On Gods and Scribal Traditions in the Amarna Letters

2005 ◽  
pp. 242-251
Keyword(s):  
2013 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 123-128
Author(s):  
J. Mynářová
Keyword(s):  

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 788-832
Author(s):  
Lukas M. Muntingh

Egyptian domination under the 18th and 19th Dynasties deeply influenced political and social life in Syria and Palestine. The correspondence between Egypt and her vassals in Syria and Palestine in the Amarna age, first half of the fourteenth century B.C., preserved for us in the Amarna letters, written in cuneiform on clay tablets discovered in 1887, offer several terms that can shed light on the social structure during the Late Bronze Age. In the social stratification of Syria and Palestine under Egyptian rule according to the Amarna letters, three classes are discernible:1) government officials and military personnel, 2) free people, and 3) half-free people and slaves. In this study, I shall limit myself to the first, the upper class. This article deals with terminology for government officials.


1960 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward F. Campbell
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Alex Aissaoui

The Amarna diplomacy (ca. 1365–1330 BCE) has been of interest for specialists ever since the discovery of the Amarna letter collection in the late 19th century. While it can be considered as one of the great archaeolo-gical discoveries of all time, it has largely remained out of academic purview in the field of International Relations (IR). IR scholarship continues to turn to the Greco-Roman experience in its attempt to delineate the chronological framework of the discipline. Far from being an anecdote in international history, this article aims to analyze what the letters convey for a student of world politics. What comes out of these missives through textual analysis of the primary sources is not only the various demands, wishes and security concerns of the actors involved but also classical IR themes such as power balancing, security dilemma and international anarchy. While there are question marks and lacunas, this paper asserts that the ancient Near Eastern world constituted an international arena where we see the makings of a genuine system of states more than a millennium before the writings of Thucydides. The Amarna letters, although incomplete, are a gateway to gain deeper synergy between IR theory and international history.


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