Tell el-Amarna

“ The Tell el-Amarna tablets found in Upper Egypt in 1887 are a series of despatches in cuneiform script from Babylonian kings and Phoenician and Palestinian governors to the Pharaohs (c. 1400 B.C.) . The epistles of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plutarch, Seneca and the Younger Pliny claim mention at this point. In the later Roman period and into the middle ages, formal epistles were almost a distinct branch of literature. ”

“ In one letter, Samsu-iluna (Brit. Mus. No. 27269) instructs Sin-Idinnam and the judges of Sippar to prohibit certain fishermen from fishing in forbidden waters; at other times the same judges are directed to send a particular case for trial in the capital (cf. Brit. Mus. No. 27266) . Another collection of letters written in cuneiform and on clay tablets are the famous Tell el-Amarna Letters,—generally of somewhat larger size and less distinctly oblong than the ordinary Babylonian despatches. The majority of them are rectangular, though a few are oval. ”

“ V. Political Conditions in the Tell el Amarna Period. However favourably the religious reform of King Napkhuria may be estimated on its own merits, it by no means strengthened the authority of Egypt in Asia. Of course it could have in no way been the cause of the state of affairs in Syria and Canaan; perhaps Amenophis III., whatever his own great slackness, simply inherited the [pg 057] confusion in this part of his empire. The heaviest blows could not in the long run prevent the Habiri from returning to the attack again and again at brief intervals. ”

“ Perhaps we should conclude that Akhenaton chose to devote himself to religious matters, and that the chaos in Asia was a result of neglect rather than self-conscious policy.
The Amarna tomb inscriptions give extravagant praise to Aton and his son, the Pharaoh:
How prosperous is he who hears thy doctrine of life and is sated with beholding thee, and unceasingly his eyes look upon Aton every day. ”

“ Archaeological work was concluded at Amarna in 1937. The site had great advantages, for it was the one city of Egypt which was never rebuilt. Most of our knowledge of ancient Egypt comes from discoveries in desert tombs, for ancient cities were usually replaced by modern cities on the same site. Akhetaton, however, was the sacred city of a Pharaoh whom later generations despised as a criminal; and after his death its significance was at an end. Just because it was not rebuilt centuries ago, today it yields an impressive picture of the times of Akhenaton. ”

“ Officials of the royal harem and a number of servants look on. Akhenaton and his courtiers have the physical characteristics which became conventional in Amarna art.
The Development of Amarna Art
The most violent break with the older convention came in the early years of Akhenaton’s reign. Before the move to Akhetaton, the Theban hillside was dotted with tombs decorated with the newer art forms and bearing inscriptions praising the Pharaoh. With the move to Amarna, the art conventions matured. Artists developed their own distinctive tastes and at times modified the prevailing tendencies. ”

“ Scholars, both professional and amateur, began making their way to Egypt to copy inscriptions and study antiquities.
The rock tombs beyond the Amarna plain did not escape these early travelers. During his explorations in Egypt from 1821 to 1831, John Gardner Wilkinson visited Amarna, and a more systematic study of the nearby tombs was made by a Prussian expedition directed by Karl Richard Lepsius from 1842 to 1845. Amarna art and inscriptions found a place in the twelve volume work of Lepsius, Denkmaler aus Aegypten und Athiopien (in English, The Monuments from Egypt and Ethiopia) . ”

“ Unfortunately the international tensions of the day were such that Egypt needed a warrior rather than a philosopher king. The idealism of Amenhotep IV was largely lost on his own generation, and entirely lost on the generation that followed him.
Nofretete was devoted both to her husband and to the religious reforms to which he dedicated his life. She bore him six daughters and appears to have been her husband’s constant companion and confidant. Nofretete was, understandably, a favored subject in Amarna art. ”

“ Many of the strongholds held by the rulers of Canaanite city states had been fortified in Hyksos times. Egyptian control, however, was maintained through commissioners appointed by the Pharaoh to collect taxes and supervise the compulsory labor groups which worked on roads, tended the Lebanon forest preserves, or worked in the Valley of Esdraelon where wheat was 52 grown for the royal court. Under strong Pharaohs, the interests of the Empire were carefully guarded, but the Amarna Age was a period during which Egyptian prestige was in eclipse and local rivalries became increasingly bitter. ”

“ Moses, raised as an Egyptian prince, probably knew both Egyptian hieroglyphs and Akkadian cuneiform, and he may have learned to write in an early form of the Hebrew alphabet as a result of contacts with his own people. The Amarna texts have underscored the fact that both Egypt and Canaan were highly literate during the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries before Christ. ”

“ In theory the Pharaoh was a god with absolute power whose word was law. The Egyptians have left us no law codes, and it may be that they sensed no need of such codified law as we find in Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, and among the Hittites (as well as the Biblical Hebrews) . The presence of a living god in the land might render such written codes unnecessary.
In practice, however, as Egypt extended her Empire the personal involvement of the Pharaoh became progressively less. The priesthood of Amon-Re, god of Thebes and chief god of the Egyptian pantheon, developed enormous power. ”

“ The Amarna texts make it clear that the inhabitants of Canaan during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries B.C. had a high degree of culture. While most people were probably illiterate, each community had its professional scribes who could write in at least one foreign language. Akkadian cuneiform, and not Canaanite, was the language of diplomatic correspondence between the city states of Canaan and the Egyptian court. ”

“ The two celebrated Colossi of Memnon (statues of himself) , many great buildings, the important part played by his favourite wife Teye, the well-filled harem, the cultivation of “wisdom” [pg 015] (which practically, no doubt, was tantamount to what we should call “preciosity”) ; last, but not least, the solemn adoration of his own divine image—all these facts combine to indicate the altered condition of things which came about under Amenophis III. He reigned thirty-six years, long enough to allow the movement introduced by him to run its course. ”

“ Kill the people who murdered my servants and avenge their blood, for if you do not kill these people they will return, and my caravans, or even your messengers they will murder, and messengers between us will be intercepted, and if that happens, the inhabitants of the land will fall away from you. [50]
The king of Alashia (Cyprus) sent copper to Egypt, requesting silver and gold in exchange. [51] Iron, which in Hyksos times had twice the value of gold, became more plentiful during the Amarna Age. Tushratta of Mitanni sent iron to Egypt. ”

“ The Amarna Age—the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries before Christ—provides the archaeologist rich resources for the study of ancient cultures. The epic and mythological literature from Ras Shamra, ancient Ugarit on the Phoenician coast, dates from this period, as do the Nuzi tablets written by Hurrian scribes in Mitanni. The Ugaritic texts give us an insight into the language and religious thought of ancient Canaan, and the archives from Nuzi offer a wealth of information concerning the social, economic, and legal structure of northern Mesopotamia in Patriarchal times. ”

“ The rulers of the larger states of the Amarna Age, and particularly Tushratta of Mitanni, sent their daughters to grace the harems of Amenhotep III and Akhenaton. A scarab of Amenhotep III commemorates the arrival of Giluhepa, a Mitannian princess with a retinue of three hundred seventeen maidens. [71] That Amenhotep III was actively building his harem is shown in a letter which he addressed to Milk-ili of Gezer which says, in part:
I have sent Hania, the commander of the archers, to you with all sorts of things, to bring the beautiful women.... ”

“ When mud brick walls decompose, they form a nitrous soil which the Egyptians have learned to use as fertilizer. A peasant woman, digging for this fertilizer among the Amarna ruins, came upon a quantity of small baked clay tablets bearing cuneiform inscriptions. ”

“ There is considerable evidence that the ‘Apiru were regarded as a social rather than an ethnic group. At Bogazkoy they are listed among the social classes and appear to have been classified between freemen and slaves. Wherever they appear they have one common trait—they are beyond the jurisdiction of the established authority. They frequently appear as a landless people who enter into dependent status as agricultural workers or soldiers in exchange for maintenance. The ‘Apiru of the Amarna tablets are never described as invaders. ”

“ I and Abdi-Khepa alone are left to fight against the ‘Apiru, and Zurata, the prince of Akko, and Indurata the prince of Achsaph, were the ones who hastened to my help. [45]
Amarna Age Palestine
The petty kings in Canaan were permitted their own armed forces comprising chariots, owned by the aristocracy, and footmen drawn from the peasant classes. Egypt did not interfere in local rivalries as long as her revenues continued to come and her commissioners were able to carry on the royal projects. ”

“ Amarna Style Head. A relief showing the characteristic art of the Amarna Age.
Queen Nofretete. The painted limestone bust shows the queen wearing a conical blue headdress encircled by a band to which the uraeus, symbol of royalty, is attached. The bust was found in the studio of the sculptor Thutmose at Akhetaton.
Realism
Akhenaton’s chief contribution to art, however, was anything but mechanical. Under his prodding, the artists at Akhetaton developed a realism—and even a distortion—which contrasts with the conservative, stylizing tendencies of earlier Egyptian art. ”

“ Here he lived with the adherents of the new creed, and here he erected a temple to the god of his worship and a stately palace for himself.
Along with the reformation in religion had gone a reformation in art. The old conventionalised art of Egypt was cast aside, and an attempt was made to imitate nature, exactly, even to the verge of caricature. The wall and floor paintings that have been discovered at Tel el-Amarna are marvels of realistic art. Plants and animals and birds are alike represented in them with a spirit and faithfulness to nature which is indeed astonishing. ”

“ A certain Dushratta, not satisfied about the safety of his sister, who had married Amenophis III, had sent to Egypt to inquire after her, but the repetition or duplication of a [188] name often makes it difficult to decide upon the exact relationship. From the letters found on tablets in the ruins of Tel-el-Amarna, many of which of course are broken and imperfect, we have chiefly derived the information we possess of these transactions. Queen Tyi seems also to have held the power for a brief period at Tel-el-Amarna, but exactly when this was the case has not been discovered. ”

“ One must not infer from this, however, that the two civilizations met on anything like an equality. Indeed, in the wonderful Tel-el-Amarna collection there is a suggestive absence of literary documents from the Aegean that demands a word of notice. The Tel el-Amarna collection, it will be recalled, consists of the royal archives of King Amenophis IV. of the XVIIIth Egyptian dynasty, who in the latter years of his reign chose to be known as Akhenaton, “the glory of the solar disk.” ”

“ But the ruins of Tel el-Amarna show that the restoration of the old creed and the overthrow of Khu-n-Aten's adherents had not been without a struggle. Most of the tombs in the cliffs and sandhills which surround the old city have been unfinished: the followers of the new cult for whom they were intended have never been allowed to occupy them. The royal sepulchre itself, as we have seen, is in an equally unfinished condition, and [pg 074] the sarcophagus in which the body of the king rested was violated soon after his mummy had been placed in it. ”

“ This age, with its regular maritime intercourse between the Aegean settlements, Phoenicia and the Delta, and with lines of caravans connecting Babylonia, North Syria, Arabia and Egypt, presents a remarkable picture of life and activity, in the centre of which lies Palestine, with here and there Egyptian colonies and some traces of Egyptian cults. The history of this, the “Amarna” age, reveals a state of anarchy in Palestine for which the weakness of Egypt and the downward pressure of north Syrian peoples were responsible. ”

“ The despatches of Rib-Hadad and Ebed-Tob, however, {156} go to show that in spite of his professions of friendship, the Babylonian monarch was ready to afford secret help to the insurgents in Palestine. The Babylonians were not likely to forget that they had once been masters of the country, or to regard the Egyptian empire in Asia with other than jealous eyes.
The Tel el-Amarna correspondence breaks off suddenly in the midst of a falling empire, with its governors in Canaan fighting and intriguing one against the other, and appealing to the Pharaoh for help that never came. ”

“ It is again the tablets of Tel el-Amarna which have shown us how this came to pass. Among them are fragments of Babylonian legends, one of which endeavoured to account for the creation of man and the introduction of sin into the world, and these legends were used as exercise-books in the foreign language by the scribes of Canaan and Egypt who were learning the Babylonian language and script. If ever we discover the library of Kirjath-sepher we shall doubtless find among its clay records similar examples of Chaldæan literature. ”