The Amarna Letters: 3300 Year Old Correspondence Reveals Diplomatic Relations of Ancient Egypt
- Recent discovery of ancient tablets reveals a collection of letters sent between Egypt and its neighboring countries over 3300 years ago. Named the Amarna Letters, these inscriptions provide insights into the diplomatic relations and political alliances of the time.
- The tablets, addressed to the king of Egypt, were written in the diplomatic language of ancient Babylon. Scholars have divided the letters into two groups: those between the king and foreign rulers who considered themselves equal, and those from vassals under the king's dominion.
- The letters cover a timespan of nearly 30 years, from late in Amenhotep III's reign into his son's reign. They disclose greed, grievances, petty fights, and diplomatic correspondence between heads of state.
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お願いします (10) We now know that the tablets are indeed letters―letters addressed to the king of Egypt more than 3,300 years ago, and copies of the replies he sent back. Nimmuriya is none other than Amenhotep III. And those chicken scratches are inscriptions written in the diplomatic language of the time, the language of ancient Babylon. Scholars today call the tablets the Amarna Letters―a priceless collection of letters between Egypt and its neighbors in the Near East. The mud bricks the peasant woman used for fertilizer once formed walls to an ancient Egyptian foreign office at Amarna―the House of the Correspondence of Pharaoh. And the stash of tablets was a file full of records stored there. Fewer than 400 survived outof who knows how many. The letters cover a timespan of nearly 30 years, from late in Amenhotep III's reign into his son's reign. The letters reveal greed and grievances. They detail petty fights and political alliances―30 years of diplomatic correspondence bdtween heads of state. (11) Scholars have divided the letters into two groups according to the opening words that led Budge to believe the tablets were letters. Some of the letters were between the king of Egypt and independent foreign rulers who considered themselves the king's equal. They opened their letters by addressing he king as "brother." (12) The second group of tablets begins quite differently. These senders wouldn't have dared to assume that they were brothers of the king, but merely "your servant, the dust of your two feet." The groveling continued for many lines. These chiefs of foreign lands under the king's dominion, or vassals, were so fearful of offending they don't even address the king by name, but instead called him "my king, my sun."
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(10) 我々は、今では、それらのタブレットが本当に手紙であることが分かっています ― 3,300年以上前にエジプト国王に宛てられた手紙、そして、国王が送り返した返書だったのです。 ニムリヤは、ほかならぬアメンホテップ３世です。 そして、それらの鶏のかき傷のように見えるものは、当時の外交の言語であった古代のバビロンの言語で書かれたものでした。学者は、今日、それらのタブレットをアマルナ書簡と呼んでいます ― エジプトと近東のその隣国の間で交わされた手紙の極めて貴重なコレクションなのです。 その農婦が肥料に使った日干しレンガは、かつて、アマルナにあった古代エジプトの外国事務所 ― 「ファラオの通信の館」の壁を作っていたものでした。そして、タブレットの隠し場所は、そこに収められた記録でいっぱいの保管庫だったのです。 400個足らずが、いくつあったのか誰にも分からないタブレットの中で残ったものでした。 それらの書簡は、アメンホテプ3世の治世の後期から彼の息子の治世の時期に当たる、ほぼ30年間に渡っています。それらの書簡は、貪欲と不平を明らかにしています。それらは、小さな戦いや政治同盟を詳述しています ― 30年に及ぶ国の為政者間の書簡のやり取りなのです。 (11) 学者は、それらの書簡を、バッジにタブレットが手紙であると思わせた書き出しの言葉に従って、2つのグループに分類しています。書簡のいくつかは、エジプト国王と自身を王と対等の者と考える独立した外国の統治者の間に交わされた書簡でした。 それらは、エジプト国王を「兄弟」と呼んでその書簡を書き始めていました。 (12) タブレットの第2のグループは、全く違った書き出しになっています。これらの送り主は、自分たちが国王の兄弟であると思う勇気はなかったようで、単に、「陛下の下僕、陛下の2本の脚に付いた塵」となっています。 へつらいは、何行も続いていました。国王の支配下にある外国の土地のこれらの長、すなわち、隷属者たちは、国王を怒らせることをとても恐れたので、国王に名前で呼び掛けさえせずに、その代わりに、国王を「わが国王、わが太陽」と呼びました。
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お願いします (22) In his fervor for the Aten, Akhenaten forgot Egypt. The city of Amarna was like the royal firstborn son who took all the attention. The rest of Egypt became the second son, ignored and neglected. Egyptians outside Amarna were paying taxes to build a city they would never see, dedicated to a god they did not want. (23) Egypt's foreign subjects fell one by one to outside conquerors. The Amarna letters flooded in with pleas for help. They fell on deaf ears. One poor prince wrote at least 64 times, "Why will you neglect our land?" (24) Akhenaten had inherited an empire but left a country in decline. After his death the new capital was abandoned. The kings who followed Akhenaten demolished his temples and erased his name. Once Amarna had been stripped of stone it was forgotten and left to crumble. The sun had set on he Amarna Period.
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お願いします (8) Budge sipped his coffee without any hurry, knowing Grebaut would be held up at the least until the next day. And that afternoon, a dealer arrived, bringing six clay tablets with him. Were they kadim ("old")? he asked. Or jaded ("new")? Were the tablets genuine? Or were they fake? Budge writes in By Nile and Tigris, "When I examined the tablets I found that the matter was not as simple as it looked. In shape and form, and colour and material, the tablets were unlike any and I had ever seen in London or Paris, and the writing on all of them was of a most unusual character and puzzled me for hours." (9) It was while he was puzzling over the wedge-shaped markings that he was able to make out the words, "to Nimmuriya, king of the land of Egypt." Budge writes, "The opening words of nearly all the tablets proved them to be letters or dispatches, and I felt certain that the tablets were both genuine and of very great historical importance." Budge stuck to his "letter" theory despite arguments from scholars who thought the tablets were fake and arguments from scholars who had misinterpreted the markings.
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お願いします (16) What happened next depends on whom you believe. Ramesses claimed the Hittite king begged for a truce by saying, "O victorious king, peace is better than war, Give us breath." The Hittite king claimed it was Ramesses who buckled under. The fact that Qadesh remained under Hittite control makes the Hittite king's version of the story more believable. (17) It took 16 years, but in Year 21 of Ramesses II's reign the two nations negotiated peace. The treaty is the earliest recorded document of its type preserved in its entirety. Inscribed on two matching silver tablets are the pledges of the king of Egypt and the king of Hatti to one another. "If a foreign enemy marches against the country of Hatti and if the king of Hatti sends me this message:‘Come to my help'...the king of the Egyptian country has to send his troops and his chariots to kill this enemy...." The Hittite king made a similar vow to defend Egypt. The treaty also pledged support if the enemy were to come from within. The Hittite king swore that if Ramesses should "rise in anger against his citizens after they have committed a wrong against him...the king of the country of Hatti, my brother, has to send his troops and his chariots...." Ramesses promised to stand by the Hittite king in the same circumstances. The treaty was honored until the fall of the Hittite Empire. Even when tested, Ramesses stood by his ally, announcing to the world, "Today there is a fraternity between the Great King of Egypt and the king of Hatti."
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お願いします (13) Throughout history, alliances have been made through marriage. Amenhotep III married several foreign princesses in the name of diplomacy. But the Amarna Letters show that Amenhotep III didn't consider these diplomatic unions a give-and-take situation. When the king of Babylon asked for an Egyptian princess, Amenhotep III flat out refused, even though he gad taken the king of Babylon's sister as a bride. The angry king of Babylon wrote, "When I wrote to you about marrying your daughter you wrote to me saying ‘From time immemorial no daughter of the king of Egypt has been given in marriage to anyone.’Why do you say this? You are the king and you may do as you please. If you were to give a daughter, who would say anything about it?" But Amenhotep III wasn't budging. Egypt did not give away princesses. (14) The marriages allied rulers, not countries. If either husband or father-in-law should die, negotiations started all over again. This letter from the King of Hatti to Amenhotep III's son, after Amenhotep III died, shows that things didn't always continue as they had in the past: "your father never neglected... the wishes I expressed, but granted me everything. Why have you... refused to send me... gifts of friendship, I wish good friendship to exist between you and md." (15) Some of the letters were sent to people close to the king and pleaded for help. This letter from the king of Mittani to Queen Tiy shows how influential she must have been, not only during her husband's reign, but also during her son's: You are the one who knows that I have always felt friendship for... your husband... but you have not sent me yet the gift of homage... your husband, has ordered be sent to me. I have asked... your husband for massive gold statues.... But your son has goldplated statues of wood. As gold is like dust in the country of your son, why... [hasn't] your son... given them to me?
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お願いします (16) These are not the only letters of complaint. A constant theme throughout seems to be, "send more gold!" Or send more soldiers, more archers, more silver―diplomacy seems more like a greedy child's demands than true acts of alliance. The demands grew, and Amenhotep's son ignored them. Unlike Amenhotep III, his son's primary concern was not about foreign policy. Control outside of Egypt slipped, as the vassals were neglected and unable to support themselves. Undersupplied and discouraged, they pleaded for assistance, "your city weeps, and her tears are running, and there is no help for us. For 20 years we have been sending to our lord, the king, the king of Egypt, but there has not come to us a word from our lord, not one." (17) And what happened to Budge and Monsieur Grebaut? Did Budge end up in prison? Budge boarded a train for home with far fewer tablets than he would have liked. The lion's share had already been sold to the Berlin Museum. The dealer delivering a rather large tablet to his German contact in Cairo hid the 20-inch clay tablet in his clothes and covered himself with a large cloak. When the dealer climbed into the railroad car the tablet slipped from under his cloak and smashed into pieces on the ground. Informants passed the news to Monsieur Grebaut, who set out after that dealer and ordered everyone in sight to be thrown in jail. He telegraphed ahead the order to make the arrests. Surely he would be there soon... that is, if nothing stopped him.
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お願いします (4) The king of the Hyksos was like a pebble in the Egyptian king's sandal. He irritated him just by being there, but war didn't break out until the insult. The Hyksos king sent a message to the ruler of Egypt, King Seqenenre. The Hyksos king complained that King Seqenenre's hippos in the royal pools "were keeping him awake at night with their grunts." Do something, he demanded. Given that Avaris was hundreds of miles from Thebes, where the king and his hippos lived, this was nothing short of a slap in the face. King Seqenenre was furious. Although it is unknown what happened next, the damage to King Seqenenre's skull indicates it didn't turn out well for the Egyptian side. During that time kings commanded the armies and led the soldiers into battle. Archaeologists have identified King Seqenenre's head, and it's not pretty. He took a battle axe to the forehead and was stabbed in the neck after he fell to the ground. This attack was the beginning of a war that would last nearly 25 years, from about 1574 to 1550 BCE, and span the reign of three Egyptian kings. (5) The Egyptians were farmers, not warriors. They were peaceful people. They were not conquerors by nature. And nowhere was that more obvious than in their army. It was unorganized. The soldiers served part-time and their weapons were not much more than farm tools adapted for battle. The few full-time soldiers were trained as palace guards, border police, or trade-ship escorts―not warriors. For the occasional battle outside of Egypt, the king hired foreign mercenaries because Egyptians didn't want to die away from home. An improper burial meant wandering the desert for eternity―not a pleasant haunting.
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お願いします。 (4) Different towns in Egypt worshipped differnt gods. The leaders of the town would try to convince everyone that their god was the most powerful. If their god was powerful, it meant they were powerful, too. Before Upper and Lower Egypt were unified, each had its own capital with its own goddess. Upper Egypt's goddess looked like a vulture. Lower Egypt's goddess looked like a cobra. After Upper and Lower Egypt unified, the kings wore a crown with both a vulture and a cobra to symbolize the joining of the regions. (5) One of the pharaoh's most important jobs was to take care of the gods. If the gods were happy, the Egyptians figured they would be happy, too. The crops would grow, the Nile would flood to the right level, and Egypt would be at peace with its neighbors. Life would be in balance, or ma'at. The pharaohs built great temples to show respect to the gods. Inside each temple, in the innermost room, they placed a shrine. And inside the shrine, they kept a statue of the god for whom the temple had been built. Every day the priests served the statue as if it were alive. (6) One pharaoh, King Neferhotep (who ruled about 1741 to 1730 BCE), paid special attention to the temple at Abydos. King Neferhotep wanted to be sure the priests were taking care of the statue exactly as they were supposed to take care of it. After all, those priests were the king's representatives. So if they displeased the gods, then the gods were displeased with the king as well. Ma'at would be thrown all out of whack.
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お願いします (1) What we know about how Egypt got along with its neighbors came to us quite by accident. In 1887 a peasant woman was poking through the ruins of an ancient city we now call Amarna. She was collecting the crumbled remains of mud bricks, which make excellent fertilizer. Digging through the rubble she came across a stash of tablets. The hunks of sun-dried clay looked more like dog biscuits a chicken had pecked than treasure, but the woman collected the unbroken ones on the off chance she could get a few small coins for them. She gathered as many as she could carry and sold them to her neighbor. The neighbor turned around and sold them for a slight profit to a local dealer in antiquities. No one knew what they were, or if they had any value. (2) Rumors of this odd discovery spread. Museum curators in the major European cities were curious. Were these tablets ancient? Were they records of some sort? Or was this just another money-making hoax? The curators sent scouts to Egypt to find out. The scouts had orders to buy as many tablets as they could if they turned out to be genuine. The British Museum sent Budge. (3) E.A. Wallis Budge knew the tablets were in the hands of native dealers, but just who those dealers were would not be easy to find out. Government officials in the Egyptian antiquities department had announced plans to seize the tablets and throw anyone connected to them in jail. The dealers weren't about to give up the tablets for nothing, and they didn't intend to go to prison either. Threats only made them stubborn. What tablets? They didn't know anything about tablets found at Amarna. The Egyptian official in charge, Monsieur Grebaut, just threatened louder. Anyone refusing to co-operate would be tortured. The dealers didn't trust anyone. Budge hoped he could draw them out. Today reputabld museums do not buy looted antiquities, but back in Budge's day that was how things were frequently done.
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お願いします (4) The mere mention of a name can be significant. In Year 10, a scarab was distributed announcing the arrival of a foreign princess to join Amenhotep's harem. But even on this scarab commemorating another woman, Queen Tiy's name is the name most closely linked to the king. Putting their names together clearly announces to the world her position as first queen. The last scarab, put out in Year 11, confirms their close relationship. It describes how a devoted Amenhotep III orders a lake made for his queen, Tiy. The lake was more than a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide. Some scholars estimate it may have been dug in just 15 days. "His Majesty celebrated the feast of the opening of the lake" by sailing witg his queen on the royal barge named his favorite name―the Dazzing Sun Disk. (5) Amenhotep the Magnificent was a very lucky king. He came to the throne when Egypt's treasury bulged with surplus harvests, the spoils of war, and goods from grade missions. And although the king would take sole credit for the country's good fortune, the man responsible for keeping things running smoothly was the vizier. Next to the king, the vizier was the most powerful person in Egypt. He, too, had many names, or titles. He was known as "Second to the King" and "Heart of the Lord" and "Eyes and Ears of the Sovereign." It was his job to keep law and order. He was in charge of taxes, all the records, troop movement, and even keeping track of the level of the Nile. The governors of every district reported to the vizier and the vizier reported to the king.
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お願いします (1) The invaders didn't swoop across Egypt like a tidal wave. At the beginning of the Second Intermediate Peiod, they trickled in―immigrants from the east settling into the delta of northern Egypt. We call the invaders the Hyksos. Soon so many Hyksos had moved into the delta that they had their own king―and that irritated the king of Egypt. This as Egyptian soil, after all. Who did that foreign king think he was ruling in Egypt? No matter how hard the Hyksos tried to blend in, they were still foreigners. It didn't matter if they worshipped Egyptian gods, wore Egyptian clothes, or ate Egyptian food. They were still foreigners. Even their Egyptian name, heqa-khasut, smacked of somewhere else. It meant "chiefs of foreign lands." (2) True, the Hyksos brought with them the hump-backed Zebu cattle that the Egyptians liked so much. And those apples sure were tasty...not to mention the olives. And oh, the sound of the lyre and the lute! Their notes echoed through the chambers of the royal palace. Then there was the vertical loom. For weaving linen it couldn't be beat. The Hyksos' potter's wheels were better, too. But why were the Hyksos hiring scribes to copy Egyptian texts? Stealing Egyptian medical practices, no doubt. And it was totally unacceptable to build Avaris, a walled fortree, and claim it as their capital. (3) Manetho, an Egyptian priest, writes that the Hyksos' king "found a city very favorably situated on the east of the...Nile, and called it Avaris. This place he rebuilt and fortified with massive walls, planting there a garrison of as many as 240,000 heavy-armed men to guard his frontier." Nowhere did the Hyksos' foreignness offend Egyptians as much as at Avaris. Why, those Hyksos dared to live in the same place that they buried their dead. Barbarians!
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