Amarna Archive - a collection of correspondence on clay tablets , mainly diplomatic, between the government of Ancient Egypt and its representatives in the Eastern Mediterranean ( Canaan and Amurru ), as well as the kings of other powerful powers in the region ( Babylonia , Hatti , Mitanni , Assyria ), during the New Kingdom . Correspondence was discovered in Amarna (the modern name of the ancient Ahetaton, the capital founded by the pharaoh Akhenaten in Upper Egypt ). Amarna writings are unusual for Egyptology , since Akkadian cuneiform writing prevails among the writing systems, which is more likely to be characteristic of Ancient Mesopotamia , rather than Ancient Egypt . To date, 382 tablets are known.
Content
Discovery History
Amarna correspondence was compiled primarily in Akkadian , which served as the language of international communication in the Middle East during the New Kingdom. The archive was discovered by locals in 1886, when an Egyptian peasant woman from Amarna stumbled upon numerous baked clay tablets with inscriptions. The finds were secretly handed down and sold to antiquaries: the discoverer broke the tablets into several parts, which were offered to merchants-dealers. Those, however, were rather skeptical and offered a very low price for them. Only one of the merchants realized that the tablets were covered with some kind of writing, and began to offer them to various museums in Europe .
However, scientists, who experienced many disappointments due to oriental fakes, reacted to the tablets from Amarna with distrust. Only employees of the Berlin Museum not only proved the authenticity of clay fragments, but also decided to buy up all the written tablets, which by that time were in different parts of the world.
The first archaeologist to undertake a systematic investigation of the site where the correspondence was discovered was William Flinders Petrie in 1891–1892. Under his leadership, 21 fragments of correspondence were discovered. Emil Chassin, who headed the French Institute of Oriental Archeology in Cairo , found 2 more tablets in 1903. Since the publication by the Norwegian assyrologist Jorgen Knudzon of a two-volume with Amarna correspondence texts (in 1907 and 1915), 24 more tablets have been found.
The Middle East in the Amarna Era
Correspondence discovered in Amarna dates back to the reign of Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) from the XVIII dynasty of Egyptian pharaohs. It includes records of a state nature - the correspondence of the pharaoh with both the subordinate rulers of the Eastern Mediterranean lands included in the composition of the Egyptian state Thutmose III , and with sovereign foreign monarchs. In the Amarna era, Egypt was one of the four hegemons in the Middle East, along with the Hittites (Hatti) , the Mitannian-Hurrian and the Babylonian-Cassite kingdoms. On the periphery of this international system were Elam , Mycenaean and West Anatolian states, the Minoan Crete, which was in decline, and Alashia (Cyprus), which also participated in the Amarna correspondence. Assyria, still dependent on the Mitannians and Babylonians, gradually increased its influence.
Amenhotep III and Akhenaten preferred to exchange gifts with their neighbors and did not wage wars themselves. For example, the Mitannian king Tushratt turned to Amenhotep III with a request to send him gold, because “my brother in Egypt has gold as sand” (and as a ransom for the bride of the pharaoh, the daughter of Tushratta Taduhepu ); in turn, when Amenhotep III became seriously ill, Tushratta sent the idol of the goddess Ishtar from Nineveh , who then depended on him, to his Egyptian "brother" for healing.
Egyptian vassals often wrote to Pharaoh, in their letters accusing other local princes of disloyalty to Egyptian rule, hoping to gain power over their lands. So, the ambitious ruler of the Principality of Amurru Abdi-Ashirt and his successor, Aziru , who entered into an agreement with the Hittites, attacked the cities subordinate to Egypt. One of his victims, the ruler of the city of Biblah, Rib-Addi, was especially active in asking Akhenaten for his help. The passivity of the Egyptian authorities, which did not help loyal vassals like Rib Addi (not least due to the relations of Azir with his patron in the Egyptian court - “the head of the northern countries” Dudu) cost Akhenaten the loss of the northern areas of his kingdom occupied by the Hittites.
In Amarna writings, for the first time, mention is made of a hapiru .
Location
The materials of the Amarna archive, discovered by local residents, did not initially linger in Egypt and went to the foreign antique market. For this reason, many of their numbers are now scattered in the museums of Cairo , Europe and the USA :
- 202 or 203 fragments - in the Berlin Museum of Near East Asia ;
- 49 or 50 - in the Cairo Egyptian Museum ;
- 7 - in the Louvre ;
- 3 - in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts ;
- 1 - at the Oriental Institute in Chicago .
See also
- Bogazkoy archive
Literature
- Anson F. Rainey. The El-Amarna Correspondence . - 2015. - T. I. (English)
- Amarna Archive // Great Soviet Encyclopedia : [in 30 vol.] / Ch. ed. A.M. Prokhorov . - 3rd ed. - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1969-1978.
- Tel El Amarna Archive // Soviet Historical Encyclopedia / Ed. E. M. Zhukova . M .: Soviet Encyclopedia , 1973-1982.
- Pislyakov V.V. Amarna writings // Orthodox Encyclopedia . - M .: Church Scientific Center "Orthodox Encyclopedia" , 2001. - T. II. - S. 98-99. - 752 s. - 40,000 copies. - ISBN 5-89572-007-2 .
- Stuchevsky I.A. Tell el-Amarna Diplomatic Archive // Interstate Relations and Diplomacy in the Ancient East. - 1987.
Links
- The Amarna Tablets (English) - Tel Aviv University Website
- Tell-Amarna Correspondence (XV — XIV centuries BC) - on the website “History of Diplomacy”