by Eric H. Cline
Princton: Princeton University Press, 2026. Pp. 272.
Illus, maps, notes, biblio. index. $35.00 / £30.00. ISBN:0691274088
Royal Correspondence in the Bronze Age and the Scholarly Battles Over It
“In 1887, an Egyptian woman made an astonishing discovery among the ruins of the heretic king Akhenaten's capital city, a site now known as Amarna. She found a cache of cuneiform tablets, nearly four hundred in all, that included correspondence between the pharaohs and the mightiest powers of the day, such as the Hittites, Babylonians, and Assyrians.”
As everyone knew, the ancient Egyptian language was written in hieroglyphics on papyrus or carved in stone, so it was surprising when an entire archive of clay tablets inscribed in Akkadian cuneiform turned up in Egypt. Akkadian, the earliest documented Semitic language, was written using a syllabic script adopted from the even earlier Sumerian civilization. Varieties of Akkadian script were used, in turn, to write other languages such as Hittite, Babylonian, and Assyrian. Egyptian scribes became proficient at reading and writing these tablets, which functioned as a medium of official communication between rulers in the Near East. Careful bureaucrats, the scribes kept file copies of the tablets they sent and received.
Much of that communication addressed to the Pharaoh amounted to begging:
- “Please send me some of that gold you have in such abundance.”
- “Your enemies are attacking me, please send troops, horses, and chariots.”
- “My son needs a mate, please send one of your daughters.”
The tablets found at Amarna became the object of fierce scholarly competition and were eventually scattered between museums in Cairo, London, and Berlin, with a few winding up in private collections. Some were fragmentary or damaged, and they presented formidable challenges to would-be translators. Unlike modern official correspondence, the letters are not dated, so their sequence, and in some cases even the identity of the originator, or the addressee, is problematic. Some of the scholars who tackled the tablets had an agenda, seeking evidence to confirm Biblical persons and events (which are entirely absent from the actual texts).
The era of the letters was eventually determined to be around the fourteenth century BCE, during the reigns of pharaohs Amenhotep III (ruled c. 1391-1353 BCE) and his son Akhenaten (ruled c. 1353 - 1334 BCE).
The book is illustrated with charming line drawings (based on contemporary portraits of many of the scholars who studied the tablets.) There are four clear maps locating places mentioned in the text, and a series of network diagrams illustrating the complex relationships embodied in the letters. There are a lot of people named in them: 15 Great Kings and Queens, 26 Canaanite vassal rulers and 5 Egyptian high officials. The scholars who studied the letters and the antiquity collectors and dealers who handled them included Americans, Belgians, Britons, Dutch, Egyptians, French, Germans, Greeks, Norwegians, Russians, and Swiss. A useful Appendix helps readers keep track of who was who.
Love, War and Diplomacy does not have much to say about warfare during this era of the Bronze Age, but it offers a fascinating account of turf battles in late 19th and early 20th century academia. Readers with an interest in Near Eastern archaeology will enjoy it.
Eric H. Cline is professor of classics and anthropology at George Washington University. He is the author of 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed, After 1177 B.C.: The Survival of Civilizations, and other books on the Bronze Age.
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Our Reviewer: Mike Markowitz is an historian and wargame designer. He writes a monthly column for CoinWeek and is a member of the ADBC (Association of Dedicated Byzantine Collectors). His previous reviews include At the Gates of Rome: The Battle for a Dying Empire, Roman Emperors in Context, After 1177 B.C., Cyrus the Great, Barbarians and Romans: The Birth Struggle of Europe, A.D. 400–700, Crescent Dawn: The Rise of the Ottoman Empire and the Making of the Modern Age, The Missing Thread: A New History of the Ancient World Through the Women Who Shaped It, The Roman Provinces, 300 BCE–300 CE: Using Coins as Sources, The Cambridge Companion to Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, Archaic Greece, Amazons: The History Behind the Legend, The Byzantine World, Classical Controversies, Reassessing the Peloponnesian War, War and Masculinity in Roman and Medieval Culture, Nemesis: Medieval England's Greatest Enemy, The Wars of the Roses: A Medieval Civil War, The Emperor and the Elephant, Tiberius, The Roman Empire and World History, Leadership in the Ancient World: Concepts, Models, Theories, A History of the Greek World from 479 to 323 B.C., and Commanders and Command in the Roman Republic and Early Empire.
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