{"id":373,"date":"2023-01-31T16:37:58","date_gmt":"2023-02-01T00:37:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/wsrp\/?page_id=373"},"modified":"2023-05-19T15:10:52","modified_gmt":"2023-05-19T22:10:52","slug":"el-amarna-tablets","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/wsrp\/el-amarna-tablets\/","title":{"rendered":"El-Amarna Tablets"},"content":{"rendered":" \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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\n Where is Amarna?\n <\/h2>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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(El) Amarna is a city in Middle Egypt between Cairo and Luxor. The archaeological site near the modern city, called Tell El-Amarna (The hill at El-Amarna) is the remains of the ancient Egyptian capital Akhetaten which thrived for a brief period in the 1300s BCE. It was the new capital of the famous religious reformer (or \u201cheretic king,\u201d depending on your stance), Pharaoh Akhenaten (Amenophis\/Amenhotep\/Amenhotpe IV, 1350-1334 BCE) and his father Amenophis\/Amenhotep\/Amenhotpe III (1386-49 BCE). Akhenaten\u2019s wife was the beautiful Nefertiti. Akhetaten was the Washington or Berlin of its era, involved in international diplomacy far beyond the borders of Ancient Egypt, especially with weaker kingdoms in the Levant that were vassals of powerful Egypt. The city came to an end within a dozen years after the death of Akhenaten in 1334 or so, although his successors Smenkhkareand Tutankhamun (\u201cKing Tut\u201d) lived there for a short time before returning the capital to Luxor.<\/p>\n

The building where the tablets were housed lay behind the Pharaoh\u2019s palace and was called \u201cthe place of the letters of the Pharaoh.\u201d In addition to this relatively small library of \u201cforeign\u201d documents, the archive housed a larger number of Egyptian texts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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\n Description\n <\/h2>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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The clay tablets are mainly diplomatic letters (with a few myths and epics) written in cuneiform script (wedge prints made in wet clay then baked), often covering both sides of a tablet for efficiency. From the side view, they often resemble fat hamburger patties! They were originally part of a court archival office.<\/p>\n

The El-Amarna tablets were written during a very brief period historically: the second half of the fourteenth century BCE (1400-1300 BCE), the \u201cNew Kingdom\u201d period in Ancient Egypt and late Bronze Age in Palestine. The actual duration of the correspondence is likely not much more than 25 years total. The tablets take us intimately into one of the most popularly recognized periods in ancient Egypt with connections to Nefertiti and her husband Akhenaten, sometimes credited with being one of the first monotheists.<\/p>\n

They first came to light In 1887, when local Egyptian peasants found a few tablets buried in the ruins of the Akhetaten palace complex and sold them to antiquities dealers. Later excavations recovered the rest, beginning with the work of English Egyptologist William Matthew Flinders Petrie in 1891-92.<\/p>\n

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382 tablets (350 of which were letters), now scattered among various museums but mainly found in:<\/p>\n

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