplomatic correspondence between Egypt and either the great powers in western Asia, such as Babylonia and - Assyria, or the vassal states of. syrta and RALESTINF.. They provide a fascinating picture of the relationship between Egypt and these states, although there are very few letters from the Egyptian ruler. The state of the empire under Akhenaten is poignantly documented in the increasingly desperate pleas for assistance from Syro-Palcstinian cities under siege. As well as giving insights into the political conditions of the time, the letters also shed light on iradI'; relations, diplomatic MARRiAGP; and the values of particular com-
Tablet from el-Ainarna, inscribed with a cuneiform letter from Tushratta ofMitanni to Amenhotep III. IHth Dynasty, c.1354 nc, clay, ii. 9 cm. (va29793)
Modifies such as glass, goi. d and the newly introduced iron, while the various forms of address employed in the letters indicate the standing of the writers vi. s-d-vis the Egyptian court.
C. Ai. dri:d, .‘ikhenaten. King of Egypt (London, 1988), 183-94.
E. K Campbell, The chronology of the Amarna Letters (Baltimore, 1964).
B, J. Ki-:mp, Ancient Egypt: anatomy of a civilization (London, 1989), 223-5.
W. L.MoR-AX, Tbe.-imarna (London, 1992).